January 2, 2023
Creativity, Critical thinking, Communication, and Collaboration (the “4 C’s”) are frequently cited among the skills[1]Sometimes called “Higher-Order Thinking Skills”. For Psychomotor Skills, stay tuned to a new paper in March 2023, and peruse the 2018 version here employers and colleges find desirable, and they’re a hallmark of independent school mission and vision statements and graduate profiles. At the Center for Curriculum Redesign (CCR) and in partnership with the Brookings Institution, we also found these skills showing up in the vision statements of nearly all of the 20+ states, provinces, and countries we deeply studied. Though they’re stated as a priority, none of our studied jurisdictions had mechanisms to help teachers teach them, or to measure student proficiency, unlike content such as literacy or numeracy. What about your school?
As the field lacks deliberate, demonstrable, systematic, comprehensive, and explicit approaches, Independent schools can leverage these novel strategies as a key differentiator.
With our school partners, we work to dispel these notions and partner with teachers in research-backed best practices of high-quality skill instruction. A starting point is the following three-step process:
