Key Competencies and Reading

1. Key Competenciesand Reading

2. Three parts of the workshop • Rationales for the interpretation of the key competencies • Developing the key competencies through learning areas (English) • Integrating key competencies and reading: examples of practice Acknowledgement: Reid, A. (2006). Key Competencies: A new way forward or more of the same? Curriculum Matters, 2, 43-62.

3. Time to think and talk about: • What is our school’s rationale? • How does our rationale affect the way we understand and teach the key competencies?

4. Different rationales, different emphases • Economic? • Educational? • Cultural? • Political? • Social? • Individual? • Local? • Global?

5. Key Competencies: capabilities for living and lifelong learning • What kinds of rationales are possible/permissible? • What is stated and implied about the place of learning areas? • What is meant by “social contexts”?

6. Developing key competencies through learning areas: why? • Knowledge is still essential; but it is no longer a goal • Key Competencies – capabilities for living and lifelong learning – are a goal • With this model both are always present, working together

7. Developing key competencies through learning areas Key Competencies Learning areas

8. Example 1: Lifelong Literacy • Step 1: What do our kids need to learn? (Empathy – a capability for living and lifelong learning) • Step 2: Which key competencies does this relate to? (Relating to Others) • Step 3: Which learning areas might they learn this key competency through? (English) • Step 4: Set up the key competency environment • Step 5: Add content knowledge

9. Step 4 – setting up a key competency environment Kids need to understand that as readers of fiction they: • Respond to the narrator’s unfamiliar perspective • Rehearse for later social interaction • Imagine themselves into the position of characters • Experience at a safe distance

10. Step 5: Add content knowledge Our level of empathy for a character is influenced by components of the text • Appearance • Dialogue • Action • Thought

11. Example 2: Lifelong Literacy(see Cinderella resource) • Step 1: What do our kids need to learn? (to be part of a literary community – a capability for living and lifelong learning) • Step 2: Which key competencies does this relate to? (Participating and Contributing) • Step 3: Which learning areas might they learn this key competency through? (English) • Step 4: Set up the key competency environment • Step 5: Add content knowledge

12. Step 4 – setting up a key competency environment Kids need to understand that as members of a literary community they: • Interpret text in unique ways • Learn from other people’s interpretations • Modify their interpretations as a result of listening to other people

13. Add content knowledge When we interpret we not only draw on our own and other people’s backgrounds, we also draw on components of the text • Appearance • Dialogue • Action • Thought

14. Finding • Teachers with little content knowledge but who have set up a key competency environment seem to know what to do with content knowledge when it is handed to them.