Should key competencies be assessed? Lessons from the New Zealand experience

ROSEMARY HIPKINS

Seminar at Centre for Assessment and Learning Studies, University of Bristol, May 12, 2009

Key competencies in the NZ context

• NZC is an outcomes-based framework for learning from year 1 to year 13

• It sets the direction for learning but schools are expected to modify their plans to meet the needs of their own students

• It represents a response to learning challenges in the 21st century (both in NZ and internationally)

• Key competencies are one of new ‘front end’ features

1990s – development of competencies/capabilities for employment/economic productivity (‘Essential Skills” in 1990s curriculum documents in NZ)

OECD DeSeCo project – development of “key competencies” for New Zealand Curriculum

Continue to see these in employment/behavioural terms (an instrumental focus to improve current curriculum and learning)

Interpret meaning within a humanist/socio-cultural framework (a social justice/democratic participation framework to transform “learning for 21st century )

After Reid, 2006

What you expect of KCs depends on how you read them

Translation challenges: what’s in a name?

DeSeCo (OECD)

Functioning in socially heterogenous groups

Acting autonomously

Using tools interactively

New Zealand Curriculum

Relating to othersParticipating and contributing

Managing self

Using language, symbols and text

Thinking

THINKING

With two plausible pathways for interpretation of KCs, the tension between the messages here is a real challenge

The “front end”

• Vision

• Values

• Principles

• Key competencies

A potentially transformative package

The “back end”

8 levels

8 learning areas

8 sets of AOs per level

The revised package – business as usual?

The “front end”

• Vision

• Values

• Principles

A potentially transformative package

The “back end”

8 levels

8 learning areas

8 sets of AOs per level

The revised package

Might key competencies be the “glue” that brings all these pieces together?

If we read KCs this way, is asking if they should be assessed per se the wrong question?

Key competencies integrate knowledge and skills with attitudes and values

Lifelong learners (vision)

• Literate and numerate

Key competencies

Learning to learn (a principle)

Using language, symbols and textsRelating to others

English learning area:learning to read

KCs highlight relationships between the reader and the text, not just the author’s agenda

Hence Lesson One

Until we determine the role that key competencies should play in learning, we can’t begin to address questions of what should be assessed…

let alone how or why…

Traditional curriculum outcome: Gaining knowledge in a range of learning areas

Enriched outcomes when a key competency focus is added

Learning involves the use of knowledge to carry out meaningful tasks – there is a focus on creating and critiquing knowledge, and on deep learning

Key competencies focus on making links and hence the whole learning context

Traditional curriculum outcome: Developing a range of skills, again as appropriate to different learning areas

When a key competency focus is added: skills are integrated with knowledge, attitudes and values in ways that direct attention to dispositions to act

The focus is in being ready, willing and able to use skills and knowledge in appropriate ways, at relevant and appropriate times

KCs align with sociocultural theories of learning

• Situated

• Distributed

• Mediated

• Participatory Source: www.mfe.govt.nz Students from Papakura South School

Traditional curriculum outcome: Socialisation –

fitting in, responding appropriately in different contexts and to relevant authorities (both knowledge and people), being a “good citizen”

Key competencies focus on ongoing development of identity as a “person who …”

Thinking and acting autonomously includes a focus on why it is appropriate to act in certain ways in diverse contexts, and on rights, roles and responsibilities

Learning “in the spaces between people” is valued

Questions generated by students at a low decile bilingual school in Auckland

Lesson 2: Time is needed to rethink deep assumptions about the nature of learning

Knowledge and its organisation

Teaching OF subjects

Based on Reid, 2006 – this fits comfortably with traditional curriculum planning models, and the narrower skills-based interpretation of KCs

Knowledge and its organisation

Capabilities

Teaching through knowledge FOR capabilities (i.e. key competencies)

Disciplinary knowledge is the basis through which we teach for capabilities (as outcomes in their own right)

Reid’s new model for the role of knowledge

What are the implications for assessment?

What do we want our kids to be?

We know what we want our young people to be..

Actively involvedParticipants in a range of life contextsContributors to the well-being of New Zealand – social, cultural, economic, and environmental

Lifelong learnersLiterate and numerateCritical and creative thinkersActive seekers, users, and creators of knowledgeInformed decision makers

ConfidentPositive in their own identityMotivated and reliableResourcefulEnterprising and entrepreneurialResilient

ConnectedAble to relate well to othersEffective users of communication toolsConnected to the land and environmentMembers of communitiesInternational citizens

Source: NZC Vision Statement

Self Competent agent

IdentityDesireMotivation

DispositionsValuesAttitudes

SkillsKnowledgeUnderstanding

Competent learnerCitizen, mathematician, scientist etc

Judgement is personal – others can only infer meaning from observed actions

Areas with a strong assessment history

Situated, mediated assessment

Personal Public

After Deakin Crick, 2008

Lesson three: Patience

• People need time to work past the ‘we already do that’ challenge (we have some evidence that developing overly simple rubrics may help them if they are supported to reflect on what happens when they use them…)

• But what potential resides in deeper interpretation of KCs?

Actually using knowledge – practicing, acting, scaffolding An explicit focus on

motivation to learn and strengthening

dispositions

The nature of knowledge is an explicit focus

Reflection is important if skills and knowledge are to be adapted to new contexts – developing metacognitive awareness

A move to greater student-focused locus of control – identity and agency are an explicit

focus

New ways of thinking – really valuing and using inputs from the diversity of students’ lived experiences

Being more explicit about learning, e.g. setting learning intentions and success criteria

Thinking skills etc we already teach

Focus on context/content interactions

Caveats about rubrics

• KCs are particular and personal - but they are NOT personality traits

• Contexts and mediation impact on how KCs can be expressed

• Strengthening KC development may take a learner backwards at first

• Care is needed in making inferences from observed behaviour - students need to be fully involved in assessing their KC development

http://headrush.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/schoolboy_1.jpg

Lesson Four:

The power of examples

The disciplinary potential in ULST

• provides the language, including ‘meta’ language, to help students think;

• awareness that texts are structured differently for different purposes;

• multiple representations of ideas;

• unpacking conventions and thinking about how different disciplines work;

• valuing systems level thinking and complexity;

An example of our early explorations (ARB item)

What "message" about the greenhouse effect is the artist giving us?

Explain this message in a short paragraph.

Assessment Resource Banks

MOE funded

NZCER developed

Some of our learning so far…

• Relationships and connections really matter - building links and weaving webs of meaning is an active, dynamic, personal process

• Contexts are integral to learning and should be never be taken for granted

• Meaning-making is not self-evident – students need to be shown how it works in different disciplines and settings

Assessment: More questions than answers

• Can competency be reported from single tasks or should evidence be accumulated across a range of tasks and learning contexts? (Sufficiency of evidence)

• What role (if any) should extracurricular activities play in making judgments about a student’s capabilities?

• What does making progress in developing capabilities look like?

• What is the nature of developmental changes over time?

How might progress be described?

More certain outcomes

Outcomes more uncertain

Zooming in Zooming out

Standardised testsmeasure traditional academic outcomes

Making rich connections across ideas and contexts

Key competencies transform learning outcomes

After Carr, 2008

Using new skills and knowledge in unfamiliar and more demanding contexts

Assessment strategies used in “early adopter” schools

Formative approaches

• Developing success criteria with students (What does it sound, feel, and look like when a person is demonstrating a KC?)

• Setting of KC goals alongside learning area goals

• Self or peer assessment of goals

• Observations or interviews (e.g., conferencing or approaches similar to the Learning Stories used in ECE)

• Recording information in portfolios or reflective diaries

Curriculum change (lifelong learning, key competencies, content reduction etc)

Professional learning that can generate deep changes in teaching and learning - both in practice and in [tacit] beliefs about the nature of learning

New types of assessment

(e.g. NCEA, assessment for

learning)

Knowledge era: new views of knowledge, ICTs, globalization, diversity, rapid change, etc.

Lesson 5 : Systems alignment matters!

www.shiftingthinking.com

Creating a curriculum for the 21st century

Creating a qualifications system for the 21st century

Early 1990s

Late 1990s

Early 2000s

2006

2007 -

First outcomes-based curricula developed

Completion of individual curriculum statements for all learning areas

Curriculum stocktake recommends some streamlining

Curriculum revision evolves into co-construction project

Draft for consultation

Final version published – to be implemented by 2010

Establishment of seamless National Qualifications Framework (NQF)

Unit standards developed to assess wide range of competencies

New standards based school-leaving qualification (NCEA) introduced

Standards review and alignment of NCEA to new curriculum

The school as a learning collective, rethinking practice

Other groups also need to be on the same learning journey (MOE, ERO, school community etc)

Staying in step – having an informed sense of shared direction

Impact of govt. ‘crusade’ for literacy and numeracy

(standards)

Absence of standards other than literacy and numeracy – weakness or opportunity

?

NZQA – qualifications and assessment practice need to continue evolving to reflect new learning imperatives (e.g. ‘authenticity’)

We’ve made our share of mistakes

But we’ve also gained some ground

Shifts are happening

http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/tutorials-effects/how-to-simulate-fractals-in-photoshop/

©NZCER

Carr, M. (2008). Zooming in and zooming out: Challenges and choices in discussions about making progress. In J. Morton (Ed.), Making Progress, Measuring Progress Conference Proceedings Wellington: NZCER Press.

Deakin Crick, R. (2008). Key competencies for education in a European context: narratives of accountability or care. European Educational Research Journal, 7 (3), 311-318.

Hipkins, R. (2007). Assessing Key Competencies: Why Would We? How Could We? Ministry of Education. http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/implementation_packs_for_schools/assessing_key_competencies_why_would_we_how_could_we [February 10, 2009].

Reid (2007) Key competencies: a new way forward or more of the same? Curriculum Matters, 2, 43-62. (Journal available on subscription from NZCER)