Victorian Curriculum: F-10

1. Victorian Curriculum: F-10 Introduction to the teaching and assessment of the Capabilities Monica Bini: VCAA Capabilities Curriculum Manager

2. What will we cover? • Overview of each Capability • Tips on explicit teaching of the Capabilities • linking to learning areas • assessment • Resources available to support explicit teaching of the Capabilities.

3. Why Capabilities? Capabilities underpin: • Flexible and analytical thinking • A capacity to work with others • An ability to move across learning areas to develop new expertise

4. The Victorian perspective • Discrete knowledge and skills • Research supports explicit instruction • Transferable knowledge and skills • Will assist deeper learning in other curriculum areas • Can be taught together with other curriculum areas

5. More information • VCAA Revised Planning and Reporting Guidelines at • https://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/foundation10/Pages/f10index.aspx

6. Overview of each Capability • Let’s take a tour

7. Tips on Explicit Teaching 1. Remember that you are teaching discrete knowledge and skills

8. Discrete knowledge and skills: example Achievement standard (extract): By the end of Level 8, students explain different ways ethical concepts are represented and analyse their value to society, identifying areas of contestability. 

9. Unpacking the content: Ethical Capability enable students to understand the distinction between: • Freedom from outside interference (“given” freedom) • Freedom in the sense of mastery of oneself (“earning” freedom)

10. Example The concept of freedom is related to: - Civics and Citizenship • Economics and Business • Health and PE • The Arts • The Technologies

11. Tips on Explicit Teaching • Remember that you are teaching discrete knowledge and skills • Bring the abstract Capability knowledge alive with case studies, examples, scenarios etc drawn from linked learning areas

12. Tips on Explicit Teaching • Use backwards design • Begin by thinking about how you want students to use their Capabilities knowledge and skills; what is it for? I want them to be able to….

13. Examples

14. Tips on explicit teaching 3. Identify what Capabilities knowledge and skills students need to learn How should the content be unpacked? Have they already learnt it? How well do they already know this/how well can they do it?

15. Examples

16. Tips on explicit teaching 4. To build learning activities, find a natural fit with prior learning area knowledge • Use prior learning as a context for new Capabilities learning • Use a range of contexts • Scaffold to the application focus

17. Example One To help teach freedom (self mastery): Can you think of something that people are not allowed to do until they are older? Why not allow it when they are younger? Is age a fair way to judge whether someone has self mastery?

18. Example Analyse how aspects of their own and others lifestyle, behaviour, attitudes and beliefs can be culturally influenced (VCICCB009) E.Phillips FOX The arbour (1910) Oil on canvas National Gallery of Victoria at https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/explore/collection/work/5570/ Source: clip art

19. Tips on explicit teaching 5. Give students time to consolidate before applying to a new context • Complete a range of learning activities with a range of contexts • Invite students to use their knowledge, not just recall, and reflect

20. Example: Collaboration Students learn the strategy: Understand where the other person is coming from – find out beforehand as much as you can.

21. Example: Collaboration Practice in own culture first: • Planning a joint birthday party

22. Tips on explicit teaching 6. Build a culture that values the Capabilities • The Capabilities are rigorous and not ‘soft’ • Foster a learning culture that suits the Capabilities

23. Examples • Teaching learning strategies in Mathematics (Critical and Creative Thinking) • Teaching ethical issues in Science (Ethical Capability)

24. Summing Up • Remember: Discrete knowledge and skills • Use backwards design • Identify new knowledge and skills • Find a natural fit • Consolidate new learning • Build a culture that values the Capabilities

25. Assessment • Assess new knowledge and skills against the Capability Achievement Standard • Often the Capability is about the ability to analyse or reflect, rather than reach a pre-determined answer

26. Example One

27. Example Two

28. Resources • Let’s take a tour

29. Contact Monica Bini, Capabilities Curriculum Manager E: bini.monica.m@edumail.vic.gov.au

30. Rich Capabilities learning requires: • Shared language across the school on what we mean by explicit teaching • Deep familiarity with the curriculum • Best practice pedagogy and assessment methods • Practices to foster learner engagement and transferability

31. High quality learning: Level 8 English • Explore the ways that ideas and viewpoints in literary texts drawn from different historical, social and cultural contexts may reflect or challenge the values of individuals and groups

32. Levels 5 and 6 Visual Arts • Identify and describe how ideas are expressed in artworks by comparing artworks from different contemporary, historical and cultural contexts, including artworks by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (VCAVAR032)

33. First, what is the underlying learning? • Intercultural Capability will help students to understand how viewpoints arise out of cultural contexts • Students might learn: • What a cultural practice is • How socialisation occurs • About unconscious bias

34. Link to learning areas • This is from English but is English necessarily the best link to learn this content from Intercultural Capability?

35. Student engagement and powerful knowledge See: Knowledge and the Future School by Michael Young, David Lambert, Carolyn Roberts and Martin Roberts, Bloomsbury Academic, 2014

36. Typical Practice Students are assumed to have the knowledge and skills already Done? We can tick off a Capability CD!

37. Mutually Beneficial Curricula

38. The Victorian perspective • Discrete knowledge and skills are identifiable • Research supports explicit instruction • Knowledge and skills across curriculum areas are transferable • Will assist deeper learning in other curriculum areas. • Key resource http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Documents/viccurric/RevisedF-10CurriculumPlanningReportingGuidelines.pdf

39. Providing high quality learning: example one • Explore the ways that ideas and viewpoints in literary texts drawn from different historical, social and cultural contexts may reflect or challenge the values of individuals and groups (Level 8 English)

40. Providing high quality learning: Example two • Scientific knowledge and understanding of the world changes as new evidence becomes available; science knowledge can develop through collaboration and connecting ideas across the disciplines and practice of science (Levels 7 and 8 Science)

41. Capabilities as prior learning Students should come equipped with their Capability learning well consolidated before they apply it to other Learning Areas or to a complex real-world problem.

42. Introduce and Practise Split Screen Context Capability • Capability must be: • introduced explicitly within a known context. • allocated time to explore so as to strengthen new knowledge and skills. • Choose a learning area: • with a natural fit. • in which they have established confidence and proficiency. + NEW KNOWN

43. “What’s the buzz?” • Write down one thing you are curious about in the form of a question • Which of these are ‘big’ questions? Photo: AP. Source: “What’s the Buzz?” by Melissa Singer The Age 26 February 2018

44. CCT Curriculum Link Examine how different kinds of questions can be used to identify and clarify information, ideas and possibilities Relevant Achievement standard: apply questioning as a tool to focus or expand thinking Big questions/ Question Quadrant

45. Question Quadrant How might the models have felt? What if a drone malfunctioned? What was the event? What was the reason given for turning off mobile phones? Within the stimulus Closed Questions Open Questions Comprehension Speculation How were the drones controlled? Why did four houses choose a robot theme? Was it fair to name and shame? Would robots ever replace models? Research Philosophical/Big Beyond the stimulus Adapted from: “Thinking Tools” by Philip Cam, ACER, 2006, p. 34

46. Application to Learning Areas What were the characteristics of the sample group? Does it matter that the survey was held just after publicity on a natural disaster? Within the stimulus Closed Questions Open Questions Comprehension Speculation What contribution can surveys like this make? Are these results different to other surveys asking a similar question? Research Philosophical/Big Beyond the stimulus Adapted from: “Thinking Tools” by Philip Cam, ACER, 2006, p. 34

47. Split Screen Context Capability • Capability must be: • practised in different scenarios to develop student confidence. • used to explore content in a purposeful and strategic manner. • Choose a learning area: • with a natural fit. • that would benefit from Capabilities knowledge and skills to improve student understanding of the learning area (non-tokenistic). + KNOWN NEW

48. CCT Curriculum Link Examine how different kinds of questions can be used to identify and clarify information, ideas and possibilities Relevant Achievement standard: apply questioning as a tool to focus or expand thinking What would a scientist/historian/artist ask? Big questions Question Quadrant

49. Capabilities and powerful knowledge • Unpack the content descriptions with knowledge and skills that: • Take students beyond their own experience and what they already know • Can be applied to other Learning Areas and the complexity of the world outside the classroom

50. The nitty gritty What might a whole learning journey look like?