BC Curriculum: Core Competencies

Understanding the Core Competencies

According to the Ministry of Education, there are some essential understandings related to the Core Competencies and how they are connected with the other parts of the BC Curriculum:

1. “The Core Competencies are sets of intellectual, personal, and social and emotional proficiencies that all students need in order to engage in deep, lifelong learning”
2. “Along with literacy and numeracy foundations, they are central to British Columbia’s K-12 curriculum and assessment system and directly support students in their growth as educated citizens”
3. “Students develop Core Competencies when they are engaged in the ‘doing’ – the Curricular Competencies – within a learning area” and, therefore, are an integral part of the curriculum.
4. Even though the Core Competencies manifest in different ways, they are interconnected and are foundational to all learning.
5. Core competencies are developed throughout the whole students’ life (before, during, and after school graduation, both inside and outside school settings). For these reasons, schools should not only value and integrate students’ knowledge acquired outside school but also give opportunities to students to learn and/or improve these competencies.

Unpacking the three Core Competencies of the BC Curriculum

BC Curriculum has three Core Competencies:

1) Communication:

These are the competencies that students should develop to establish healthier relationships with others. In this sense, students should develop two groups of communication competencies:

1. 1. Communicating: BC curriculum identifies three facets (skills) that students should develop to active a good communication:
      • Connecting and engaging with others
      • Focusing on intent and purpose
      • Acquiring and presenting information.
   2.  Collaborating: BC curriculum identifies three facets (skills) that students should develop to be able to collaborate with others:

• • • Working collectively
    • Supporting group interactions
    • Determining common purposes

2) Thinking

These are the competencies that students should develop to improve their intellectual development and produce new understandings. In this sense, students should develop two groups of thinking competencies:

1. 1. Creative Thinking: BC curriculum identifies three facets (skills) that students should develop:
      1. Creating and innovating
      2. Generating and incubating
      3. Evaluating and developing
   2. Critical Thinking and Reflective Thinking: BC curriculum identifies four facets (skills) that students should develop:

• • • Analyzing and critiquing
    • Questioning and investigating
    • Designing and developing
    • Reflecting and assessing

3) Personal and Social

These are the competencies that students should develop to help them understand their own identity in the world. There are three facets within personal and social:

1. 1. Personal Awareness and Responsibility
   2. Positive Personal and Cultural Identity
   3. Social Awareness and Responsibility

The role of each person in progressing through the Core Competencies

BC Curriculum recognizes that Core Competencies are developed inside and outside of school.

Consequently, students, teachers, and parents/ guardians have different responsibilities and roles in the process of developing Core Competencies.

However, BC Curriculum has designed profiles or, in other words, levels in the progression of development of each one of the Core Competencies (See an example here) to guide students, teachers, and parents/ guardians to understand what they should do to become more proficient in the Core Competencies.

Core Competencies in the early educational years

The Provincial Outreach Program for the Early Years (Popey) has some orientations and assessments to support teachers implementation in  primary and pre-primary contexts.

How to assess Core Competencies in the BC curriculum?

Assessment is another big challenge related to the Core Competencies but essential to guarantee that each student is developing them. BC Curriculum suggests that students should self-assess their own Core Competencies, but teachers have an essential role in developing strategies and tools to support students in this task.

North Vancouver School District has some suggestions of how to write “I can statements” to the Core Competencies, so the students can think clearly about what they need to focus on.

Surrey Schools has also designed a guide with questions and rubrics to self-assess Core Competencies. Moreover, teacher Kerri Hutchinson from Surrey Schools explains and gives many examples of how she has developed and supported her students to self-assess Core Competencies:

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Guest post by Peer Tutor Ariane Faria dos Santos (Ph.D. EDCP), Feb. 2022.