policy & reform
campusreview.com.au
establishing the case for capabilities in
school curricula. I think the conversation,
though, has gotten a bit stuck in the
school gates, and it’s really important for
us to broaden our lens and recognise that
these skills and dispositions and habits and
ways of getting on are things that children
are learning from birth and that they will
continue to develop and grow throughout
their life course.
So I think it’s more about a shift in
narrative to assure people that capabilities
aren’t anything new, but they don’t just
happen. They do need to be deliberately
nurtured. They do need to be intentionally
built and developed throughout the life
course, and there are appropriate ways to
do that from the early years and throughout,
and that it’s important to give assurance that
we as a nation continue to be committed
to building strong, capable, curious learners
through our education system.
The report recommends eight steps to
strengthening capabilities in education.
Can you elaborate on some of them?
The first step we’ve put in there is to make
a strong evidence-based case for the
value of capability to employers, parents
and educators. I think we can see in
our national policy documents around
education, at all levels, that there has been
recognition by departments of education
and ministers of education that capabilities
matter and that they can be taught and
learned through our education system, and
that they should be a part of what happens
within early learning centres, schools,
TAFEs and universities.
But it might not have gotten through to
parents that they have a role to play, that
what they do with their children, whether
that be very young children, school-aged
children or young adults, the conversations
they have, the opportunities they provide
make a difference to whether or not those
young people grow up to have problem-
solving skills, critical skills, analytical
ability, the chance to play on a team, all of
those things.
Also, at the other end of the spectrum,
there’s a role to play for employers in
continuing to endorse the capabilities
being included throughout the education
system, but also in giving opportunities to
work together with the education system
and build them through on-the-job training
or opportunities during school in the
training years.
There’s a series of fact sheets that we put
together to go along with this report that
give a step-by-step sense of what people
could expect small children to be able to
do, what their capability challenges might
be, and some of the ways that anyone can
help a child or a young person at any stage
in their life to grow in their capabilities.
For example, a three-year-old who’s
trying to learn the difference between
right and wrong, they need someone to let
them know when they’ve done the wrong
thing. They need someone to show them
good ways to behave. They need to have
someone who talks to them afterwards
and says, “So how do you think that made
such-and-such feel?” and, “How would you
feel if someone did that to you?”
By having those kinds of conversations
with a three to five-year‑old, you’re giving
them an understanding of what empathy
is and they’re starting to learn that other
people have different feelings to them.
Similarly, throughout schooling, parents
have that role to play.
The area I’m particularly passionate
about is the early years. I think it’s
important that we look at what strategies
work to set young people up at the
beginning of their learning journeys and
how important it is that we build strong
foundations in things like getting on
with others, following rules, managing
emotions, and learning appropriate
behaviours – all of those things that many
of us probably suspect just happen. They
don’t just happen. Small children do need
to see and to experience and to do all
of those behaviours that will then turn
into their self-regulation skills and their
executive functions.
Where do these sorts of skills sit in relation
to education more broadly? Obviously,
they’re meant to complement it, but are
we seeing that they should take priority,
or are they just an equally important facet
of education?
Something we’re concerned about is
that education systems seem to be
configured at the moment where learning
is assessed just in terms of memorisation
or being able to perform well in exam
conditions, by being able to pull out facts
and figures, rather than in an iterative way
that really looks at how a young person
has combined their knowledge, skills and
capabilities, and how they are able to use
what they know, how they can do things,
and how they understand things, how
they get along with others, as a way to
demonstrate their learning.
Of your report’s eight recommendations,
are any of them challenging to implement
in practice, and if so, why would they
be challenging and how could those
challenges be overcome?
Of course, there are many fabulous
educators out there doing sensational
things in all of the different learning
contexts in which they are working, and
there are pockets of exceptionally great
teaching and learning going on. Many of
us probably think about capabilities and
say, “Well, a good teacher would just teach
those anyway,” or, “Of course you learn
how to do problem solving and teamwork
at school; that’s just part of what you learn
at school,” or, “Of course you learn to
follow instructions in an early childhood
education and care setting; that’s just what
happens.”
But in reality, there may be some
educators who find it more challenging,
who have been trying perhaps to see their
role as to get content knowledge in and
anything beyond that as being something
that’s not within their area of confidence
and expertise.
I don’t believe that there’d be many
teachers out there who wouldn’t want
to be able to say that all of their students
came out the other end of the class with all
of these capabilities and skills.
I think that’s probably a large part of
what motivates many people to become
educators. But just because that’s what
we all hope to see in education doesn’t
mean it just happens. It’s really important
to be able to give opportunities for
mentoring, for those who have great
insights and learnings to be able to share
them with their colleagues, for there to
be opportunities to coach and bring other
people up, for there to be communities of
practice and sharing.
This can be a bit challenging sometimes,
especially in a context of a market-based
or a choice-based education system;
I’m thinking, perhaps, in the early years,
where the centre down the road might
not want to share the insights of how great
they are because they want to have that
market advantage. But rather than seeing
it as a competition, seeing education as
a collaborative effort could really make a
difference for the children of Australia. ■
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