So what's the solution to my problem of practice?

Change is hard! For the last several years, my school has been in transition, moving through several iterations of curriculum. We have finally settled on the British Columbia curriculum and are in the process of becoming a Certified BC offshore school.

This means that while we have been using the BC curriculum as a guide for content, we now have to move to implement the curriculum fully. As stated by the Government of BC, this curriculum is concept-based and competency-driven.

Figure 1: Middle school competency based classroom, using personalized learning.

However, it hasn't been as easy as just changing the curriculum. This curriculum requires us to assess competencies, which is a large change in pedagogy. We have a growing number of students with learning challenges and many restrictions on what websites and apps we can use. Developing new units takes time, there are few resources and many pressures and challenges to overcome.

As I waded through all the work, I felt that I was failing the students who needed the extra support. I wasn't seeing growth in the students like I had come to expect. Sure, my students were learning, but the students with diverse needs were not making the strides that I thought based on the differentiation I was using. In the past, I felt confident in differentiating for students and felt that I had seen the progress that I expected. Why not now? What was different? I talked to colleagues, and some of them felt the same. So, when asked for a problem of practice, I decided to explore if differentiation looked different in a competency-based classroom. Was it our differentiation that wasn't working anymore or something else?

Here is what I found:

Based on my survey data, I don't think it is my differentiation strategies, well not completely...The real problem is the lack of pedagogical knowledge, which impacts my lesson planning, differentiation and assessment.

As we know from frameworks like TPACK, you need to look at the content and pedagogical knowledge to be best informed when selecting technology that will support learning. Technology is vital in Competency-based education (CBE) to offer the personalization of learning that brings it such value and helps us to support all learners. Thus, if we want to better implement CBE we need to ensure that all 3 aspects of knowledge (content, pedagogical and technological) are supported.

Gaining further pedagogical knowledge on competency-based learning, more specifically unit planning for competency-based learning, would help me to have a better foundation. I would be able to prepare units and lessons that better align with competency-based education. From there, I would be better set to create resources to allow my students the differentiation to allow them to master the competencies, as well as assessments that better demonstrate their growth. 

So, while there is no PD on the table right now, it looks like I am going to have to go search some out to make sure I am helping all my students.

Share Your Top Competency-Based Education PD Course Recommendations in the comments below!

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References:

Wix AI image generator. (2025, March 7) Middle school competency-based classroom using personalized learning.

Government of BC. (2016). Curriculum redesign. Government of BC. https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/rethinking-curriculum#:~:text=Concept%2Dbased%2C%20competency%2Ddriven%20curriculum&text=Deeper%20learning%20is%20better%20achieved,learning%20to%20the%20real%20world.

Bullock, Elicia. (2025, March 7) Differentiation in a competency-based classroom. [Google Slides]. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/14Fy08W8QQ4J-nOvhOFzy-dwVmxj29Av-2hvtuAjGwyg/edit?usp=drive_link