The Revised Curriculum

Thinking Skills and Personal Capabilities

• How to enhance Thinking Skills and Personal Capabilities

• Activating Children's Thinking Skills in Northern Ireland (ACTS)

• "Miss, what will I do now", Carol Weatherall, BELB, shares her experiences of ACTS

The ability to think both critically and creatively and to develop personal and inter-personal skills and dispositions is essential for functioning effectively in a changing world. Therefore, the development of Thinking Skills and Personal Capabilities (TS & PCs) is at the heart of the revised curriculum from Foundation Stage to Key Stage 4.

The Thinking Skills and Personal Capabilities Framework

 

 

The Thinking Skills and Personal Capabilities Framework is divided into five strands for the purposes of making the skills and capabilities explicit and identifying their importance. A distinctive feature of the Framework is that it integrates different types of thinking skills with personal and inter-personal skills and dispositions. However, we recognise that the boundaries between them are fuzzy both conceptually and in practice. They are best described as overlapping sets.

 

Managing Information aims to help learners operate effectively in an information-intensive environment. They should have opportunities to access, select and integrate information from various sources. Increasingly, they will demonstrate the critical ability to identify the 'signal' (information that illuminates) from the 'noise' (information that distracts).

 

Thinking, Problem-Solving, Decision-Making identifies a range of thinking skills to help learners to make sense of information (for example, by sequencing, classifying, comparing and contrasting) and then to go beyond the information to engage in deeper learning (for example, by making predictions, developing arguments, drawing conclusions, examining options, weighing up pros and cons).

 

Being Creative aims to foster creative dispositions and approaches to learning across the curriculum. Curiosity, exploration, experimentation and invention are important elements and can be developed within a supportive classroom climate as learners are given opportunities to generate and follow through on ideas, see other possibilities, challenge routines and take risks for learning.

 

Working with Others aims to develop the social skills and dispositions needed to learn with and from others, for example, by joining in and sharing ideas, understanding how words and actions affect others, taking on roles and responsibilities and helping to reach agreements. These in turn promote the co-construction of meaning, as children question and judge each others' ideas, justify their own and make collaborative decisions.

 

Self Management '.knowing what to do when you don't know what to do'

This strand aims to help pupils become more knowledgeable about themselves as learners as they develop an awareness of their strengths and weaknesses and become more able to use strategies that help them plan their work. As they become more self-directed they are able to manage their learning in new situations.

Infusion

The framework does not stand alone. The skills and capabilities are not developed in a vacuum. It is intended that they are developed and assessed in and through the learning areas. Infusing a particular skill or capability into a subject context should lead to a deeper understanding of the context. In turn that context can provide a new and more challenging opportunity to practice and demonstrate the skill or capability. Indeed, progression in skills and capabilities is only made through their practice and application in a range of contexts and at increasing levels of challenge and demand.

 

More information on Thinking Skills and Personal Capabilities is available from www.nicurriculum.org.uk.