What else does PISA have in store for us?

The OECD announcement regarding future PISA tests should function as a moral seismograph: not to scare us, but to hold us accountable.

I read a news item stating that, in a few years, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) will test media competencies and the use of Artificial Intelligence through PISA tests. These are the tests, as everyone knows, where Romania has had disastrous results in recent years, which in turn have fueled a multitude of internal accusations regarding the inefficiency of the education system and the teachers.

How prepared are we in this regard is the natural question we must ask ourselves. The simple answer is that we are hardly prepared at all. And I say this as someone who has been concerned with media education for several years now. Recently, I concluded a new series of training for teachers to develop their teaching competencies and to infuse media education and digital skills. This is not the first time I write about this complex endeavor, which has started to receive institutional support in recent years, but which is still far from having widespread coverage.

What has been done so far? The pioneering work belongs to the Center for Independent Journalism, which developed a training program back in 2021. The program has been accredited and is conducted offering transferable credits to the teachers who follow it. As a trainer, I can say that a overwhelming percentage of teachers state, at the end, that it is one of the most useful and engaging courses they have taken. There are countless feedbacks of this kind. We support teachers not only to teach an optional media education course but also to introduce media education snippets into the teaching of the subjects they represent. To give an example: when teaching "Baltagul" by Mihail Sadoveanu, one can introduce the concept of digital footprint, associating it with all the traces that Nechifor Lipan leaves on his path and on the basis of which Vitoria builds her detective endeavor. However, the number of teachers who have reached this course is still small, at the national level, and among those who graduated, some are probably no longer concerned with applying what they have learned in class.

What else has been done? A program for an optional course, Digital Education and Media Skills, which is approved by ministerial order and can be taught in the 11th and 12th grades, as well as a Teacher's Guide for this optional course. There is also in the works an optional course for middle school, as well as a manual for middle school, with the support of the same Center for Independent Journalism.

I would also like to mention two things: in the framework plans for high school, media education has been introduced, albeit only in the pedagogical profile, as a mandatory subject, and the description in the same framework plans of the Romanian language and literature subject includes mandatory units of media education, alongside elements of rhetoric, oratory, and grammar. This means that both school programs and textbooks will have to take this into account!

That said, why do I say that we are still not prepared? First of all, because these beginnings that I have enumerated do not have coverage throughout the entire system. Before all teachers are prepared to at least infuse media education, some time still needs to pass.

Secondly, because, beyond documents, ministerial orders, and good intentions, the system still has the reflex to react only when pushed from behind: by a crisis, a scandal, or a poor result in an international test. But media and digital competencies cannot be developed through reaction, but through construction. They are fields in constant change, requiring flexibility, continuous updating, and pedagogical courage.

Therefore, the OECD announcement regarding future PISA tests should function as a moral seismograph: not to scare us, but to hold us accountable. To understand that media and digital literacy is not a whim and not a curricular bonus, but a condition for educational survival. If we want not to be surprised again by "disastrous" results, we should start to surprise ourselves through consistency, through real learning, and through the responsibility of no longer postponing what was necessary yesterday.

Horia Corcheș is a writer and a teacher of Romanian language and literature. His most recent published book: A yellow dress, like a well-ripened lemon, Polirom Publishing House, 2022.

https://www.dilema.ro/pe-ce-lume-traim/ce-ne-mai-pregateste-pisa