Under the invitation of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Professor Huang Zhongjing, chair of the Department and Dr. Gao Xingyuan went to the OECD headquarters for attending a two day academic symposium in Paris, France, on March 8-9, 2018. The conference aimed to promote the OECD project in every country about an international survey on social networking and emotional skills.
The international survey on social and emotional skills is another major international student comparison project after the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which is launched by OECD. Professor Andreas Schleicher, the founder of PISA, thinks that "social and emotional skills" is a field that should be valued in school education but often neglected. A large number of studies have shown that the students' social and emotional skills are closely related to the students' cognitive skills and physical and mental health, as well as the harmonious development and stability of the society as a whole.
At the symposium, the director of the OECD project introduced the theme of the project and its current progress, focusing on the research framework, design principles and investigation methods of the project, and explained how to improve the difficulty of the testing tools, translation and the fitness in the cultural background of various countries. And some countries which had already entered the preliminary project testing phase (item trial) shared their practical experience, and had carried out preliminary analysis and discussions with the data on the test stage. Finally, the OECD Secretariat further released the schedule and important time node for the future development of the project to all countries.
In his speech, Professor Huang Zhongjing expressed the willingness of the Faculty of Education of East China Normal University to support and actively participate in the project, and made a preliminary agreement on how to carry out the work next with the director of the OECD, and laid a good foundation for the future of the project in China.
