Competencies: Sharing our explorations

Sharon JeroskiHorizon Research & Evaluation Inc

August 2014

Agenda

– Overview

– Share experiences

– Learn about profiles and illustrations

– Consider potential action

Overview

Curriculum: Key elements• Core Competencies: sets of intellectual, personal, and social and emotional

proficiencies that all students need to develop in order to engage in deeper learning and become thoughtful, ethical, and active citizens. The core competencies include thinking, communication and social and personal competencies.

• Big Ideas: a statement that is important to one’s understanding in an area of learning. A big idea is broad and abstract … generally timeless and is transferable to other situations.

• Curricular Competencies: explicit statements of what students are expected to be able to do in a given grade and area of learning.

• Content and Concepts: what students should know and understand in a given area of learning at a particular grade level. They define the core knowledge (facts and concepts) essential to the development of big ideas for that area of learning in that grade.

Core Competencies

• Core competencies are the sets of intellectual, personal, and social and emotional proficiencies that all students need to develop in order to engage in deep learning and life-long learning, and become thoughtful, ethical and active citizens:

– Communication– Thinking– Personal and social competence

Curriculum: Key elements• Core Competencies: sets of intellectual, personal, and social and emotional

proficiencies that all students need to develop in order to engage in deeper learning and become thoughtful, ethical, and active citizens. The core competencies include thinking, communication and social and personal competencies.

• Big Ideas: a statement that is important to one’s understanding in an area of learning. A big idea is broad and abstract … generally timeless and is transferable to other situations.

• Curricular Competencies: explicit statements of what students are expected to be able to do in a given grade and area of learning.

• Content and Concepts: what students should know and understand in a given area of learning at a particular grade level. They define the core knowledge (facts and concepts) essential to the development of big ideas for that area of learning in that grade.

Core Competencies

• Core competencies are the sets of intellectual, personal, and social and emotional proficiencies that all students need to develop in order to engage in deep learning and life-long learning, and become thoughtful, ethical and active citizens:

• Communication• Thinking• Personal and social competence

Communication

• encompasses the set of abilities that students use:• to acquire, impart, and exchange information,

experiences and ideas• to connect, engage, and collaborate with others• to recount and reflect on their experiences and

learning• to understand and effectively engage in the use of

digital media.

Thinking

• Creative thinking • involves the generation of new ideas and concepts

that have value to the individual or others, and the development of these ideas and concepts from thought to reality.

• Critical thinking• involves the analysis and evaluation of thinking in

order to improve and extend it, and includes systematically examining thinking about information that comes to them through observation, experience, and various forms of communication.

Personal and Social Competence

• Positive Personal and Cultural Identity• involves the awareness, understanding, and appreciation of all the

facets that contribute to a healthy sense of oneself. It includes awareness and understanding of one’s family background, sense of place, heritage(s), language(s), beliefs, and perspectives..

• Social awareness and responsibility• involves ability and predisposition to cooperate and collaborate

with others, display community-mindedness, empathize with and appreciate the perspective of others, and create and maintain healthy relationships within one's family, community, and society.

• Personal awareness and responsibility • involves self-regulation, taking responsibility for one’s actions,

making ethical decisions in complex situations, accepting consequences, and understanding how their actions affect themselves and others.

Share Experiences

Tell the story …• CARE – introduce yourself and tell why this competency is

especially important/interesting to you • SHARE –1-2 minutes each to talk about how you have

incorporated this in your class/school

• COMPARE – 10 minutes to discuss – what’s similar in your experiences and observations? Different? Insights, questions, speculations …

• DECLARE! One conclusions/piece of advice for other Surrey educators

Competency Profiles and Illustrations

What’s important?• Reflects our collective ongoing feeling that we were often missing or

setting aside essential aspects

• Created to reflect BC schools and communities – no recipe

• Developed in collaboration with BC teachers

• Teachers across grades worked together

• Based on actual classroom illustrations from Strong Start to graduation

• Everything described in the competency work is already happening somewhere in BC

• It’s a beginning …..

Critical components in development

Three interrelated sources:

• Feedback from the Aboriginal scholars, knowledge-keepers

• Research presented in Defining Cross-curricular competencies (BC Ministry website)

• Field work in 9 districts to date (work in 9 additional sites in progress/to come)

Feedback from the Aboriginal scholars, knowledge-keepers

Influenced development of the definitional paper and the way fieldwork was conducted and integrated. Two key results:

• Inclusion of Positive Personal and Cultural Competency.

• Emphasis on integrated, holistic nature of competencies (within each competency, with other competencies and curricula, and between school and home/community).

Fieldwork

• elaborated and refined definitions

• grounded the work within the BC context, connecting competencies to the lived experiences of students, teachers and communities

• created profiles and illustrations to make the competencies “real” and accessible

• identified key issues and changes

Authenticity

• grounded in current BC classrooms

• illustrations “observed” in ordinary, amazing classrooms not “created” as showpieces

• authentic profiles – the number of profiles reflects what we/teachers observed; the descriptions describe work that exists

Inclusion

• commitment to inclusion

• competencies are for everyone – therefore ALL students have “profiles”

• inclusive descriptions and illustrations

CHARLENE

Characteristics of the Profiles• INCLUSIVE: every student has a profile

• CROSS-CURRICULAR: evident in all curricular areas

• STRENGTH-BASED: the series of profiles emphasize the concepts of expanding and growing

• STUDENT-CENTERED: based on actual samples from BC

students and grounded in “I” statements

• DESCRIPTIVE AND PROGRESSIVE: profiles of progression from early childhood through adult expertise

Profiles and illustrations

• Focus on “illustrating” rather than exemplifying

• Each piece of work is an “illustration” of what you might observe, not an exemplar that we try to “match”

• Allows us to incorporate a greater variety and range of student work – each piece just does what it does

Draft Competency Profileshttps://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/competencies

• Drafts available for review:• Communication• Creative Thinking• Positive Personal and Cultural Identity

• In development• Critical Thinking (draft January 2015)• Social Awareness and Responsibility (Draft April 2015)• Personal Awareness and Responsibility (Draft July 2015)

Essence of the Competency Profiles

• Shifted away from talking about reporting to talking about how the competency work can bring us together and focus to student

• The place where we see past, present and future for every student

• The “educated citizen” beginning in pre-school