Building around competency.

This week, I was working on revamping a lesson...Teachers know how that goes, we rethink, overthink and decide on something after going back and forth over what is going to be best for our students. It can be a short or long process depending on what part of the lesson you are taking a look at.

With my school moving to the British Columbia curriculum, which is a concept-based competency-driven curriculum, I have been struggling with writing learning goals and assessments. These are supposed to assess both the concepts and the science competencies however, I still feel like I am focusing on the content in the lessons rather than the skills. My question was, How can I focus more on the skills and arrange my lessons so that they are "competency-driven"? So as a scientist, I went digging. Where does one go? Google Scholar of course and luckily my university's library site (thanks MSU)!

What I found was relief! Both Lay (2023) and Searchfield (2017) have found that there are large amounts of inconsistencies in the implementation of the new curriculum. Lay (2023) also found that there were many stumbling blocks including personal challenges such as time, departmental chanllenges such as a lack of consistency in proficiencies and sometime a lack of understanding which further hindered by a lack of professional development. This then sent me searching further, what do they call that.. a rabbit hole I think I found. Finally settling on wording that I found on the Greater Victoria SD61 District educational services website. Their sentence template, Students need to know (insert content area) in order to be able to (insert curriculum competency) and as a result they will understand (insert big idea), was very useful in helping me think through my learning outcomes or lesson goals.

So it seems just when I think I am becoming more expert in my teaching I am back to being a novice, though a novice who can appreciate how research can help me find answers and improve my teaching.

Have you used competency-based assessments before?

• Yes, all the time. I'm a pro.
• Heard of it and tried it out, but not confident.
• Competency what?

References

Curriculum Redesign | Building Student Success - BC’s New Curriculum. (n.d.). Government of British Columbia. https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/rethinking-curriculum

Edutopia (2018, July 18) Competency-based Learning - Developing mastery of skills and content. [Video] Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnXdj0yqpzI

Lay, K. (2023, July 26). Competency-Based Assessment implementation: A Study of understandings, challenges, and supports. Summit SFU. https://summit.sfu.ca/item/36475

Dodier, S. (2020, April). Perspectives on the competency-driven reform in British Columbia: A case study of the science teacher education program at SFU. Summit SFU. https://summit.sfu.ca/item/20032

Searchfield, Mary A. (2017) Changing Curriculum: A Critical Inquiry into the Revision of the British Columbia Science Curriculum For Grades K-9. Royal Roads University. https://www.proquest.com/openview/4edc0e012178d7bdfd02077aa4623087/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750

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Image created with Wix generative AI - prompt: Female teacher stuck in a research rabbit hole.