Learning dispositions and key competencies: a new curriculum continuity across the sectors?

This year, 2006, marks an exciting new curriculum development in Aotearoa New Zealand that will affect the early childhood sector as well as primary and secondary schools. Curriculum reform has resulted in proposed changes to the school curriculum that will go out to schools for discussion during this year. One of these changes is to replace the essential skills with five key competencies that parallel the five strands of the early childhood curriculum in Te Whariki (Ministry of Education, 1996). In this article I begin with a discussion of learning dispositions, briefly introduce the key competencies, and then consider three ways in which a new continuity might be forged between early childhood and primary school curricula when the proposed key competencies are put into place. Learning dispositions and Te Whariki During early consultations for the development of Te Whariki, key contributors were the Maori advisory group contracted by the Te Kohanga Reo Trust and led by Tilly and Tamati Reedy. They laid down a challenge for the curriculum: hat it should be about mana, which they set out in five realms--mana whenua, mana atua, mana aoturoa, mana reo, and mana tangata. Tilly Reedy (1995/2003) commented that those aims would "ensure that the learner is empowered in every possible way" (p. 68). This concept provided an initial frame for Te Whariki, and a key value for the early childhood curriculum. One of the curriculum principles in English was a version of the Maori whakamana: empowerment. The text reads: "The early childhood curriculum empowers the child to learn and grow. " It includes the annotation that early childhood services will assist children and their families "to access the resources necessary to enable them to direct their own lives" (Ministry of Education, 1996, p. 40). In English, the parallel curriculum (not a translation) became: Belonging, Well-being, Exploration, Communication, and Contribution. Te Whariki then included the following commentary about "learning outcomes" associated with those five strands, emphasising learning outcomes as "working theories" and "learning dispositions": In early childhood, holistic, active learning and the total process of learning are emphasised. Knowledge, skills, and attitudes are closely linked. These three aspects combine together to form a child's 'working theory' and help the child develop dispositions that encourage learning. In early childhood, children are developing more elaborate and useful working theories about themselves and about the people, places and things in their lives . The second way in which knowledge, skills, and attitudes combine is as dispositions-'habits of mind' or 'patterns of learning'. (Ministry of Education, 1996, p. 44) There is a wide range of ideas about dispositions, and in my view it is worthwhile to keep returning to the notion that a curriculum will assist children and their families to access the resources they need to direct their own lives. Ron Ritchhart (2002), writing about research in schools, describes dispositions as "patterns" of behaviour, thinking, and interaction (p. 9). He maintains that dispositions turn abilities into action, and says that: [I]ntelligent performance is not just an exercise of ability. It is more dispositional in nature in that we must activate our abilities and set them into motion. (p. 18) In a research project that followed on from the development of Te Whariki, five dispositions-in-action were set out as the peaks of five learning "icebergs", aligned to the strands of Te Whariki and included in assessment formats called Learning Stories (Carr, 1998a, b, 2001). These were: taking an interest; being involved; persisting with difficulty; expressing an idea or feeling; and taking responsibility. Dispositions--an example The following story may illustrate these dispositions. …