competency-based learning. Readers learn the components of successful PLCs and how to leverage the PLC framework to support competency-based learning design principles in schools.
▶ Chapter 3 focuses on the first critical question of a PLC in the context of a competency-based learning model: What knowledge, skills, and dispositions should every student acquire as a result of this unit, this course, or this grade level (DuFour et al., 2016)? Educators answer this question through the development of effective competency statements. Readers learn how to develop schoolwide and course-specific competencies that include explicit, measurable, transferable learning objectives to empower all students.
▶ Chapter 4 looks at changing traditional grading practices. Readers learn how teams within a PLC support competency-friendly grading practices for both academic skills and academic behaviors.
▶ Chapter 5 looks at assessment development, specifically in the context of the second critical question of a PLC: How will we know when each student has acquired the essential knowledge and skills (DuFour et al., 2016)? Readers learn how teams within a PLC develop systems of comprehensive assessment to formatively and summatively assess students’ competency and growth.
▶ Chapter 6 focuses on schoolwide support structures as they relate to the third and fourth critical questions of a PLC: How will we respond when some students do not learn and how will we extend the learning for students who are already proficient? (DuFour et al., 2016)? Readers learn how in a competency-based school, individual teachers, teams, and the school as a whole respond when students need interventions or extensions.
▶ Chapter 7 focuses on change management in the school setting. Readers learn how to sustain the change process in their schools as they begin to evolve from a traditional to a competency-based learning philosophy.
Embedded throughout the book are real-world examples of competency-based learning from schools and districts throughout the United States. These stories offer a practitioner perspective on how to turn theory into practice. Although not specifically highlighted as practitioner perspectives in this book, readers may also learn from several international examples of competency-based learning. Countries that score high on the PISA and that have made a commitment to a competency-based approach include Finland, Sweden, Canada, and New Zealand (Bristow & Patrick, 2014).
As you undertake the work of implementing a competency-based learning model, you may find it to be some of the hardest work of your career; however, you will also find it to be some of the most rewarding because your school will truly become laser focused on student learning. Student engagement, ownership of learning, and career and college readiness will be the ultimate, tangible outcomes of this work.
CHAPTER 1
Understanding the Components of an Effective Competency-Based Learning System
Think back to when you first learned to drive a car. Knowing what you know now as a more experienced driver, would you change anything about the way you first learned to drive? Brian’s experience with learning how to drive a car happened like this.
As a sixteen-year-old teenager in New Hampshire, Brian, along with his father, spent every day backing in and out of driveways while Brian delivered newspapers in the neighborhood. Brian’s father would take him to shopping malls after hours to practice parking. He eventually brought Brian to a point where he could drive on quiet streets in town as he started to learn the rules of the road.
Then, Brian started a formal driver education program. Like many programs, it consisted of both classroom instruction and actual driving on the road with an instructor. To this day, Brian doesn’t remember a single thing about the instruction he received in those thirty classroom hours, but he does know that the class culminated with him memorizing a lot of arbitrary facts and figures so that he would pass the written driving exam, an exam which would contain twenty-five multiple-choice questions based on information in the State of New Hampshire Driver’s Manual. This test never caused anxiety for Brian because he already knew how to “play that game of school” from other experiences. He was very good at cramming for multiple-choice tests, knowing what sorts of random facts and figures his teachers would likely quiz him on. The driver education manual made it easy; the real driving test would just be a subset of the one hundred–question practice test in the back of the book.
What did scare Brian as a young teen and soon-to-be driver was not the written test, but rather the time he would have to spend in a car with an instructor, and, even more so, the actual driving test with someone from the Department of Motor Vehicles. Brian knew his skills, or lack thereof, would be on full display during the driving instruction sessions and test. He had to perform. Knowing that one false move with a car could spell disaster, there was little, if any, room for error.
As Brian reflects back on his driver education experience, a few things stand out to him that are rarely seen in our schools, such as the following.
▶ In driver education, all students are working toward the same explicit and measurable learning goal of being able to safely and effectively drive a car in any condition or setting.
▶ To a certain extent, driver education allows students to move at their own pace. Students progress from skill to skill when they are ready through their driving practice. There is no set maximum amount of time students should spend learning a particular driving skill, and students are encouraged to practice with family members on their own time to become secure with their skills.
▶ Driver education can adapt to individual student needs. Those who need more practice with a skill like parking or highway driving can get differentiated support either from their driving instructor or others (in Brian’s case, his father).
▶ The true test of whether or not a student has mastered driver education is performance based; the student must drive a car while an outsider evaluates his or her performance against a specific set of driving standards.
▶ Driver education is not the final step toward mastery of the road; it is just the beginning. The longer you drive a car, the better you get at driving. Driver education serves as an initial base to help students apply their new driving skills and develop better habits and dispositions for a lifetime of effective driving.
Driver education is an excellent way to introduce the topic of competency-based learning for two reasons: (1) it is an education program that many Americans experience at one point in their lifetime, and (2) driver education has many of the hallmarks and characteristics of a competency-based learning model. The concept of competency-based learning is often interpreted differently from school to school and, in some cases, from state to state. This chapter provides the reader with a framework and a foundation for the rest of the book by outlining a five-part definition for competency-based learning.
A Definition of Competency-Based Learning
In a system of competency-based learning, a student’s ability to transfer knowledge and apply skills across content areas organizes his or her learning.
