Last updated April 10, 2022

Status: #📥/🟨 Tags: EDUC 100W Readings Links: & Papers

& Reinventing the Curriculum

Link

Notes

Abstract

What

• CfE and 4 capacities

But

How

Ideas

Four Capacities Overview

• Scottish Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) organizes educational activity into four capacities:

  1. Successful learner
  2. Confident individual
  3. Responsible citizen
  4. Effective contribrutor

• Are the outcomes for learning which are promoted through curriculum

• Each has unique qualities of characterization and what each should do

Successful Learner

Qualities

• having enthusiasm and motivation for learning
• determination to reach high standards of achievement
• and openness to new thinking and ideas, and as being able to use literacy, communication and numeracy skills
• use technology for learning; think creatively and independently
• learn independently and as part of a group
• make reasoned evaluations
• link and apply different kinds of learning in new situations
• Someone who is emotionally motivated and capable to learn in various ways

Confident Individual

Qualities

• having self-respect
• a sense of physical, mental and emotional well-being
• secure values and beliefs; and ambition, and as being able to relate to others and manage themselves
• pursue a healthy and active lifestyle
• be self-aware
• develop and communicate their own beliefs and view of the world
• live as independently as they can
• assess risk and take informed decisions
• achieve success in different areas of activity

Responsible Citizen

Qualities

• responsible citizens as having respect for others
• and commitment to participate responsibly in political, economic, social and cultural life, and as being able to develop knowledge and understanding of the world and Scotland’s place in it
• understand different beliefs and cultures
• make informed choices and decisions
• evaluate environmental, scientific and technological issues, and develop informed, ethical views of complex issues

Effective Contributor

Qualities

• having an enterprising attitude
• resilience, and self-reliance, and as being able to communicate in different ways and in different settings
• work in partnership and in teams
• take the initiative and lead
• apply critical thinking in new contexts
• create and develop and solve problems

Student as a learning outcome

• Historical examples of student-centered outcomes
  • Paideai
  • Not new, mentioned in greek with paideia
    • required free time - schole - rather than productivity
• Bildung
  • Self-formation through interacting with culture and society

Competence

• The work you go into has no set expectations, its based on individuals and groups

Criticism

Five critical questions

A disjointed cirriculum?

• Will it prepare them for the “real” world?
  • Focusing on meeting outcomes prevents a teacher from developing their skills, to provide higher-order connections and purpose of content

  While a focus on competencies and capacities has the potential to address one of the often-heard complaints about education – which is that it gives students knowledge and skills but doesn’t prepare them for the ‘real’ world, which can either be the world of work or the world of life more generally – one danger with a focus on competencies and capacities is the production of long and detailed lists of all the things that individuals apparently need to obtain and master in order to perform a particular task well or to be competent at their job or profession. (Biesta, 15)

Necessary but not sufficient?

• Just because we tick off the crtieria does not mean we will be prepared
  • Ex) Qualified people who can’t do the job properly
• Mentioned qualities might be important, but they might lack other qualities not included ^9sysgn

A new behaviourism?

• Focus too much behavior than actual thinking, reflection, understandings, judgement
  • Criticism of assessment
• Gives skills, but doesn’t teach how to use?

Adaptation or agency?

• Hard to predict required competencies with an unpredictable future and workplace
• Too much focus on adaptation over subjectification

Normativity and values?

• Not a form of preparation, but a set of values

Highlights

Thus we find a description of successful learners as having enthusiasm and motivation for learning; determination to reach high standards of achievement; and openness to new thinking and ideas, and as being able to use literacy, communication and

36

Reinventing the Curriculum

numeracy skills; use technology for learning; think creatively and independently; learn independently and as part of a group; make reasoned evaluations; link and apply different kinds of learning in new situations 2021-10-19 6:38 PM

Successful learner qualities

confident individuals as having self-respect; a sense of physical, mental and emotional well-being; secure values and beliefs; and ambition, and as being able to relate to others and manage themselves; pursue a healthy and active lifestyle; be self-aware; develop and communicate their own beliefs and view of the world; live as independently as they can; assess risk and take informed decisions; and achieve success in different areas of activity 2021-10-19 6:38 PM

Confident individuals qualities

effective contributors as having an enterprising attitude; resilience, and self-reliance, and as being able to communicate in different ways and in different settings; work in partnership and in teams; take the initiative and lead; apply critical thinking in new contexts; create and develop; and solve problems 2021-10-19 6:39 PM

Effective contributor qualities

responsible citizens as having respect for others; and commitment to participate responsibly in political, economic, social and cultural life, and as being able to develop knowledge and understanding of the world and Scotland’s place in it; understand different beliefs and cultures; make informed choices and decisions; evaluate environmental, scientific and technological issues, and develop informed, ethical views of complex issues 2021-10-19 6:38 PM

Responsible citizens qualities

CfE provides a very open and ‘light’

framework that explicitly aims ‘to engage teachers in thinking from first principles about their educational aims and values and their classroom practice’ 2021-10-19 6:47 PM

CFE

Purpose of CFE, list of outcomes

The idea that education should have an interest in and a focus on the formation of the person is, in itself, anything but new. We can find it, for example, in the Greek idea of paideia which emerged in classical Athens and stood for a broad process of cultivation of the person towards good character or ‘virtue’ (ἀρετή) and, more specifically, towards civic virtue 2021-10-19 6:49 PM

history of student-based outcomes

it became increasingly understood as a process of self-formation through the interaction of individuals with culture and society 2021-10-19 6:51 PM

Bildung

competence as ‘a complex combination of knowledge, skills, understanding, values, attitudes and desire which lead to effective, embodied human action in the world, in a particular domain’ 2021-10-19 6:55 PM

Competence definition

formulation of capacities, capabilities and competencies is not a matter of factual description of the situations for which education should prepare children and young people, but inevitably implies values and (normative) judgements 2021-10-19 7:05 PM

The key question, in other words, is whether the turn towards capacities and competencies can support emancipation and the development of critical and democratic agency, or becomes too easily a ‘technology’ that is focused on adaptation, adjustment and survival. To what extent the framework for the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence runs this risk is an important question that requires careful analysis, not only of the policies and frameworks but also of how these work out in practice. In this chapter we have tried to point both at possibilities and dangers of the turn towards capacities and competencies in order to provide tools for a critical analysis of this particular dimension of the new curriculum. 2021-10-19 7:06 PM

Thought-provoking conclusion, summing purpose of the article

Actionable

Thoughts/Questions

Created:: 2021-10-19 18:10