The COVID-19 pandemic was a forceful reminder that education plays an important role in delivering not just academic learning, but also in supporting physical and emotional well-being. Balancing traditional “book learning” with broader social and personal development means new roles for schools and education more generally.

Digitalisation is transforming education as well as social and economic life, with implications for childhood. Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), with its immense potential to shape children’s early development, learning and well-being, can play a major role in addressing the opportunities and risks that digitalisation brings to young children.

Childhood is changing in ways that we are still unpacking, affected by digitalization, globalization and climate change, as well as shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic. In many OECD education systems, child empowerment is increasingly an explicit aim of policies and practices. But it is often poorly defined, which risks turning it into a mere slogan. With the advancement of children’s rights, children are increasingly being included as stakeholders in decision-making processes. This report gives examples of how children in OECD countries can and do participate in making decisions about issues that affect them. The report examines children's emotional well-being and physical activity, and the role of schools as a physical space to create and support relationships. It also underlines the untapped potential of media education when it comes to seizing opportunities in childhood. Empowering all children to make the most of digital opportunities starts with further narrowing the gap in terms of access to digital tools and the Internet, where inequalities are persistent and pervasive. So, what does child empowerment mean today? Empowered children have the opportunity and ability to act on issues important and relevant to them, can learn by making mistakes, and are key contributors to democracy.

Literacy in the 21st century is about constructing and validating knowledge. Digital technologies have enabled the spread of all kinds of information, displacing traditional formats of usually more carefully curated information such as encyclopaedias and newspapers.

Education systems can build on school-led micro-innovations during the pandemic to develop more equitable learning. Empowering teachers to be autonomous, actively engaged in designing learning environments, and knowledgeable and dynamic in using multi-modal technology can encourage more peer-to-peer collaboration in schools and enrich pedagogy.

To design, implement and monitor effective child well-being policies, policy-makers need data that better capture children’s lives, measure what is important to them and detect emerging problems and vulnerabilities early on. Despite improvements in recent decades, there are still important gaps in both national and cross-national child data. Countries can achieve progress if the right actions are taken.

In recent years, the Emirate of Dubai has been placing a stronger emphasis on people’s well-being with the aim of making Dubai “an inclusive and cohesive society (...) that is the preferred place to live, work and visit and a pivotal hub in the global economy”. Within the education sector, KHDA and private schools have introduced a number of initiatives to help raise awareness, measure and support students’ and staff’s well-being.

This book shows the results of research in different countries on how to measure digital competence among future generations of teachers and facing the challenges brought by the convergence of analogue and digital media. This book provides answers to the research questions: How should the key competencies related to media pedagogy be effectively measured and compared? What is the level of digital literacy of pre-service teachers in selected countries? The individual chapters are based on a systematic review of research results (from the last two decades) to show trends related to changes in measurement and levels of digital competence. This book is valuable for researchers training future generations of teachers in the use of new media as well as to those trying to measure the development of the information society, as well as those conducting research in the field of comparative pedagogy (including the transfer of the most effective solutions in the field of media pedagogy).

Students face a future filled with uncertainty and change. For education systems to continue to remain relevant, they must empower students to navigate these changes and succeed in the future by equipping them with the requisite knowledge, skills, attitudes and values. Teachers are key enablers of this endeavour, and it is imperative that governments and teacher organisations collaborate to support teachers in exploring and enacting pedagogies, and designing learning environments that support student attainment of future-ready competencies, through policies, processes and teacher professional development.