In this week’s web article, DIGITAL FIRST partner University of Ljubljana Faculty of Education showcases the recent findings of the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) in Slovenia to highlight the importance of informatics education in primary and secondary schools to empower students with creative and computational thinking skills which are vital for addressing real-world problems in their future professional lives.
PISA measures the skills of 15-year-olds in reading, mathematics and science to assess how well they can apply their knowledge and skills to real-world challenges. Additional areas such as creative thinking are also assessed to gain insight into students’ readiness for future social and professional demands. In 2022, 83 countries – 690,000 students – participated in the PISA study. In Slovenia, all secondary schools as well as 52 elementary schools and 2 adult education institutions participated in 296 educational programmes with 6,721 students. The implementation in schools took place in March and April 2022 (Educational Research Institute – Slovenia, PISA 2021/PISA 2022)
Last week OECD published PISA 2022 results in the report Volume III: Creative Minds, Creative Schools, according to which Slovenian 15-year-olds have below-average creative thinking skills compared to their peers in other countries. In several OECD countries involved in the study, we observe a decline in performance in mathematics, reading and science between 2018 and 2022, but this is more pronounced in Slovenia than elsewhere. While average performance in mathematics and science remains above the OECD average, Slovenian young people perform below average in reading literacy. This means that Slovenia is far from the European target of having less than 15% of young people below the basic level of reading literacy.
In terms of mathematical literacy, Slovenian pupils do not differ significantly from their peers in Belgium, the United Kingdom, Poland, Austria, Australia, the Czech Republic, Finland, Latvia, and Sweden. Female students perform similarly to their male peers in mathematics. They perform slightly better in science and significantly outperform their male peers in reading. However, the differences in academic performance due to socio-economic factors are concerning. For instance, grammar school students tend to perform better than vocational school students, which poses a societal challenge.
On the creative thinking scale, in Slovenia, female students scored 32 points while male students scored 28. The difference of 4 points is the largest among the countries compared. Interestingly, female students scored higher than male students in all countries compared. This could mean that if female students are properly motivated in the areas of STEM and block-based programming, we can also expect improvements in their results in these areas where girls show less interest.
What might be the reasons for low creative thinking skills in Slovenia?
According to experts, the reasons for this are both context-dependent and complex. They attribute this to the Slovenian education system’s focus on grades rather than creative learning and conclude that the current focus on good grades leaves little room for the promotion of creativity.
What influences the results in creative thinking skills in general?
Analysis of PISA results showed that participating in school activities such as art, drama, creative writing, or programming classes once or twice a week is linked to better creative thinking performance compared to infrequent or daily participation. Boys generally participate in school activities more often than girls across OECD countries, with girls attending art classes more frequently, while boys dominate in science clubs and computer programming, reflecting gender preferences and the under-representation of girls in STEM fields. Students who engage in these activities weekly perform better in creative thinking than those with irregular or excessive participation, suggesting that a balanced and consistent engagement is most beneficial for developing creative skills and fostering attitudes like openness to intellect and creative self-efficacy.
In the Slovenian curriculum there are classes dedicated to arts, but drama, creative writing and programming classes are more a part of an elective or extracurricular activities for students. In Slovenia, there is only one year of computer science education in the compulsory part of general education in a grammar school that has an open curriculum and consequently lessons on the use of technology. With a few exceptions, secondary school students are not familiar with the content of computer science and rarely choose to study it.
If we look at the curricula in elementary school, we see that not only is basic computer science content not part of the compulsory curriculum but also that digital literacy is not developed in a cross-curricular and vertical way but is left to the teachers. As a result, too high a percentage of students leave elementary school without having developed digital literacy and computational thinking skills. Globally, modern computer science education includes the acquisition of basic skills in the compulsory part of the curriculum and usually throughout the school years: from kindergarten to the end of secondary school. Although PISA does not assess specific curriculum skills, it emphasizes the need for societal change through contextual factors. These factors emphasize functional learning at different levels — e.g. in school or society — and advocate for practical knowledge, creative learning and the strengthening of higher-order thinking skills rather than mere use of technology and memorization, both inside and outside the school environment, as found in modern computer science curricula.
By 2025, PISA’s exam (PISA’s new focus on computational thinking and coding), Learning in the Digital World, will evaluate students’ ability to use computational tools for problem-solving, emphasizing computational thinking and coding. Integrating computer science into education enhances critical problem-solving and creative skills, boosting performance across subjects and increasing college attendance rates. Countries like Estonia, South Korea, and the UAE, which incorporate computer science into their curricula, are better preparing students for a digital future and will likely excel in PISA rankings. This inclusion of computational thinking and coding into the PISA exam serves as a call to action for global education systems to prioritize computer science, essential for all careers in today’s digital world.
Based on the results we believe that computer and information science should be included in the Slovenian curricula as a mandatory subject not only to enhance student’s creative thinking skills but also to develop computational thinking skills which are vital for their future careers.
And that’s where the DIGITAL FIRST project comes into play: We are on a mission to transform informatics education across Europe with innovative pedagogical approaches to equip students with the most suited informatics skills for the future!
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PISA 2022 creative thinking domain: Written expression (12 items), Visual expression (4 items), Scientific problem solving (6 items), Social problem solving (10 items)
