Evaluating Competencies to Go Beyond Education - A Conversation with Michaela Horvathova

Welcome to the Future Learning Design Podcast.

What we know is that these competencies are malleable and they can be developed over time if they are systematically integrated into the school environment. And so this is ultimately the goal that we are advocating for, right? Like, you cannot systematically integrate them if you don't know where you are and what is your starting point.

Hi everyone, welcome back to the podcast this week. My name's Tim Logan and the podcast is produced by Good Impact Labs.

I'm sure many of you have heard the question, are we valuing what we measure or measuring what we value? Well, this week we're taking a detailed and reflective look at the role of measuring complex competencies in our schools, as this is often a big part of the discussion about what needs to change in formal education. In previous episodes, I've chatted with folks from Melbourne Metrics, Rethinking Assessment, and Mastery Transcript Consortium. And now I'm particularly pleased to be able to bring you this conversation with Michaela Horváthová from Beyond Education. Personally, I have some real tensions and questions about this topic, and it was so useful to be able to discuss them in a really open and collaborative way with someone who has deep expertise in this area. Michaela and her team at Beyond Education are being incredibly thoughtful and rigorous about how they proceed in bringing these approaches into schools. As the co-founder and chief education officer of Beyond Education and the co-founder of Beyond International School in Portugal, Michaela is an International education policy expert focused on the future of education and skills for the digital age and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. She's been a policy analyst at the OECD, education advisor to the Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic, researcher and curriculum expert at the Center for Curriculum Redesign, and worked as a consultant with UNICEF, International Baccalaureate, and many other organizations. You can find more links to Beyond Education in the show notes.

Well, thank you, Michaela. I'm very excited to have this conversation. It's quite funny and ironic with you sitting there in Paris and me sitting here in Bordeaux at 1 o'clock in the afternoon while the entire country is having a nice long extended lunch break. And here we are recording a podcast. So no, I'm super happy to be able to have this conversation and, um, Likewise. I mean, firstly, recently, very big congratulations. I saw, you know, a big announcement on social media that you're opening a school. I didn't even know about this.

Yes, indeed. Yeah, a lot of things are happening at the same time, and it is just an extension of really the Beyond Education vision and the philosophy of developing a, a whole child. And so really focusing more than just academics and going beyond that. It's really also in our name, Beyond Education, and the school is called Beyond International School. And what we aim to do is basically embody everything that we are talking about and doing in Beyond Education into a physical space of a school, right? And so the goal of that is that really the DNA of the school embodies the holistic development of students.

Amazing. Practicing what you preach. I love it. So, I mean, maybe we can start just, I'd love to hear a little bit more about how you've come to this work. And I'm also, one thing I learned about you is that you were at one point you were a semi-pro or pro tennis player. And with the French Open just happened and Wimbledon coming around the corner, this is like a good time for tennis, right? You know, there's definitely some competencies and some interesting learning habits happening when you're a pro sports person. So now I'd love to just maybe, yeah, we could start with a little bit of your reflection about how you came to this work.

Yeah, and it is an excellent question, Tim, because I think that what I learned on through tennis and on the tennis court really, I think, transposed very much into my professional experience, and, and it very much inspired what I do right now. I, as a student, I was growing up in Slovakia. I didn't have myself the best experience, and so what really taught me the most was tennis, right? And as you mentioned, there are a lot of competencies that are being developed as we practice, as we play, as we lose, right? And basically, just some of them to, to mention, I think one is the, the growth mindset, really learning to continuously grow and improve and, and learn. I think this is the key, and this is something that I way with me to life and to how I approach life, how I approach learning. Another one, of course, it's resilience, basically not giving up and staying on the course and through whatever setbacks and losses and injuries, just keep going. Right. And this is a very useful skill for me right now on this entrepreneurial journey as well with Beyond Education. Then I think metacognition. So continuously thinking about where you are, where you want to go, how can you learn, how can you improve? And then I think one of One of the things that really helped me a lot in that, and which I think I would love that it's transposed to education, was having continuous feedback. As I was learning and playing and developing, I continuously had the meaningful personalized feedback as to what is it that I can improve and get better at. And also I had the right level of challenge. I was always stretched beyond my limit, but never too easy so that I would not be interested and never too difficult that I would be discouraged, right? And so, yeah. These are, I think, is just very interesting how so many of the components of playing and learning tennis is transposed, I think, and could be transposed into education and then also ultimately into life.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I mean, I'd love to get onto some of that more specifically and the implications for education, but also just to say, you also then, in terms of a path of where you were seeing levers for change in some of these spaces, went into a policy space. And again, I'd love to talk about that a little bit, about what your reflections are on on that. Now you're in a slightly different entrepreneurial space, but what was it that led you into the policy space in general?

I think it was my ultimate goal was to, to have impact, right, in, in education. And I believed back then, and maybe still somehow, but maybe in a less naive way, that the policy and international policy can have huge implications and can really move the needle in international education systems. And so, so this was the belief and the conviction that I had. This is why I studied international education policy at Harvard. This is why I then worked at the OECD for several years. Then I also worked with different ministries of education on the competency-based reforms. I was also an advisor to prime minister in Slovakia, my home country. And so all of this experience really taught me that, yes, I think in theory it can have a huge impact, but it needs to be done in the right way. And oftentimes the second part is missing. And I think there are several reasons for that, obviously. I think one One obvious one is that many times it's just top-down and really the, the real changemakers on the ground that are teachers and principals are not very much consulted and are not very much part of the process. They don't co-design these reforms and policies with the government. Then the second one is they are not capacitated to actually implement those changes, right? Like the reforms and the policies are very visionary and they are basically describing what is the ideal objective of education, but in order for the practitioners to carry this through, they need to have a completely different professional development and training, and they need to be capacitated. And oftentimes this is not the case. And then the metrics, right? Like we say one thing, what is the goal of education? But the metrics and what we measure doesn't change. And so what I've seen is that it's really a systemic change that we are trying to have, but we don't approach it in a systematic way, right? We need to really align all of these different systems within that, right? Which is, as I was mentioning, the curriculum, the professional development, the metrics, the capacitation of the teachers in order for this reform and these goals to actually happen in practice on the ground.

Yeah.

And last, I think I would say the last challenge also is that oftentimes there is just not a continuity in the leadership and it changes every 4 or 5 years. And so that is also difficult, right? And education, as we know, it's a long-term game.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I mean, yeah, there's so much there I'd love to dig into, but I mean, in a way, what I hear you speaking to there feels like it's related to your mission about widening the scope of education with Beyond Education. And so I think there's a whole set of really interesting questions in that idea of opening up the scope, right? Widening the scope.

And so I'd, yeah, fascinated to get into that, but what could you maybe just say a little bit more about what you mean by widening the scope, unless it's the same as what you've already said, but Yeah, I think it's really expanding what we value and measure, and that should go beyond traditional academics and include the full spectrum of these competencies that we call 21st century competencies, right? Like creativity, resilience, collaboration, empathy, metacognition. So all of these competencies that we know that they have predictive outcomes for better academic results, better results in labor market and in life in general. Yet we are still very much limited into focusing on traditional academics. So basically moving beyond that and viewing learners as multidimensional as they are, right?

Yeah, absolutely. So, so there's an interesting piece there about valuing and measuring, and that again feels like a lot of what you're focusing in on is the measuring part so that we can take seriously what we value. And this is kind of how we, how we met and how we exchanged initially was around these ideas. Cause I have some, I have some serious questions about competencies and measuring competencies, and I've had wonderful people on the podcast previously, like Sandra Milligan, talking about this. And so, yeah, I mean, I think it's a, it's a really common theory of change in a way that the metrics should match up to what we say we care about. And they often don't. I guess my question there is, should we be measuring competencies? And in a way, that's a, it's an unhelpful question because Beyond Education is a lot of what you're doing. But I'd love to, if we can pull back a little bit and ask that question about should we? Because I think there's some really interesting tensions there for me about what happens down the road if we do start measuring the things we say we care about.

I, so I, I think, you know, my answer, I believe we should, obviously. And you also said it yourself, because what we measure, we treasure. And if we really want to widen the scope of education, we need to bring focus on other results and outcomes than just academics. And if we don't do that, it will always just be nice to have and sort of add-on as it's been until now. And we see that change that is needed, it's very slow because of that. And so it is not the only one, but I believe very effective lever of change of helping education systems to really focus on what matters. And at the same time, so I believe it is important, but it's complex and it's not easy. And so that's why it really needs to be done well, right? And mindfully, and we need to be really thoughtful and rigorous about how we are implementing it so that it has the outcome that we want, right? And so I think for me, the, the The first one is that we really need to be very clear on explaining the rationale for measurement and why are we actually doing this. And so, so that the education practitioners and all of the stakeholders understand that it's not yet another standardized examination, high-stakes test, right? But it is here, the purpose of it, it's really to, to help growth of learners ultimately, right? And then obviously guide the personalized learning, inform instruction, and then lead the system-level change and the decisions that we aiming to. But so I would say that this first point is extremely important, like explaining, and this is part of what we do anytime we implement assessment in schools, we are explaining, okay, this is not yet another assessment as you know it. This is the reason why we are doing it. So the why behind it's important. Then the other consideration I would say that is important is the validity and reliability of the instrument. And this is something that we need to be sure as much as we can that we really measure what we say that we measure, right? And so So that's why we did the evaluation and the validity of our instrument, and we looked at psychometric properties of reliability, sensitivity, and validity to really test it, retest it, and to really look for how robust it is, right? So being very intentional and thoughtful about this aspect as well. And then I would say, yeah, another consideration, of course, it's the ethical use of data. So this is a huge topic nowadays, especially when we are dealing with the data of minors. And so being very transparent about how we are using the data, having the protocols explaining, okay, what are the data being used, how are they being stored, and explaining and having a clear communication with learners and families about basically what is the purpose and the storage and the use of the data. And then last, I would say we operate in 12 different countries, so the, the cultural and contextual sensitivity is very important, right? One thing doesn't mean it's not the same in Latin America versus Europe versus Middle East, right? And so this is something we also take very seriously and we continuously do cultural adaptations and contextualization of our tools. For example, we operate in Brazil and we have adapted it to Brazilian Portuguese, while in Portugal we are using Portuguese Portuguese, you know, just to make sure and ensure that the, the meaning of the words is translated into local contexts. In conclusion, I would say yes, we should measure the competence, but we need to be very thoughtful, intentional about how we are doing it.

Yeah, I didn't expect you to say anything else, but there's some really interesting points there. I absolutely agree with a lot of it. My questions come from a place of something about being careful what we wish for. That's the phrase that often comes to me around this. It's like, you know, Sandra Milligan was talking about standards, not standardization, and it's like nuanced difference between— we're not trying to turn everybody into the same profile of creative, collaborative, blah, blah, blah, right? So we're not trying to standardize everyone, but we are trying to provide some robust standards on which we can make judgments or see growth, as you say. And so maybe could you say a little bit more perhaps about how does that process, or how do you see that process of making visible the growth of young people? In around some of those kinds of metrics, like, you know, collaboration or growth mindset or metacognition?

Yeah, sure. So the ultimate goal of the, the tool is making those what we say in quote-unquote invisible competencies visible through the instrument, right? So it's not to make judgments, it's not to put students in the boxes, it's not to say they are good or bad, it's everything but that. The ultimate goal is to help them grow and reach their potential, whatever that is, right? We are not saying that everybody should be high on creativity and critical thinking. It's impossible, and that's not the point, right? But what we know is that these competencies are malleable and they can be developed over time if they are, again, systematically integrated into the school environment. And so this is ultimately the goal that we are advocating for, right? Like, you cannot systematically integrate them into the school environment if you don't know where you are and what is your starting point, right? And so So, so this is why we have these metrics and this is why we have this tool to actually help students to go to the maximum of their potential, whether it is beginner or intermediate or advanced. It's not for us to make this call, right? But we know that each of them can go further within each of the competencies if they are targeted intentionally. And this is the role of the school and the school can only do it if they have the data and evidence. To basically have it as a starting point to then go and see what are the interventions that they can do to, to improve it.

Yeah. And I guess a follow-up question on that therefore would be, how contextual is the definition of that concept? Because, I mean, you talked about Brazil or Portugal and different cultural contexts from a linguistic point of view, but I'm also interested in— because, you know, I'm not, I'm not a measurement scientist, but I would imagine that the clarity with which you define the concept that you are trying to operationalize is quite critical in terms of creating robust measures. And therefore, how standard across contexts is that description and how contextualizable is that?

Mm-hmm. Great question. The definition stays, right? And the reason for that is we need to have a unified language. Leadership, even though it might be understood and interpreted differently in different countries, is for the tool to work, it needs to be based on certain concepts that cannot be changed. And the concepts, the way they were developed was through several years of research of learning sciences and developmental psychology and having a lot of feedback from practitioners to come to as robust of a definition, as comprehensive of a definition, as globally relevant of a definition as possible, right? And so I believe that we have a very solid conceptual underpinning of the concepts and the definitions. And then we have descriptors of what does this mean at the beginner, intermediate, advanced, expert level, right? Each competency, sub-competency is really described. So we have a massive conceptual underpinning that is based on research that informed the development of the tools. Yeah. And then how can we contextualize it is indeed what I was mentioning by the language translations. So when we are translating it into the local languages, we have it in Portuguese, in Spanish, in English, now we're translating into French. We always test for this, right? How are the items, the questions in the tool understood, right? And then we can make the adaptations in the items and in the questions and in the tool to make sure that the understanding is captured there. That's first. And second, we also calibrated basically our range and our metrics are calibrated based on the ages and based on the languages, right? And so this is where the contextual contextualization comes in. So the, the concepts and the definition stays, but then basically as we are going to different countries and different languages, that's where we are contextualizing it. Yeah.

Okay. No, interesting. And the reason I asked that question is one of my wonderings about this is that the way that collaboration or communication show up in desirable or undesirable ways, or helpful or generative or degenerative ways, whatever whatever, you know, adjectives you might want to put on it, is a deeply contextual thing. And helping young people to understand the way they show up in a particular context and what kind of, you know, it's a highly nuanced art, right, of learning, somehow learning to be human, right? Of knowing when do I stay silent? When do I not say, not actually say anything in this space? Or how do I communicate in all sorts of ways which don't feel like explicit verbal communication or just just that kind of responsibility to that context. And I think, of course, that's in a way you could say is highly advanced awareness of what communication is. But one of my concerns about the universal definition of these things is that we box it off and separate it from something else, right? Communication can also be collaboration in itself, right? There's no clear boundary between those two things in actual practice, in real life, messy human contexts. And my worry is like by drawing that line and that boundary, as one example, we do something to the nature of what it means to be a systemic complex human in context.

It's very interesting that you say that, and, and again, I couldn't agree more with you. They are same. I feel that the disciplines and subjects are artificially divided into boxes while they're actually connected. The competency is exactly the same thing. We don't put them into separate boxes, right? And actually one of the analysis that we do, and it's super interesting, is how the competencies— we have 12 competencies that we measure— how they are intercorrelated. And we see that, and of course again depends on the context, on the country that we are in, but that some competencies are more intercorrelated with one another than others, right? Like, so for example, resilience and growth mindset are extremely correlated, right? Ethics and mindfulness extremely correlated, more than, for example, ethics and critical thinking, right? And so we have this map of really like bubbles that are expanding. The more they are correlated, the bigger they are. And so this is very interesting for us because it exactly points out to the, to the thing that you said, right? Like they are interdependent and we can see that. And that's yet another data point that can then help us when we are guiding the schools as to what are the interventions that they can be doing and that they can be aware is that when they are developing one competency, it has actually consequences, positive consequences oftentimes, on some specific other interrelated competencies.

Yeah, no, that's super interesting. I, I recognize sometimes in these kinds of conversations that I am in probably an unhelpful minority, but I think I feel that they're quite important questions to ask before we head down down what could be, I think, quite a dystopian blind alley, because we've got really good intentions about taking the things that we value really seriously. And at the same time, I wonder whether this— we might be heading down quite a tricky path. So I think it's unfair for me to say that and not say what I mean. So maybe like, if you'll allow me just for a moment to describe my dystopian future, and you can tell me how, like, tell me how way off and ridiculous it is. But I worry about the implicit communication that goes on here in this space. So you described the fact that everyone's starting from their own starting point and, you know, we want people to grow and take growth really seriously from where they are. Absolutely agreed. And I'm sure every educator out there would broadly agree. And at the same time, when we set up these kinds of structures and metrics, the implicit communication is more is better. So higher up the ladder, just like you saw with your, you know, your previous employer with OECD, right? With the PISA results that everyone's scrabbling to get to a higher level in whatever the metric is. And one of the things that I am concerned about is that when we set up a whole bunch of instruments around measuring things which are really quite personal attributes of, of being a human, we then potentially open the door for the individualistic and competitive dynamics that already pervade the education system into this space of I'm more mindful than you, or I'm more collaborative than you, because that's the implicit communication of the, the current, I would say, kind of industrialized education system is that it is about your own individual capital accumulation of competencies, credentials, et cetera, in order to go out into the workplace. And I know that's, that's clearly one, not a very fair description of it perhaps, but I think there are dynamics of that at play. And this is my worry is that we then open the door for young people feeling that they are being constantly surveilled. In fact, not just in their academic time, but also in their extracurricular activities where they're doing sports or music, and they may be places where they can demonstrate these competencies. In fact, they are really, as you said about tennis, right? These, all these competencies show up a lot in these spaces. And so therefore suddenly those, those places become sites of assessment. Investment, not just sites of leisure and pleasure and passion and growth. And potentially your home life as well, right? You know, you're helping out at home, you're looking after your elderly grandparent. And, you know, I can evidence this for my compassion metric. And so this, you know, the kind of surveillance capitalism idea then creeps in of, you know, this idea that actually in all aspects of our lives, I mean, we talk about this kind of 360-degree views and assessments, that we end up potentially with a space where young people are assessed and measured in all aspects of their lives, not just in the narrow artificial subject-based disciplines that they were being assessed in. So I recognize that's, that's a dark and dystopian future. I just worry that that may be the unintended consequence of measuring competencies.

Yeah, I hear you. And thanks for sharing your concern and your worry. And I understand where it's coming from because indeed we do live in a highly competitive, high-stakes culture, right? And so everybody's used to this constantly being measured, evaluated, comparing one against another, who is better, right? And this is exactly the opposite of what we are trying to do and what is the goal of this tool. And that's where the communication is just the key, really. And so anytime we are implementing it, before we implement it, we We have the, what we call, orientation session where we explain to school leaders and educators that this is not another assessment where students are being judged and put into the boxes and graded as we are used to. This is a tool to help them grow and improve, right? And I think what it requires is just continuous communication, awareness raising, and really change management. It's really a mindset shift. That it's necessary for this to work. But I believe this is not the mindset shift that is needed just for this specific tool and measuring the competence that is needed. This is the complete mindset shift that is needed for the whole education system.

I would agree with that.

Yeah, I mean, if, if we want to go to this paradigm shift as to what we're talking about, like, we need to move away from individualism, competition, metrics, rote memorization, learning, all of that based on which this whole system is based on, we need a mindset shift. And only with this mindset shift, then tools like this and others can really thrive and reach their full potential, which ultimately the, the full potential of this is that we can really reshape education. And as we were talking earlier, widen the scope of education. The goal of this is that students are constantly being measured, but they're being measured on the wrong things, really. They leave the school and they're completely lost. They have no idea of who they are. And so the goal of this is to bring more focus on things that matters nowadays, maybe matter even more than the academic outcomes, so that they can ultimately, when they leave the school and the K-12 education, thrive and find themselves and know who they are and have their internal compass developed because the competencies were intentionally developed across their educational journey. So this is how— this is my vision and this is how I see it.

No, no, I really appreciate it. And I mean, I just think it's really important to be able to have this kind of conversation around it because I worry that there are unreflective people moving into this space because it's a growth area in education. And I just think, yeah, I think they're important conversations. But one of the things One of the things that struck me as you were speaking there, I wanted to ask you about, you mentioned this idea of an internal compass for a young person. Perhaps you could speak to the kind of, where does the onus lie or the locus of control lie in terms of the generation of the measurement, let's say? So really right at the, the heart of the thing that's happening, we've got this defined concept. Is it that the teacher is doing the assessing of the thing, or is it that the young person themselves is doing the self-reflection against a descriptor? To generate kind of a more of a self-report idea of where they are at?

So there are different ways to do it. The methodology that we use is that it is students themselves reflecting about where they are, right? And so that's why we, we start from 10 years old because they need to have a certain level of metacognition and understanding and self-awareness to be able to answer these questions. But I mean, you have challenges across— if it is students, right, you have challenges. If it is teachers, you have challenges. So there's always this potential for bias, right? Our philosophy or methodology is that who else can know these competencies that by nature are just so internal better than students themselves, right? And then obviously we have implemented certain checks and balances within the instrument to also detect students that they, what we call social desirability bias. They tend to overreport and score higher so that they can seem better. And so those are the ones that we exclude from the results. But it's really students themselves responding. And then it's students themselves that they get personalized report. And then we basically share data with all of the stakeholders at the grade level. So with teachers and then at the school-wide level with the principals. And then when we work with education groups or governments, we basically do the comparison between all of the schools that are within the network.

Okay.

It's been taken, but the data are really multi-level, right? They are shared with all the key stakeholders within the education system.

Yeah, no, interesting, because that doesn't feel insignificant in the way that you are approaching this, because I, it feels, I wonder, I suppose, how much pushback you might receive in relation to this word measurement and this idea of self-reflection and self-report from young people, because I think sometimes the word measurement itself, the whole concept, concept of this kind of objectivist paradigm of true measures. And if it's not that, then it's a poor, you know, little brother of that. But that's what we should be aiming for is a particular worldview that I think has been, it's, I don't know, I would say is, is a challenging one to hold given the complexity of the reality, the messy reality of the world. I mean, what actually, is there any ever any clean, true measure of anything without interference or bias or noise or, and so I just, yeah, I wondered how you hold that kind of concept of measurement with that idea of self-report from young people.

Yeah, no, excellent question again, Tim. And I think we, we keep having this discussion. This point keeps being raised, you know, over time. As you said, there isn't any perfect measure, right? It just, there isn't, especially in this space. I mean, we are not measuring physics or mathematics. That is really black and white that we can really say, okay, this is yes and this is no. So the starting point is already complex, but from, again, what we know from research and from psychology is that it is the self-report. It's still the best methodology to measure this internal construct that we know of, right? The OECD social emotional learning project is using this, the OECD, a lot of different pieces ISA questionnaires are using this. The Big Five, the, the most validated psychological assessment, is using the self-report. So again, it's not perfect. Of course, there can be some limitations, but it's the best of what we know currently. And at the same time, there are, as I was mentioning, certain mitigations that we can implement into the test design to keep that in mind and to prevent that. So no, that's interesting, you know, like we take this very seriously. And so we did very thorough work of validating the instrument and really looking at the psychometric properties of this and ensuring that the instrument as it is right now, it is robust, you know, and it really is what we say.

Yeah, absolutely. No, I really, I really appreciate that. It feels to me the significant part of that self-report is an ethical one, actually, not so much a validity one. It's like, where does the ownership of that self-reflection. I mean, if we're really serious about growth, that is not an external, top-down, extrinsic process. That is an internal process that surely self-reflection has to be a key part of that. So it's more of an ethical question for me, honestly.

That, and, and exactly. And in that, once again, as I was mentioning, the communication is the key. So when we are implementing this, we are really explaining that the students are doing it for themselves. I mean, and there are no consequences, right? It's not like if they score high, they will get a, I don't know, a better grade, and if they score low, they will get punished for that. So they know that there are no consequences for that. So ultimately, them knowing that they are really doing it for themselves and for their own growth, it's also very important element in doing the assessment.

Yeah, I mean, this is a bit of a curveball, and I hope you don't mind, if I was having a recent conversation with Indi Johar on the podcast about quite a radical shift around the, the focus of education, which could be less individualistic, let's say, right? So the scenario we were talking through on the previous episode was what would happen if the focus and the kind of direction of education, the horizon of what we are trying to work towards, is to increase the collective intelligence of a city. So fine, there's a concept of collective intelligence in there that would take some finessing and defining, et cetera. But just to take that as a placeholder for a minute, the fact that the idea of learning together in a school or what, some kind of social institution that is about learning, committed to growth and learning. But if the horizon of that was contributing to a broader collective value, collective goal, wide boundary goal. Like collective intelligence of a city, what would that do to the kinds of work that we do and the kinds of metrics that we might use? So quite specifically, I guess my question would be, could you foresee a moment where the kinds of tools and instruments you are using on an individualistic basis could then be opened up to be used at a more collective descriptive level?

Mm-hmm. Well, I love that idea, and I'm very much aligned with that. I think that the goal of these frameworks, the framework that we are using from Center for Curriculum Redesign or the Learning Compass from OECD, the ultimate goal is always the individual well-being and collective well-being, right?

Right.

So it is implicit in the design of these frameworks. It's never meant to be— it is meant to be to move away from the current system, right, which we know that it's failing, which is highly individualistic. And so So that's why the competencies that are integrated and the definitions of those competencies that are in this framework, I think implicitly are really thinking about individual and collective well-being. But I think in order to have collective well-being, you need to have, you need to start with an individual, right? Individuals need to thrive in order to contribute to a thriving community or the society. And so I would say implicitly it's there because we have the competencies like, you know, collaboration, mindfulness, being aware of self, all others and the world, leadership, how can you serve others. It's really servant definition of leadership, right? Yeah, it's not like, yeah, this is sort of a masculine figure that is going to tell everybody else what to do. And so I would say that implicitly in the goal of these competencies and the framework, and also in the definition of these competencies, it's there. But yeah, maybe it can be more surfaced or more explicitly communicated. This is the ultimate goal. Indeed.

Yeah. No, interesting. And sorry to spring that on you. I know it wasn't something I planned to talk to you about, but it's an interest. I think it's an interesting, and I'm not sure honestly that I would agree with you that it's individual to collective. I think I would say, for example, a thriving child thrives in a thriving family, or, you know, it takes a village to raise a child kind of ideas that actually, I think there is, I think it's a dialectic. I don't know that one can come without the other actually. And I, but I do, I do worry that we particularly in the weird countries, we overfocus on the individual and leave the collective piece implicit. And, um, this is not, I'm not advocating for a collectivist politics or a collectivist approach in general, but I think it's just an interesting question to me about like, what do we really value? And if we say we really value collective thriving or, or thriving of the individual in a community or in a collect collective, which one would hope that is also a thriving space. You know, there's some interesting questions there about what are we, are we on track towards that by focusing in on individual competency? So I don't know. Yeah, lots of, lots of questions and I do not have the answers to them, but I just, I really appreciate the fact that we can have this conversation to reflect on them because I think, as I said before, we just kind of blindly walk down this path towards taking really deeply human aspects and churning them through an unthinking measurement device. And that's very much not saying that that's what you're doing. I'm saying exactly the opposite of that, that, you know, the fact that we can reflectively have this conversation about it, I think is critically important at this stage because there is going to be a role for measurement and assessment. Clearly, I don't think that's going away entirely, although some would advocate for that. But as a pragmatic reality, I think it's going to stay day. So something really— yeah, there's some big questions for me around how do— how we do that being really critically important.

Absolutely. No, and I appreciate your questions and being able to, to talk about it and to reflect on it, and they are valid, right? Whenever you do anything, there are always— there's always a space for unintended consequences. And so our role in this is to ensure that we do everything that we can and more to make sure that this is used in the right way, because as you said, the measurement doesn't go anywhere. I don't think it will disappear, right? It's here to stay. And it is a powerful tool. And now the question is, how can we use it in a thoughtful, meaningful, ethical way for the ultimate goal that I believe we are very much aligned as to how to bring this humanness in us more to the forefront of education, which I believe it has been forgotten within this traditional systems that are just focusing on rote memorization and learning. Right. And so I believe it's not the only one, but I believe it is a powerful tool to help us get there.

Yeah.

And I, I wonder as feedback, you know, I don't know whether that is an important move, but how can, if we situate the measurement as feedback at every possible level, it's like feedback on the system or feedback on the individual or the perspective to then create learning systems that then can adapt and move as times adapt and move. I think that, that feels important.

And this is exactly the way we, we see it and I see it, you know, it's really an iterative process and the results of the measurement, it's really a starting point for us to work on this learning and improving of the system, right? So, okay, now we have the data. What is it that we can do in terms of instruction? What is it we can change? In terms of professional development? How can we adjust and integrate these competencies and make more time and space in the curricula, right? So it, it really is a starting point for us to be then thinking more systematically and intentionally about integrating those key competencies into education system.

Amazing. Yeah, no, thank you, Michela. I really appreciate being able to have the conversation and yeah, I hope we can continue reflecting together as you continue to do this amazing work and I hope you're able to to test some of these ideas out in the Beyond School. Hopefully you might get down there at some point to come and visit. No, thank you so much.

Real pleasure.

We would love to have you there. Thank you so much, Tim, for this conversation. It was great.

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