Self-assessing Key Competencies in Leadership

For our flipped preparation for Mind Lab this week, we have been asked to read a document about Key Competencies and how they relate to teaching and leadership and then self assess our own teaching and leadership practice against these ideas. 

There are five Key Competencies identified in the NZ Curriculum:

• Thinking
• Relating to others
• Using language, symbols and texts
• Managing self
• Participating and contributing

These are five skills and abilities that we want our children to learn. Children need to develop these abilities in order to successfully navigate the world. They were established and are of great importance because of the vast amount of change in the world. Education is about about what you can do with knowledge. It is about equipping students with the skills to be able to learn well now and continue to be life-long learners...as there will certainly be ongoing change.

Strengths:

Project Based Learning (PBL) allows for authentic learning and application of knowledge. PBL equips the children with the knowledge that they require and then they are able to put their learning into action and they are able to develop their knowledge and learning in social contexts. I feel that all five competencies can be covered in a well planned PBL unit. In groups, children learn how to collaborate, communicate, problem solve, create, negotiate, make meaning in the context of the PBL focus and as a result they are hopefully active participants. The great thing about PBL is that the learning can continue throughout the year and can be referred to time and time again - you can say it's a great tool for growing and transferring knowledge.

Another strength (linked with PBL) is that we specifically teach, model, demonstrate and put into action, each competency. What does a successful communicator/collaborator/creative/problem solver etc actually look like. Children, especially young children, need to learn these skills.

Weakness:

Managing Self - this is like a bright red flag for me. Managing self is about setting high standards and high expectations for yourself, goal seeing, being a motivated learner and having the strategies to successfully navigate challenges. I feel that there are a number of students (largely boys) who lack resilience and the points listed above. I need to find ways to successfully engage the 'disengaged learner' and allow them to be able to do these things. Perhaps we need to start with teaching resilience and go from there. I feel it's hard to motivate some children who spend so much time 'gaming' and on screens. This is most definitely an area that I would like to improve on.