Starting points for thinking about key competencies
28/02/08 | No comments
These strategies have been selected from a presentation by Mary Chamberlain at the Learning @ School Conference, February, 2008. You can download a PDF of the speaking notes for the presentation.
Talk about your own learning and the way you draw on your own key competencies.
Kids pick up their learning habits from those around them - we’ve known for a long time that learning by imitation is powerful and recent brain research confirms this.
If kids are surrounded by adults who are learners - adults who talk about their own learning and model things like goal setting, giving things a go, open mindedness, critical thinking, curiosity, empathy then they are off to a strong start. This means that it’s vitally important that you are aware of your own approach to learning and that you know how your kids approach learning.
When demonstrating safety procedures on planes hostesses always say:
“Put on your own oxygen mask before you attempt to help others.”
In his book, Improving Schools from Within, Barth says teachers spend a lot of time putting oxygen masks on others rather than putting them on themselves first.
He says teachers want their students to learn, but seldom reveal themselves to their students as learners.
Think about the last time you learnt something new, something that changed what you did on a regular or daily basis.
What did it take for that to happen? Did you share that learning with your students? If not what would it take to do that?
It’s easy to forget the detail and intensity of learning something new. It’s a good idea to put yourself in that situation at least once a year and write something about it at the time with a view to sharing it with your students.
Talk about what competencies mean and why they are important.
Encourage teachers, parents, and students to work together to develop descriptions or visual examples of what the key competencies look like in action.
Some teachers in trial schools last year deepened students understanding and interest in the competencies by getting them to develop short descriptions of what people who have developed key competencies might say and do.
Ask students to look for people (parents, staff, other kids at the school or community) who exhibit these competencies.
Foreground one competency every week.
In one secondary school, all teachers in the school would focus on the same aspect and as the kids moved from lesson to lesson – teachers would foreground the same competency to deepen understanding and encourage transfer.
Teachers involved students in strengthening the culture of learning - initially by asking them to notice when learning got harder and talking about what to do.
When you do this, conversations start to change. You hear things like:
- How did you do that?
- How could you help someone else do it?
- How did you feel when you got stuck?
- How did you manage yourself when you felt like giving up?
- What strategies did you use? What did you say to yourself?
Deliberately build feedback loops so student voices are not only heard, but evident in planning.
Stephen Heppel quoted a researcher who had asked kids what they thought their teachers should be able to do to be considered IT literate. What they said included:
- Manage a community in Facebook
- Upload a video to Youtube
- Edit a Wikipedia entry
- Subscribe to a podcast
- Manage a groups Flickr photos
What skills would they say teachers needed in order to teach key competencies?
Consider students:
- visiting other schools to find out how other schools help their kids become better learners
- being involved in professional development days for teachers
- delivering a seminar or speech on how to be a better learner
- giving formal feedback about how you could be a better teacher
Kids are more likely to develop key competencies if they understand what’s going on and are given a role in helping design and bring about change - if they are involved in solving real problems and in creating knowledge.
Deliberately foster and strengthen connections.
Get kids tallking about how their learning connects to things they are interested in and talking about patterns they notice.
Get teachers thinking about learning happening anytime, anywhere and the implications of that for programme design - moving beyond ideas about learning only occurring at fixed time inside fixed programmes and structures.
Most kids are fascinated by projects that take them into the community. Allow them to influence real decisions and challenge them to develop knowledge and skills that other people clearly value.
Stoll, Fink and Earl in their book "It's about learning and it's about time" talk about the possibilities when you link the words learning and community:
- learning of community
- learning with community
- learning for community
- learning as community
Think about quality learning time in your classroom and make sure it is prioritised.
If learning is the active process of connecting ideas, practising skills, and applying competencies in new situations, then what conditions need to be created in schools to allow kids to do more of it?
It’s important that teachers and school leaders look carefully at how their decisions impact on the use of time in the classroom.
- What do your students learn from the routines in your classroom? How many of your routines support the development of key competencies?
- How much quality learning time do your kids get each day?
- Do they have flexible time available for self-paced learning?
- Is enough time devoted to learning as opposed to discipline, settling in, packing up (have you ever tried a timer?)
- How many hours are lost and for what reasons? Does someone keep a record?
On that note, though, introducing key competencies doesn’t mean finding more teaching time. They are not an add-on. There is no need to do less science or art so you can find time to teach thinking. It’s about split screen thinking - doing both at once - teaching concepts and strengthening learning capacity at the same time.
Margaret Carr and Guy Claxton talk about 4 different kinds of classroom environments that are each impact differently on students developing learning capacity.
Prohibitive environments make it difficult or dangerous to express a range of independent learning attitudes and behaviours.
Affording environments allow students to express learning behaviours but don’t make it particularly attractive to do so.
Inviting environments make it attractive for students to be a learner but do not necessarily stretch and challenge kids capacity to learn.
Potentiating environments make the exercise of learning both appealing and challenging - teachers in such classrooms use what they call split screen thinking when planning and conducting lessons - this ensures that they remember to construct activities and environments that stretch kids capacity to learn at the same time as they are learning new content.
The key competencies give students what Guy Claxton calls ‘learning power’ They are about resilience – locking on to learning, resourcefulness – knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do, reflection strategies and self-awareness and the relationships – needed for learning alone and with
others.