collaborative problem solving oecd

PISA 2015 Collaborative Problem Solving

The PISA 2015 Collaborative Problem Solving assessment measures students’ capacity to effectively engage in a process whereby two or more agents attempt to solve a problem by sharing the understanding and effort required to come to a solution, and pooling their knowledge, skills and efforts to reach that solution.

• PISA 2015 Results (Volume V): Collaborative Problem Solving
• PISA 2015 Collaborative Problem Solving Framework

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What is Collaborative Problem Solving?

The PISA 2015 Collaborative Problem Solving assessment built on the  PISA 2012  Creative Problem Solving  assessment framework , incorporating additional concepts that focus on the collaborative aspects of problem solving. These aspects reflect the skills found in project-based learning and in collaboration in workplace and civic settings, namely communicating, managing conflict, organising a team, building consensus and managing progress.

Why is it important for students to develop collaborative problem solving?

Today’s workplaces demand people who can solve non-routine problems, and who can do so in concert with others by sharing ideas and efforts. Digitalisation is also increasing opportunities for collaboration in both the workforce and civic contexts, such as volunteering and social networking, through technologies such as e-mail and web conferencing. Students emerging from schools into the workforce and public life will therefore encounter collaborative situations and be expected to have the necessary collaborative problem-solving skills to thrive.

Collaborative problem solving is increasingly recognised as an important 21st century skill as it has several advantages over individual problem solving: labour can be divided equally, a variety of perspectives and experiences can be applied to try and find solutions, and team members can support and stimulate one another, in turn enhancing the creativity and quality of solutions. Yet collaboration, if managed poorly, can also quickly lead to communication issues, interpersonal conflict and inefficiencies. It is therefore important that students develop the skills needed to engage in successful collaborative problem solving.

What is innovative about the PISA 2015 Collaborative Problem Solving assessment?

The PISA 2015 Collaborative Problem Solving assessment was the first large-scale, international assessment to evaluate students’ competency in collaborative problem solving.

It required students to interact with simulated (computer) in order to solve problems. These dynamic, simulated agents were designed to represent different profiles of team members, and responded to students’ responses following a script in a virtual chat.

The assessment included several types of collaborative problem-solving tasks in order to elicit different types of problem-solving behaviours and interactions between the students and computer agents. There are three types of tasks:

• group decision-making tasks (requiring argumentation, debate, negotiation or consensus to arrive at a decision);
• group co-ordination tasks (including collaborative work or jigsaw hidden profile paradigms where unique information must be shared); and
• group-production tasks (where a product must be created by a team, including designs for new products or written reports). Explore the  example assessment tasks .

Results and supporting documents

The  PISA 2015 Results (Volume V): Collaborative problem solving  examine students’ ability to work with two or more people to try to solve a problem, highlighting the relative strengths and weaknesses of each school system and exploring how they are related to individual student characteristics, such as gender, immigrant background and socio-economic status. This volume of results also explores the role of education in building young people’s skills in solving problems collaboratively.

• How does PISA measure students’ ability to collaborate?  
• PISA in Focus: Collaborative problem-solving results
• Country notes:  France ( French ) ( English ), Germany ( English ) ( German ), Japan ( English )

Assessment framework and instruments

• PISA 2015 Collaborative Problem Solving released Field Trial cognitive items
• Description of the Released Unit (Xandar) from PISA 2015 Collaborative Problem Solving Assessment and Scoring Guide

Additional resources

Articles and blog posts.

Are School Systems Ready to Develop Students' Social Skills? , Andreas Schleicher, OECD Education and Skills Today 

Girls Better Than Boys at Working Together to Solve Problems, Finds New OECD PISA Global Education Survey, OECD Newsroom

Webinars, podcasts and presentations

Webinar on pisa 2015 collaborative problem solving: key findings (andreas schleicher).

What collaborative problem solving can tell us about students' social skills

Presentation on pisa 2015 collaborative problem solving - key findings (andreas schleicher).

For more information, reach out to the PISA innovative assessments team at  edu.pisainnovation@oecd.org . 

Related policy issues

• Student performance (PISA)
• Reading literacy
• Mathematics literacy
• Science literacy
• Student financial literacy
• Creative thinking
• PISA 2022 Creative Thinking
• Global competence
• PISA 2018 Global Competence
• Student problem solving skills
• PISA 2012 Creative Problem Solving
• learning-in-the-digital-world
• PISA 2025 Learning in the Digital World
• Foreign language learning
• PISA 2025 Foreign Language Assessment
• Learning time and disciplinary climate
• Students' well-being
• Student engagement and motivation
• Student assessment

PISA in Focus

Collaborative problem solving.

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• Educational Research and Innovation

The Nature of Problem Solving

Assessment of collaborative problem-solving processes, using research to inspire 21st century learning.

Solving non-routine problems is a key competence in a world full of changes, uncertainty and surprise where we strive to achieve so many ambitious goals. But the world is also full of solutions because of the extraordinary competences of humans who search for and find them. We must explore the world around us in a thoughtful way, acquire knowledge about unknown situations efficiently, and apply new and existing knowledge creatively.

The Nature of Problem Solving presents the background and the main ideas behind the development of the PISA 2012 assessment of problem solving, as well as results from research collaborations that originated within the group of experts who guided the development of this assessment. It illustrates the past, present and future of problem-solving research and how this research is helping educators prepare students to navigate an increasingly uncertain, volatile and ambiguous world.

• https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264273955-en
• Click to access:
• Click to download PDF - 3.70MB PDF

Centre for Educational Research and Innovation

This chapter presents a framework for understanding collaborative problem solving, including both the cognitive and social perspectives, and identifies the construct’s theoretical underpinnings, structure and elements. It describes the circumstances under which collaborative problem solving might best be used, with consequences for the design of tasks to assess the component skills. It highlights the characteristics of problemsolving tasks, interdependence between problem solvers and the asymmetry of stimulus and response, through a focus on task design. The chapter then outlines approaches to measuring collaborative problem solving and illustrate them with examples.

• Click to download PDF - 439.54KB PDF

Cite this content as:

Author(s) Esther Care and Patrick Griffin

11 Apr 2017

Pages: 227 - 243