reThinking Learning 2020

There is tremendous interest in the teaching and assessment of “21st Century Skills”, but educators still find it challenging to integrate them into their existing teaching units and to assess and report on the skills that students are developing.

In this one-day Masterclass led by Dr Claire Scoular, participants will learn how to apply an assessment tool from the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) to a teaching unit of their own.

In Part 1 of the Masterclass, participants will be introduced to the ACER General Capabilities assessment and teaching framework. This will include the conceptual underpinning of the framework as it applies to the assessment of collaboration, critical thinking and creative thinking. It will include how the assessment framework is built around a problem-based learning approach and will provide examples of the kinds of tasks that are included in the assessments. Participants will learn how the framework can be applied across a range of year levels and subject areas.

In Part 2 of the Masterclass, participants will take part in a hands-on activity in which they will apply the framework to a unit of instruction that they have designed. In groups, they will work through a guided process to produce a draft of a possible problem-based assessment of the general capabilities of collaboration, critical thinking and creative thinking.

The “ACER General Capabilities assessment” is generalizable and is applicable to teachers of students of any year level and curriculum framework.

This one-day workshop will look at the different the tenets of concept-based curriculum and instruction with a focus on mathematics for Pre-k to 12. The answers to the following questions addressed

• How is knowledge structured and how can we utilize that structure to develop the intellect?
• How can we move to a three-dimensional curriculum and instruction model that allows us to compact the overloaded curriculum, and help students learn both factual and conceptual knowledge with greater depth and rigour?
• How can we design instruction and learning experiences to encourage synergistic thinking between the factual and conceptual levels of knowledge and understanding?
• How do we scaffold thinking to deeper and higher levels?