Key Competencies

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Key Competencies

• Unlocking the future for our students

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Goals for the Day

• What are Key Competencies?
• How could / should schools use them?
• How do they link into the new curriculum?
• What are other schools using / doing?
• How do they relate to e-learning / fitting
  together?
• Other useful info for us to lead the development
  in our schools.

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Draft Curriculum Update
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Consultation process

• Questionnaires
• 9117 received and processed by Colmar-Brunton (
  21 online)
• Key findings
• Overall intent and direction generally accepted
• Document easy to read and understand
• Most parts will be useful
• Will have an impact on school curriculum
• Moderate to major challenges for implementation

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Consultation process

• Long submissions
• - 168 long submissions ( gt 3 pp) and 774 short
  submissions received and analysed by Lift
  Education
• - Comments related to
• Treaty of Waitangi
• Diversity and equity
• Economic focus
• Sustainability and the environment
• Spirituality, religion, values

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Learning Areas

• Generally seen as accurately capturing the
  essence, structure and appropriate outcomes for
  students.
• English, Maths Statistics, Health and PE
  attracted higher agreement
• Learning Languages, Technology, raised some
  concerns

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International Critique

• Joanne Le Metais ( UK )
• Sue Fergusson ( ACER )

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What has been happening to date?

• Rewriting of Learning Areas now completed
• Framework groups have met
• There has been significant reworking of the
  school curriculum section

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Next Steps?

• June 15 redrafted document to reference group
• July 31 cabinet to sign off the new curriculum
  document
• Mid October Launch of the new curriculum
  document
• Gazetted date 2010

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Implementation Challenges

• Sufficient resources
• Time
• Too vague
• Increased workload
• Including community input
• Integration, assessment and reporting of key
  competencies
• Assessment
• Consensus, management, staff meetings needed
• Consultation between schools, lack of consistency

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Definition of Terms
Key competencies Are generic and needed by
everyone across many life contexts to meet
important challenges
Specific competencies Are only needed in certain
contexts. Cannot be used effectively without key
competencies and vice versa
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Key Competencies
Knowledge, skills, attitudes and values cannot be
separated
Key competencies are interrelated and used
together
They are developed throughout life
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Key Competencies
The ways competencies are manifested will differ
in different contexts
Proficiency should be seen as the ability to
combine and use competencies in increasingly
complex contexts
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Schools will need to
..clarify what the competencies mean for their
students
..show how well the students are currently
showing them
..identify the conditions that will help or
hinder development
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Discussion !?
What opportunities do the competencies offer?
What challenges do they pose?
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• Key Competencies
• Putaruru Cluster

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Four Key Components

• Professional development for teachers
• Implementation of a school wide plan
• Exploration of assessment
• Provision for information transfer

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Focus

• Thinking was the original focus
• Social competencies became more focal
• Each school has taken a slightly different
  emphasis based on professional development
  direction

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• OURSELVES AND OUR WORLD PROGRESSIONS
• Planned reading instruction includes the focused
  teaching of language, symbols and texts across a
  range of disciplines

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• Competence is a product of the interaction of
  attributes of individuals and the context in
  which they operate
• Rychen Salganik

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Process of learning new skills
(Zimmerman Kitsantas (1997)
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Thinking

• How well do teachers use and share a vocabulary
  of thinking words, to give students the language
  tools they need to think about their thinking?
• Do students receive specific feedback on their
  progress in learning to use these thinking tools
  and approaches?

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• What opportunities do students have to actively
  practice thinking?
• How are they introduced to a variety of thinking
  patterns and skills?
• What opportunities do students have to transfer
  what they learn about thinking in one context
  into different contexts?

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• ..schools gathering data about how they are
  providing a facilitating environment for key
  competencies.
• Carr, M. 2006

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Outcomes for teachers
Change of thinking in the terms of the way we
plan.
Awareness of what the KCs mean and the need to
provide opportunities to develop them
Had to unpack them for the children- what do they
look like, sound like, feel like
More deliberate focus on the KCs
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Gave us the freedom to teach what we have always
felt was important
Very timely as a platform for the new schools
already trying to develop a culture
Recognition that we are in a constant state of
refinement
Development of professional dialogue as a result
of a focus
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• Helped us clarify the learning and make sure that
  the connections have been made for the students

Teachers articulating learning intentions and
sharing this with students
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Outcomes for Students
By focusing on one or two children, spin offs
for others
Making links to KC outcomes with more explicit
focus
Celebrating and acknowledging other children
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Monitoring their own learning

• Reflecting on their own learning, more involved

Feeling of success
Understand the purpose of the learning and
transferring this
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Key Learning

• The development of key competencies requires
  pedagogical change for teachers
• Students (and teachers) need to learn the
  language of the competencies to have shared
  meaning and understanding
• Teachers need to understand the way in which
  students develop increasing competency over time

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Key Learning

• Key Competencies need to be developed in context
  and through the curriculum
• Key Competencies are taught and not caught
• Teachers need to provide many opportunities for
  the competencies to be developed in a wide range
  of contexts both in the classroom and in the
  wider context of the school

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Assessment

• In what ways did you integrate the Relating to
  Others big idea into your planning?
• How did you relate and reinforce the school Goal
  of the Week into your class programme?
• List the children in your class that you think
  displayed behaviours that showed them to be
  consistent/ moving towards/ having difficulty
  with the aims of the big idea for this
  competency.

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Key Learning about Assessment

• Co constructing success criteria with students
  of a competency within a given context attaches
  greater meaning and understanding.
• Students need opportunities to self assess
  themselves against agreed criteria
• Stories can be used to describe increasing level
  of competency in individual students or groups of
  students.

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Key Learning about Assessment

• Assessment of the Key Competencies is hugely
  problematic and there is a real danger that
  schools might resort to some kind of
  inappropriate tick box system
• Anecdotal evidence is subjective but useful.
• Significant change methodology could be one way
  to gather useful data
• The interrelated nature of the Key Competencies
  makes it difficult to assess in isolation

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Questions to Consider

• What is, or ought to be, the purpose of
  documenting increasing strength of key
  competencies?
• How can documentation include the desirable
  integration or entwining of the competencies
  with each other?
• How can documentation enable teachers, learners
  and their families to more effectively
  co-construct learning pathways?

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Excerpt

• When you and your school community start to
  engage in re-designing your school curriculum you
  will begin a process that challenges everyone to
  think differently about the kind of design that
  will lead students in your school towards
  becoming successful learners, confident
  individuals and active and responsible citizens.

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• It involves making decisions and choices about
  the needs and abilities of all those involved in
  the teaching, learning and assessment processes
  how the schools vision, principles and values
  will feed into the design deciding what will be
  taught when and how where learning will takes
  place how time and physical resources are used
  how new technologies will be integrated. You will
  seek students input into this work.

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• Model Three
• This model focuses on integrating the key
  competencies into the learning areas. Schools may
  decide that one or more of the key competencies
  work better for some of the learning areas. The
  framework for the design is a combination of the
  schools own vision and the direction set by the
  New Zealand Curriculum (draft) 2006.

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• How could the key competencies look within the
  context of your work?