21st Century Skills
As part or our school ‘identity’, we strive to prepare our students to be responsible and successful global citizens who can ultimately, participate effectively in society. Part of this is to build their skills so they can have to opportunity to be employable once their whole education within a schooling context is complete. When we look at what global employers will be looking for in the future, we can clearly see that skills such as problem solving, communication, negotiation, collaboration, digital literacy, creativity, critical thinking and emotional intelligence are those that are most desirable.
By ensuring that our students have the opportunity to start to develop these required skill sets, we hope that we are ‘future proofing’ them for jobs that may not even exist as yet. It is through the provision of authentic teaching experiences to grow these capabilities, that we believe will best prepare our students.
Whilst we are familiar with the more ‘traditional’ learning areas of learning, the Capabilities are still a relatively new concept, even though they were an integral part of the Victorian Curriculum F-10.
It is very important to understand that all Learning Areas including these Capabilities have a set of discrete knowledge and skills that are intended to be taught explicitly using the specific vocabulary.
The aims of the 4 Capabilities of the curriculum are explained below:
Critical & Creative Thinking capability aims to:
• Develop an understanding of thinking processes and an ability to manage and apply these intentionally
• Learn skills and learning dispositions that support logical, strategic, flexible and adventurous thinking
• Build confidence in evaluating thinking and thinking processes across a range of familiar and unfamiliar contexts.
Ethical capability aims to:
• Analyse and evaluate ethical issues, recognising areas of contestability
• Identify the bases of ethical principles and ethical reasoning
• Engage with the challenges of managing ethical decision making and action for individuals and groups Cultivate open-mindedness and reasonableness
Intercultural capability aims to:
• Demonstrate an awareness of and respect for cultural diversity within the community
• Reflect on how intercultural experiences influence attitudes, values and beliefs
• Recognise the importance of acceptance and appreciation of cultural diversity for a cohesive community.
Personal & Social capability aims to:
• Recognise, understand and evaluate the expression of emotions
• Demonstrate an awareness of their personal qualities and the factors that contribute to resilience
• Develop empathy for and understanding of others and recognise the importance of supporting diversity for a cohesive community
• Understand how relationships are developed and use interpersonal skills to establish and maintain respectful relationships
• Work effectively in teams and develop strategies to manage challenging situations constructively.