CompetencyWorks: Keeping Students On Their Learning Edge

New report provides guidance on student supports and success in competency-based education

WASHINGTON, Dec. 18, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — A new report released today by CompetencyWorks explores how our schools and educators support student growth as states adopt policies that move from a traditional time-based system toward student-centered systems that award credit based on proficiency and mastery. The new report, titled The Learning Edge: Supporting Student Success in a Competency-Based Learning Environment, is written by Laura Shubilla and Chris Sturgis and highlights how student supports are necessary to ensure each student remains engaged and achieving at their “learning edge” to maximize potential and provide continuous support for learning.

“Support systems for students in a competency-based environment are embedded in the learning process itself, and are continuously part of goal-setting with students within mastery-based models,” said Susan Patrick, President and CEO of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL). “A competency-based system, where each student is always on their learning edge, creates an environment in which each student is maximizing their own learning potential with support from educators.”

The Learning Edge, the second report in a series of briefs from CompetencyWorks, provides guidance for innovators in competency education to develop powerful systems of supports for students in order to eradicate, not replicate, the inequities and variability in quality and outcomes that exist in our current time-based system. Specifically, authors Shubilla and Sturgis focus on the need for schools to embrace a growth mindset that allows students to have greater opportunities to learn, and for leaders and educators to develop an environment where learning is grounded in relationships and anchored by systems of assessments that provide feedback and continuous data.

“The world of learning is changing dramatically, and will continue to do so through the foreseeable future,” said Dr. Richard Elmore, Professor of Educational Leadership at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education. “The Learning Edge is a powerful and exciting new report that represents the best current thinking about how to provide individualized, growth-oriented, highly-engaged learning with digital access and a human touch.”

To download a copy of The Learning Edge: Supporting Student Success in a Competency-Based Learning Environment, please visit http://bit.ly/thelearningedge.

To learn more about competency-based learning, please visit CompetencyWorks at  http://competencyworks.org.

SOURCE International Association for K-12 Online Learning