Oecd Background Paper for Oecd-keris Expert Meeting Information and Communication Technologies and Educational Performance Magdalena Claro Draft-not for Citation

For at least a decade, in many countries, considerable investment has been placed in Information and Communication Technologies for education, and today concrete results or impacts of these investments are required. In order to find evidence in this area, an important amount of research that has been done has focused on the use of ICT in the classroom, where teachers’ ability to integrate these technologies into their teaching practices has been the main concern and learning what outcomes can be expected as a consequence of ICT curricular integration. In this sense, the focus has been placed in schools and on the teachers as the agents of change regarding ICT learning. The OECD’s Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) New Millennium Learners (NML) Activity focuses instead on the new generation of students and what they might be revealing in terms of expected, but also unexpected, impacts of ICT. It aims, on the one hand, to conceptualise and analyse from a comparative perspective the effects of digital technologies on younger generations’ cognitive development, values and lifestyles, as well as educational expectations, and on the other hand, to examine the educational responses to the emergence of this new phenomenon, both in terms of policies and practices. The goal is to provide policymakers, researchers and educators with valuable insights on what could be the most suitable policies and practices to deal with this new generation of learners in light of the needs and requirements of the knowledge society.