We Should Measure More Than Knowledge

Have you ever felt that school tests do not always show everything you are good at? Have you ever looked at your school report card and thought: “Hmm… here are my grades in math and science… but where is the grade for all the other things I am good at too?”. Maybe you are good at helping friends when they are sad, or maybe you have cool ideas when working in a group to create a new game. Maybe you keep trying even when things get tough. Do your teachers and classmates recognize these other parts of you? A lot of students feel like schools are a bit too focused on memorizing facts and solving equations, but they forget about all the other amazing stuff students are capable of.

Good news: That is starting to change! Researchers and teachers around the world are working on new ways of designing learning and schools around a set of skills and habits called 21st century competencies. The name might sound a little complicated, but it is all about things that are already part of students’ lives. These competencies include the skills, character, and abilities that help people do well in school, work, and other aspects of life. They help students feel better about themselves, help them connect with others to solve big problems, and are an important part of current school subjects. New tools are helping students like you show what you can really do.

A New Kind Of Learning

Imagine you are working on a big class project. You need to come up with creative ideas and share them, listen to others, and stay calm even when things are confusing or when mistakes are made. This kind of work calls for way more skills than just remembering facts, right? According to recent research, even for adults, success depends much more on skills that do not show up on any test, like communicating well, adapting quickly when things change, and understanding your own feelings. That is why researchers say students need more than just “book smarts” in today’s world, so they are expanding education to the other dimensions of learning covered by 21st century competencies [1].

The 21st century competencies are the skills and habits people need to be physically and mentally healthy, to do well in a fast-changing world, and to be ready to explore the future. We can group them into three big areas: skills (creativity, critical thinking, communication, collaboration); character (mindfulness, curiosity, courage, resilience, ethics, leadership); and meta-learning (metacognition and growth mindset) (Figure 1). Although there are many more elements that could be included, these are the ones considered important all around the world, in many different contexts, because they help students grow as people—not just as students.

How To Make The Invisible Visible

Measuring creativity or leadership is not as straightforward as grading a math test. So how can we capture things like curiosity or courage? Sometimes we can measure these things through observation, like when a coach watches how you play to see what skills you have. Sometimes we can measure them through problem-solving activities or even cool new tech that helps us understand how the brain works.

But no one knows your skills better than you! That is why we often use a special kind of test to learn how students think and feel [2]. Then, we use a method called psychometric analysis to check if the questions really connect to the skills we want to understand. Psychometric analysis brings together two very important things: the psychological and emotional side of people (how they think, feel, and act) and mathematical and statistical tools that help organize and interpret this information in a reliable way.

Psychometric analysis is used, for example, to create tests that show not just what a student knows, but also how they learn, what their strengths are, how they deal with challenges, and how they relate to the world around them. For an assessment like this to really work well, it must be built with great care. That is where the three pillars come in Figure 2—stable score (reliability), noticing differences (sensitivity), and measuring the right thing (validity)—to make sure everything is working the way it should.

These competencies are not rigid blocks. They are made up of many parts. For example, critical thinking can also include decision-making, and collaboration can include skills like empathy. So, when a student takes a test based on psychometrics, they are going through a process that has been thoughtfully designed, blending science with care for their unique way of being. It is like a personalized map of their abilities, created with attention to detail and respect for their individuality.

Researchers at Beyond Education have done this for the 12 competencies we mentioned above. They created a tool called the CCI-21, which is short for Compound Competency Inventory for the 21st Century. It is an online test available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese that asks students to rate simple statements about how they think, feel, and act [3]. For example:

• “When I face a challenge, I keep trying until I figure it out.”
• “I enjoy asking questions to learn more about things.”

Students respond to the statements using simple scales (for example, indicating how much they agree with a statement or how frequently a behavior occurs), which allows the CCI-21 to capture patterns of thinking, emotions, and behaviors across different situations. These answers help teachers (and students) understand which competencies are already strong and which ones they might want to grow. There are no right and wrong answers, and the CCI-21 is not about ranking, labeling, or comparing anyone. It is a tool for reflection, a way for students to better understand how they deal with real-life situations and which competencies come more naturally to them. The results are more like a snapshot of where a student is right now, not a final judgment or fixed label. The goal is not to measure performance, but to build self-awareness and to help students get to know themselves better, so they can grow in their own way, at their own pace. These kinds of assessments are not meant to replace school tests, but to complement them by helping students and teachers better understand a wider range of abilities.

CCI-21 has been used in several cultural and educational contexts. It was originally developed in English-speaking schools in South Africa, Hong Kong, and Slovakia, but since then it has been used in 14 countries with 300,000 students responding! However, ongoing research continues to explore how these competencies are expressed and how they can be compared across different countries and educational systems. For example, the assessment is available in Portuguese, but the Portuguese version is slightly different in Portugal compared to Brazil since these two cultures speak a bit differently.

Why Does It Matter?

The world is not just changing, it is accelerating. Every day, new jobs are being created, old ones are disappearing, and technologies are evolving. In the past, being “smart” might have meant memorizing dates, formulas, or vocabulary lists. Today, most of that is just one click, or one AI prompt, away. With tools like large language models, students and professionals can now access, summarize, and generate information in seconds. Artificial intelligence can already pass professional exams, write essays, solve equations, and even simulate conversations.

Change is happening so fast that most of the kids in school today will work in jobs that do not even exist yet! Just a few years ago, no one was thinking about careers like augmented reality experience designer, AI ethics engineer, or algorithm coach. These new roles are emerging precisely because technology is transforming everything. To keep up, and even more importantly, to lead meaningful lives, we need people who can:

• Think in new, creative ways.
• Work well with others, across cultures and contexts.
• Stay calm when things get difficult or unpredictable.
• Learn from mistakes and keep growing.
• Lead not just with knowledge, but with kindness and purpose.

That is why more schools around the world are shifting their focus toward 21st century competencies, to help students become resilient, thoughtful, and good people who are ready to shape a better future. You are more than your test scores—you are a thinker, a helper, a dreamer, a creator, and a doer! By measuring 21st century competencies, schools can help students discover their strengths, grow new ones, and feel proud of the person they are becoming. At some point, everyone faces big challenges, and by growing your creativity, courage, mindfulness, and resilience, you will be ready for whatever comes—inside and outside of school.

Competencies can be developed in everyday school life, especially when the school plan includes collaborative activities, projects, and moments of reflection, with teachers supporting and observing these processes in practical situations such as group work and problem-solving. For example, when you keep working to learn complex new math concepts even when it is hard, you are also learning how to be resilient. We want teachers and students to celebrate and support the growth of resilience and math concepts. You are already learning those skills, and by intentionally thinking about growing them as a part of your school lessons, you can grow them even faster!

One student was working with their teacher on growing their courage. They said “I do believe, [learning about courage] has given me the confidence to actually publish my own book, you know. Before I would actually submitted my [book], before clicking on the submit button, there was a period of time where I would been feeling super inferior”. In learning about courage, this student was taught that feeling like you are not good enough is a normal feeling. Every single famous singer, author, politician, or other famous person is just a person like you! They had to practice courage to show their unique skills and work with others. Doing all this is what helps you shine!

Even though more schools around the world are beginning to value 21st century competencies, this change is not happening everywhere at the same pace. In many education systems, traditional test scores are still the main way students are evaluated. One student said the following after taking the CCI-21: “Finally someone was interested in my 21st century competencies, and the competencies I was developing outside of school. Once I found out about my level in the competencies, I felt confident… This made me eager to learn more about these competencies and to learn new skills”.

So the next time you are helping a classmate, solving a tough problem, or trying again after a mistake, remember this: you are practicing your 21st century competencies! And that is something truly worth measuring!

Glossary

21st Century Competencies: ↑ The skills, character, and meta-learning dimensions that we need for well-being, work, and school. They are able to be taught and learned and can be used in many disciplines.

Metacognition: ↑ Is the capacity to recognize your own knowledge, skills, behavior, and ways of learning. We sometimes say it is “learning how to learn”.

Psychometric Analysis: ↑ Is the science of how we measure psychological ideas like happiness or the competencies. It combines psychology, education, and mathematical modeling.

Reliability: ↑ Whether an assessment gives consistent results over time. If a student has not changed, taking the assessment again should produce a similar score, showing the tool is stable and trustworthy.

Sensitivity: ↑ Whether an assessment can notice meaningful differences between students, even when they are in the same class or situation. Sensitivity helps show each student’s unique strengths and growth areas.

Validity: ↑ Whether an assessment measures what it is supposed to measure. For CCI-21, validity means the questions truly connect to the competencies the assessment is designed to understand.

CCI-21: ↑ The Competency Compound Inventory for the 21st Century is a tool developed by Beyond Education to measure 12 competencies to help students and teachers focus on the things that matter.

AI Tool Statement

The author(s) declared that Generative AI was not used in the creation of this manuscript.

Any alternative text (alt text) provided alongside figures in this article has been generated by Frontiers with the support of artificial intelligence and reasonable efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, including review by the authors wherever possible. If you identify any issues, please contact us.

Conflict of Interest

The author(s) declared that this work was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.