What is a skills based curriculum?

[skewiff]

Our primary school says one of its aims is to make the curriculum more skills based?

What does this mean?

Well I certainly don't teach in a middle class area with well educated parents working9while5

Isn't that an arguement in itself for teachers making decisions over what they teach and how they teach it and adapting their lessons to the learning style of the pupils they teach.

I agree, I added meat onto the bones of what was taught in school to deepen her understanding, I appreciate not all parents have the means to do this. It really made a difference to her understanding and the links she made though.

argument (sorry!)

Some sort of summative assessment would be useful at the end of these sort of topics I always feel, so you can see what understanding of both skills and knowledge have been grasped. Like you say, sometimes pupils may have got certain skills ticked off but still be non plussed re the actual concepts covered.

'Skills-based' teaching does not excuse a teacher from providing the critical information needed to understand a topic. And I agree that in a class like mine with almost 50% SEN and a group of children who have never been to the nearest city let alone further afield then that 'foundation work' needs to be laid down alongside the skills being taught. It is a matter of balance - for the same group of children, providing facts like 'The Great Fire of London was in x year' makes very little sense because they have never been to London, never seen pictures of it and don't have the maths skills to realise that x was some time ago. Those gaps have to be filled whatever the general 'style' of the curriculum.

I should clarify my last post about the Battle of Hastings, btw. There is no reason why children should not be taught it as part of a skills-based curriculum, but it is possible that in an individual school the teacher may choose to teach the same skills via a different event or period of history. The current National Curriculum prescribes both 'Knowledge, skills and understanding' and 'Breadth of Study' [ie the 'content' to which those skills relate]. The issue has historically been that there is a lot of content, and the temptation has been to 'cover the curriculum' rather than 'develop skills'. If instead we teach skills via particular contexts, then there may be some 'favourite' topics that an individual child might not experience. For example a teacher may teach similar skills (map skills, interpretation of limited written sources, archaeological evidence, pictorial evidence created after the event by someone with a particular viewpoint, identification of a historical event on the local landscape) in another context such as the Roman invasion of Britain instead.

Mrz? Relevance? It doesn't change my opinion.

I am sure it must be possible to do it better than I have been able to observe, but in one of the schools I work in, I see this tremendous urge to "power through" teaching of skills in a tick-list fashion and a lack of attention to the basics of the learning experience - does the student truly know and understand something new that they didn't at the outset of teaching? I fail to see evidence of this being achieved in many skills-based lessons. In assessing skills, naming and listing or applying those "skills" to a piece of work where their use has been heavily modelled to the point of redundancy isn't sufficient evidence that skills have been acquired IMO.

The students should be able to apply these "skills" to a new piece of work independently - otherwise, they have been given knowledge about skills, not skills and if that's to be the case, content knowledge seems more important in the long term.

It seems to me to be it would be undeniably easier for students with a broader general knowledge to access this style of teaching and learning but I am not observing students like that and the students I am observing are not accessing a quality experience in my opinion.

The students should be able to apply these "skills" to a new piece of work independently

Of course. Not all skills-based teaching is better than 'imparting of knowledge' teaching ... because whatever the 'system', it cannot by itself overcome the weaknesses of the particular teacher or school.

The question is, what should we ASPIRE to? Excellent skills-based teaching, where defined skills are developed and applied to a somewhat reduced or more flexible body of knowledge, or excellent knowledge-transfer-based teaching, where the focus is on transferring a defined body of knowledge to pupils as efficiently as possible? We should not choose our aspirations just because there are some poor examples in practice.

teacherwithkids, i've already said that i think both are needed, so we are more in agreement than we differ, i think.

however - regarding your response to my example -
A teacher teaching in a 'knowledge based' way would simply say 'Right class, we have been reading Lucky im. The things happening in the world at the time were x,y and z, now take notes as to how that influenced the author'.

Now you are talking about a teacher deciding which things are the relevant and interesting ones, rather than an individual tapping into a strong base knowledge and imaginatively and analytically approaching the subject. Presenting a limited palette of facts from which a student is then asked to draw the 'right' conclusions. Dreadful way to teach.

Moreover, this assumes that the teacher has done the process I described earlier - has the base knowledge, makes the connections...or how else is this supposed to happen? Facts will always shape the narratives we get, and we must not allow those facts to be known only to a few.

People must have a range of facts at their disposal, in their head, so that they can make a judgement when they encounter new information. Being able to 'look something up' is useless when one doesn't understand that they even need to look something up. Without some factual knowledge, we can't possibly ask the right questions.

The end results of an imbalance of these two ideas are all too obvious and easily found - intellectual arrogance, smallness of ideas, and a narrowing of the entire concept of an 'educated person' to a unit of production...what does a person need to do x job. Look at the claims on here ... one doesn't need facts except to win at pub quizzes...information is useless if it doesn't advance one's career...it is a horribly depressing state of affairs.

I think where I differ from you is in the belief that knowledge is only valuable when it is known 'by heart'. Instead I think that people need to have a range of QUESTIONS in their head. The natural intellectual curiousity common to all young children has to be fostered and directed and not removed through didactic teaching...

And you do of course realise that i was giving an example of bad teaching in the section that you have quoted?

I think realistically the two can't and shouldn't be divorced, and an artificial emphasis on "knowledge" vs "skills" can easily lead to poor teaching. I see some really poor teaching of "skills", I have to say. I am sure there was just as much poor teaching of "knowledge".

As I said, my philosophy of teaching/learning is simple: does the student know something new after teaching that is meaningful and relevant? Can the student apply that knowledge to new facts/contexts? Can I prove that?

The relevance working9while5 is that you seem to think children who don't have middle class highly educated parents are unable to understand whereas that isn't the case if children have been provided with the skills to question and discover for themselves

www.nurseryworld.co.uk/news/rss/1116829/Parents-spend-little-effort-cultural-activities-children/

???? Not quite sure where you got that from.

I think children whose experiences are different from those who write the curriculum are often disadvantaged by that, particularly if teaching doesn't take that into account or is poor and assumes a shared cultural experience. I think this is a pretty common idea and one which is shared by many educators.

I'm not really sure what you mean by "that isn't the case if children have been provided with the skills to question and discover for themselves". What are these skills to question that everyone goes on about? What are you questioning? What are they discovering for themselves? Isn't it all underpinned by knowledge and how it links together? It all sounds like meaningless claptrap to be honest.

Someone recently asked me to do some work in a school on developing oracy. What "strategies" and "techniques" could be used to create a one-page "speaking frame" that would enable students to confidently discuss a range of topics using sentence starters such as "In my opinion...", "I take your point, but on the other hand.." etc.??? This was to be used across contexts and subject areas.

The reality is that kids need to given interesting, stimulating material that someone brings alive for them to inspire them to talk and then need to be given time to talk and express their opinions. An teacher can challenge their novice thinking/talking/questioning by engaging them and modelling that discussion. It's not about a "speaking frame" or "sentence starters".. and God, sentence starters can be the MOST off-putting, conversation-killing device ever brought into a classroom if used without that underlying engagement. It's an example of a "technique" or "skill" that sucks the heart out of what a discussion or debate is all about.

I see some really poor teaching of "skills"

Might this not be because teaching skills is quite a bit harder than teaching knowledge? And the cognitive problems of some pupils that you describe earlier in the thread are perhaps partly because the cognitive levels required of pupils to perform knowledge based tasks are lower than those required to develop skills effectively.

There is a degree of lateral thinking needed together with embryonic critical skills which take some time to develop. EBDTEACHER points out that a skills based curriculum takes more time (and, I would add, skill on the part of the teacher)to deliver than a knowledge based one.

I agree the two are not mutually exclusive and the teachers here will be teaching both. I agree that if a teacher hasn't the sense to check that the class doesn't understand what a charity when beginning a project about them is then there is a problem with that teacher's delivery. It's usually a matter of experience though - it took me a while, years ago as a young teacher, to realise just how little common knowledge we can take for granted in society.

Sorry, yes, I may have been unclear. I realise that you were putting it forth as a 'bad example', but I think it is an example of exactly what happens when students don't have that grasp of the fundamentals. Teaching 'skills' is all very well, but my point is that (and I think gaelicsheep said this better than I am!) without them, the teacher is shaping the understanding of the text - actually working against the stated goals of the 'skills-based' model. I don't see this working to encourage natural intellectual curiousity at all, quite the opposite.

sorry, should have written there "but my point is that (and I think gaelicsheep said this better than I am!) without the fundamentals,"

Or, alternatively: www.ipoddess.com/iPoddess/Resources/Entries/2008/10/23_The_Very_Best_of_iPod_and_Podcasting_files/30MillionWordGap-by-age3.pdf

I'd like to highlight, in posting this, that this "gap" has been used to suggest that parenting of children from lower SES areas is somehow deficient and/or produces "developmental delay". I would contend that this is not the case, but that children from lower-SES backgrounds are disadvantaged by having different vocabulary and experience on school entry that often isn't bridged over the years, as these skills are prioritised by the current curriculum, which elevates a particular style of talking/listening/engagement with literacy etc.

There is a lot of talk about how nearly 20% of children now have some form of speech, language and communication "difficulty". I would argue that actually, it's more likely that 10-14% of these just "match" poorly with the current curriculum and are disadvantaged by teaching that doesn't meet them at their baseline, that assumes something that isn't there. I think good schools and good teachers find a way of moving from where a child is at, and don't let the curriculum put a stranglehold on teaching and learning but adapt it creatively while poor ones just carry on regardless without checking that actual learning is taking place, just powering through the tick list of the curriculum.

A balance would be good..my kids are in Scottich system - dd at primary and ds in first year of secondary. We are now firmly in "curriculum for excellence" - which appears to be a skills based, cross-curricular system (I say "appears" as on-one really seems sure yet.)
I do know that neither child has yet to study eg "the Romans" or "Ancient Greece" or "Vikings". They have done topics with subjects like "bridges" , "bags" "Fairy Tales" so they can practise their skills of finding information, discussing, communicating, presenting etc etc.
These are all valuable skills but I feel they have missed out a lot on learning actual facts.
Even when it comes to Maths there seems to be no hard and fast list of what they actually need to learn. WE were advised at a curriclar meeting when both dc were still in primary school taht what they did in maths that term would be determinded by what topic the children decided on for that term..
It all seems to wishy washy to me - which considering teh schools still do not seem sre how they will assess this "skill based curriculum" in S4 and s5 seems afairly accurate assessment of the situation.
Seems so strange that the SCottich and ENglish systems are now so far apart.

I didn't think that was what working9while5 meant. Agree that it sounds too simplistic to suggest that all children will develop skills, arguments and opinions without knowledge, often taught at home by parents. Had never really considered this skills based approach to benefit more priviledged children but I can see how it makes sense.

haggisaggis children can practise their skills of finding information, discussing, communicating, presenting etc etc just as easily with a topic of Ancient Greece/myths or Vikings/saga/kennings as any other topic a skills based curriculum does not exclude knowledge but it encourages children to be active learners rather than passive recipients of information

mrz - I agree with you, but certainly in my experience there seems to be a move away from topics like these to more wooly ones bases on what teh pupils want to do. I remember doing the Vikings, Romans etc and they provided "facts" I still remember today.

Just seems to me in SCotland the move is to skills INSTEAD of facts which is astep too far I think.

Our pupils still study The Romans, Egyptians, Aztecs, Greeks, Tudors, Victorians, etc etc

I'm not really sure what you mean by "that isn't the case if children have been provided with the skills to question and discover for themselves". What are these skills to question that everyone goes on about? What are you questioning? What are they discovering for themselves? Isn't it all underpinned by knowledge and how it links together? It all sounds like meaningless claptrap to be honest.

All good teaching has to a) start from where the children are and b) know where it wants to take them (though that destination can be defined in different ways - it could be defined as a body of knowledge about a subject e.g. Romans, or it could be defined as a precise skill set e.g. the skills to create a hypothesis and then to design and carry out a simple fair test experiment to test it).

To find out where children are, it is very instructive to listen to their first questions...a recent historical topic started from a question posed by one of our pupils with least 'prior knowledge' "Why does that man look all funny?" In fact, you don't usually have to provide children with questioning skills - you just have to avoid squashing such skills out of them in the school context - but there are 'teachable' skills involved in selecting answerable questions, and in working out where to find answers to them "Let's look at the books in the library to see if any have a picture like that on the front, then we can read the words to see if they can tell us more about men who look like that" was this child's suggestion on that front. The real skill for a teacher is channelling that, in explicitly teaching skills to make the process of finding out efficient and rewarding, and in making available resources that children would not necessarily be aware of (and also in making children aware of the general 'classes' of resources so that a child would next time be able to do that for themselves).

Of course it is underpinned by knowledge - there is something there to find out, that is the purpose of the exercise. A teacher needs to have, and needs to impart to students, a knowledge of skills and resources, and needs to have a general idea of the things which it is possible to find out. However it is not necessary for a teacher to have the knowledge in detail ready to transmit directly to children - it is enough to know that it is possible to find out what Romans ate, not to be able to list that in detail. Each time a child encounters e.g. a new historical period, they will bring the skills and knowledge that they hve already acquired to their study of it and thus each time they will practise their skills and build on their knowledge.

Haggisaggis raises the Curriculum for Excellence. This is a travesty of our education system and if England follows suit it will be making a mistake that will harm a generation of English children, just as it will Scottish children. We are moving away from Scotland and the idiotic CfE is one reason for this.

I have rarely been so depressed as I am reading this thread. How dare anybody make the judgment that x child won't need x knowledge because of the job it is assumed they will do? Such a backward step and so judgmental! "Keep the peasants in their place" is what that argument says, although I suspect the people making it don't realise this.

We are rapidly returning to a situation where knowledge is the preserve of the elite. Do we really want that? I sure as hell don't!

The other thing I would say is that to be "creative" - one of today's buzz words it seems - one needs building blocks to be creative with. Otherwise you are effectively asking someone to create a great sculpture out of thin air.

Our children are being placed in a position of unconscious ignorance. There will not be much creativity or innovation coming from that starting point. Plenty of sleepwalking citizens though, which should suit future Governments' purposes very well.

Thank god some people with some sense turned up on this thread.

My DH went to Winchester. Most traditional education you can get? They had a subject called Divisions where a class were allocated different teachers by half termly periods and the teacher could give a series of lessons on any topic they liked. The only requirement was to generate thinking and questioning amongst the boys, the context was irrelevant. He cites these lessons as the highlight of his education. History GCSE was not offered because they considered it to be a useless fact learning exercise.

I teach children with severe EBD. They come to us lacking the skills to learn any facts. We intensively boost their intra and interpersonal skills, executive functioning (basically thinking skills), literacy skills and numerosity in the hope that they will then be able to access some facts.