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Understanding the Core Competencies

According to the Ministry of Education, there are some essential understandings related to the Core Competencies and how they are connected with the other parts of the BC Curriculum:

1. “The Core Competencies are sets of intellectual, personal, and social and emotional proficiencies that all students need in order to engage in deep, lifelong learning”
2. “Along with literacy and numeracy foundations, they are central to British Columbia’s K-12 curriculum and assessment system and directly support students in their growth as educated citizens”
3. “Students develop Core Competencies when they are engaged in the ‘doing’ – the Curricular Competencies – within a learning area” and, therefore, are an integral part of the curriculum.
4. Even though the Core Competencies manifest in different ways, they are interconnected and are foundational to all learning.
5. Core competencies are developed throughout the whole students’ life (before, during, and after school graduation, both inside and outside school settings). For these reasons, schools should not only value and integrate students’ knowledge acquired outside school but also give opportunities to students to learn and/or improve these competencies.

The BC Curriculum has three Core Competencies:

Communication

These are the competencies that students should develop to establish healthier relationships with others. In this sense, students should develop two groups of communication competencies:

1. 1. Communicating: BC curriculum identifies three facets (skills) that students should develop to active a good communication:
      • Connecting and engaging with others
      • Focusing on intent and purpose
      • Acquiring and presenting information.
   2.  Collaborating: BC curriculum identifies three facets (skills) that students should develop to be able to collaborate with others:

• • • Working collectively
    • Supporting group interactions
    • Determining common purposes

Thinking

These are the competencies that students should develop to improve their intellectual development and produce new understandings:

1. 1. Creative Thinking: BC curriculum identifies three facets (skills) that students should develop:
      1. Creating and innovating
      2. Generating and incubating
      3. Evaluating and developing
   2. Critical Thinking and Reflective Thinking: BC curriculum identifies four facets (skills) that students should develop:

• • • Analyzing and critiquing
    • Questioning and investigating
    • Designing and developing
    • Reflecting and assessing

Personal and Social

These are the competencies that students should develop to help them understand their own identity in the world. There are three facets within personal and social:

1. 1. Personal Awareness and Responsibility
   2. Positive Personal and Cultural Identity
   3. Social Awareness and Responsibility

The BC Curriculum recognizes that Core Competencies are developed inside and outside of school. Consequently, students, teachers, and parents/ guardians have different responsibilities and roles in the process of developing Core Competencies.

To guide students, teachers, and parents/ guardians in understanding how students develop proficiency in the Core Competency, the Ministry of Education has articulated profiles, or levels in the progression of development of each one of the Core Competencies. See an example on the BC government website

How to assess Core Competencies?

Assessment is another big challenge related to the Core Competencies but essential to guarantee that each student is developing them. BC Curriculum suggests that students should self-assess their own Core Competencies, but teachers have an essential role in developing strategies and tools to support students in this task.

Several school districts have published resources to help teachers engage in articulating and helping students self-assess the core competencies:

• North Van School District (NVSD44): “I can statements“
• Victoria School District (SD61)
  • I can statements across the competencies. 
  • IEPs and core competency statements/goals

The Provincial Outreach Program for the Early Years (Popey) has some resources including PPTs with assessment examples  to support teachers implementation in  primary and pre-primary contexts.

Teacher Kerri Hutchinson from Surrey Schools explains and gives many examples of how she has developed and supported her students to self-assess Core Competencies:

Additional resources:

If you are looking for suggestions of how to develop the Core Competencies in your classroom, the UBC Education Library has a Core Competency booklist to support teachers in this work.

References:

Ministry of Education (2022, February 25). BC Curriculum Core Competencies. https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/competencies

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Guest post by Peer Tutor Ariane Faria dos Santos (Ph.D. EDCP), Feb. 2022.