“Change efforts need human, educational, infrastructure and financial support. Perhaps most important is the capacity building of teachers/educators and educational leaders.”

Enabling Change: Capacity Building, Relationship Building, Infrastructure & Resourcing  

Capacity Building

Canadian educators are among the strongest in the world. Their training, professional learning, and front-line experience have largely been within the context of subject-based instruction. Accordingly, educator capacity will need to be a central focus in the transition to competency-focused education. The nuances of personalized learning, individualized assessment, the ability to assess student capacity for competency development, student-led learning, integration of technology, authentic learning, and other pedagogical approaches described across the other domains of change (see specifically “making change”) will need to be learned and/or enhanced.

Capacity building will need to include peer-support systems, mentorship, clinical supervision by administrators, and more. Patrick and colleagues (2018) point out that professional judgment is at the core of competency-focused teaching, and that policy, training, supervision, and other supports need to assist with this judgment. By supporting teachers to engage in collaborative inquiry, education systems can build capacity by empowering them to inquire and learn together. By addressing obstacles, and encouraging and supporting collaboration within schools, education systems can empower teachers to take leadership over their own professional development and enable them to develop and adapt context-specific strategies to meet the needs of students in a changing world (Schnellert and Butler, 2014).

Another key element of capacity building, as Hipkins (2010) notes, will involve helping teachers “unlearn” concepts and practices they have been encouraged to practice for years in order to shift from current approaches to competency-focused education. This is particularly important in provinces and territories where staff and administrator turnover is high and where these individuals come from “other” educational experiences and philosophies.

Canadian provinces and territories have strong examples of capacity-building supports. British Columbia has a series of communications for teachers that provide profiles, examples, and illustrations to support core competencies development. The resources include frequently asked questions (FAQs), videos, booklets, updates, and more. Alberta has made useful resources for educators available on-line (ARPDC, n.d.) as has Ontario. Ontario also offers resources for enabling collaborative inquiry in schools (Government of Ontario, 2014).

The capacity of educational leadership will also need to be developed on a number of fronts. Administratively, personalized learning and assessment can create challenges that are outside of many educational administrators’ repertoires. Leaders will need to ensure that they have the ability to clearly communicate the changes to teachers, parents, employers, and others and be able to manage the shift in each stakeholder’s expectations. Educational leaders will need to grasp the full intent and vision of global competency integration, inspire staff with the benefits of this vision, support staff as problems arise, and engage other stakeholders in the process of helping students learn regardless of who might be “teaching.” By way of example, British Columbia’s Ministry of Education has developed, in collaboration with a host of other organizations, a leadership framework with 19 common competencies for educational leaders (BC Education, 2017).

Relationship Building

The engagement of stakeholders in the change process was addressed in the “owning the change” domain. In the “enabling change” domain, the focus is on establishing system-to-system relationships in a more formal, structural way. Owning change is about emotional commitment; building relationships in “enabling change” is about formalizing and documenting commitment between systems.

There are many systems that should be considered in the vision of lifelong global competency development (pre-school, adult literacy, and language learning, senior citizen programs). For example, the postsecondary education system and the system(s) of employers/industries within a province or territory will be important partners in the shift toward competency-based education because many students will eventually be making the transition to either (or both) of these systems, and both serve as important spaces for learning in life after secondary education. The heart of global competency-based education is to support students to have the ability to not only make sense of the world around them but to have the competencies to thrive in it. Therefore, the goal of global competency integration must be broader than its integration and development in public education. Relationships need to be developed and/or strengthened across all these systems and across multiple stakeholders (e.g., nongovernmental organizations, employers, families, community organizations, Elders, etc.) so that the changes adopted by the public education system are supported, encouraged, and extended.

Infrastructure

The physical infrastructure supporting learning global competencies was referred to in the literature. “In several schools [that were moving to more competency-focused learning], learner-centered pedagogy was being considered not just as new learning spaces were designed, but also as old spaces were redesigned” (Bristow & Patrick, 2014, p. 12). Traditional bricks-and-mortar schools are likely not going to disappear, but their internal shape and relationship to other facilities will change as global competencies are embedded in the system. The “where” of learning is important, and the physical learning environment cannot be ignored. Neither can virtual spaces. Virtual spaces and the equipment that can be accessed in these spaces—tablets, computers, smartphones, and more—are increasingly becoming pivotal elements of educational infrastructure (e.g., Milton, 2015).

Resourcing

As Fullan (2010) points out, resourcing change efforts does not mean throwing money at problems. He argues that too much resourcing can in fact distract from the aims and lead directly to worse educational outcomes. On the other hand, insufficient resourcing can slow or halt progress. Given this possibility, resourcing of everything discussed thus far needs to be considered and addressed. This resourcing ranges from appropriate remuneration for educators to obtaining technology that is appropriate to the need.

Required funds need not all come from a single source. Stakeholders can contribute funds and/or in-kind resources, recognizing the difficulties of ulterior motives or conflicts of interest. Further, one-time funding is of limited use. There is little point in purchasing technology, for example, without the funds to maintain or upgrade it (e.g., Intel Education, 2017).

A particularly important element of resourcing relates back to leadership and engagement. If stakeholders such as teachers see that appropriate (in their eyes) funding is not being provided for the change effort, every other element of the change effort may be undermined. Innovation funds provide special remunerations and reliable core funding for ongoing elements.

Enabling Change Worksheet

For more information, and to consult the references indicated above, please click here to download the pan-Canadian systems-level framework on Global Competencies.