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6b Introduction to the Competencies
Before we can implement the Learning Process we need to appreciate the significance of the competencies that a learner requires to be able to learn efficiently and effectively. The210 competencies are a comprehensive set of capabilities that develop into dispositions that will increase in sophistication throughout the learner’s lives.
The competencies provide learners with a sense of their identity, build their capacity to think and question, manage self, collaborate across a range of contexts, connect and reflect on their knowledge, ideas and concepts and develop a rich language that underpins their learning. These six factors contribute to learners to being competent and take agency over their learning.
The competencies should never be assumed. The absence of an understanding of the importance of the competencies by educators has been the main reason inquiry learning, differentiated learning and personalised learning may not have been as successful as educators may have expected.
Our focus on learning should have us asking the fundamental question, “What does the Learning Process look like and what capabilities do learners require to take agency over their learning?” We rarely ask these critical questions as we assume that everyone knows how to learn efficiently and take control of that learning.
The competencies are a collection of fundamental capacities that, with practice, develop into personal dispositions. These learning dispositions represent the qualities that allow us to take increasing agency over our learning and our ability to function in an increasingly sophisticated society. With experience, we can apply these dispositions without consciously thinking about them. Once we have a degree of competency and these become dispositions, we can implement the Learning Process in a manner that allows everyone to learn with increasing success.
Both studies illustrate how strategic thinking was taught explicitly through group instruction using both modelling and direct exhortation. In both cases significant gains followed from instruction targeting thinking tools students can apply to complex problems.211 John Hattie and Gregory Yates.
The competencies are the best investment we can ever make in improving learning outcomes. Without learners having the competencies, educators have had to fill in these competency gaps, racing from table to table being the learners' ever-present problem solver. It is no wonder that teachers are exhausted by the end of their day.
If we were to film an inquiry process we would find that almost 80% of the questions, and the difficulties learners had, were due to the learner’s lack of competency. We would also find that the lack of learner agency, was largely because the teacher told learners what, how and when to learn. The result was the teacher racing from team to team of inquiring students sorting out their issues, and while this is possibly useful in improving teacher fitness, it does not assist the learners becoming learning-fit and manage their own Learning Processes.
210 The chapter 29 summary video can be found here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJerg82rlr8&t=83s if you are reading the book, otherwise click on the video icon at the top of the page and the video will open in your browser
211 Hattie, J. & Yates, G. (2014). Visible Learning and the Science of How we Learn. Retrieved from http://www.amazon.com/Visible- Learning-Science-How-Learn/dp/0415704995
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