Knowledge alone is not enough
The higher order skills group was unusual among excellence groups in that it had no particular responsibility for any subject or curriculum area but was expected to say something relevant to the curriculum as a whole. After considerable soul-searching, it decided that its big message had to be ‘deep learning’. This, it suggested, is the central organising principle of Curriculum for Excellence – in effect, what it is really about.
Deep learning goes beyond the acquisition of knowledge. It must involve understanding and the ability to apply knowledge in useful ways. Deep learning is impossible without intellectual skills; the ‘higher order’ skills the group was expected to identify.
In the event, the group decided that the task of drawing up a comprehensive list of skills was both impossible and pointless. Instead, it has offered the idea that learners will need qualities of personal effectiveness in order to develop a limited number of general intellectual abilities or ‘cognitive skills’.
The list of these skills is similar to that in Building the Curriculum 4 but with the addition of synthesis and systems thinking. The group considered that these are critically important because they are the skills of ‘big picture’ thinking; the ability to bring together ideas from different areas of knowledge and the capacity to understand complexity, interdependence and unintended consequence. Even more than the others in the list – knowing, understanding, applying, analysis, evaluation and creativity – these are the key skills of the twenty-first century.
The development of skills and the building of knowledge are not in way in tension. Knowledge is a pre-requisite of understanding and the other members of the list. The key message, however, is that knowledge on its own is not enough. The task now is to create a curriculum in which the knowledge and skills are seen as mutually supportive and equally significant.
Keir Bloomer, Former leader – Association of Directors of Education Scotland (ADES), Chair – Higher Order Skills Excellence Group
More information on the Excellence Groups and the published reports are available on the Curriculum and Assessment pages of the Scottish Government website.
1 comment
A well articulated statement from Keir Bloomer which actually fits the variety nature of one discipline entirely – History – and others such as Modern Studies and Geography to a great extent. Long may this sort of support of it and other disciplines continue, despite their being subsumed into the murky wastes of Social Subjects where the skills are few and the criteria based on experience rather than competency. As one parent pointed out when a group of them marvelled at the vague nonsense that is being imposed upon their children “I’ve experienced being in a ‘plane- does that mean I’m now a secure pilot”!