Invitation to Participate in Professional Learning & Competency-Based Education TAG July 16-20, 2018

Across the country, there are thousands of leaders and educators who have deep expertise in competency education who could make valuable contributions to advance competency-based education (CBE) and lead important conversations on key issues. Thus, CompetencyWorks has committed to adopting a participatory process by which many people can participate and contribute to the development of key issues in a transparent way through Technical Advisory Groups (TAGs).

CompetencyWorks is hosting a TAG for Professional Learning & Competency-Based Education, during which we will share a draft document through Google Docs and ask TAG participants to share their insights and reflections at some point during the one-week virtual session, running July 16-20, 2018. You can sign up to join the TAG here, and please consider sharing this opportunity with your peers and networks. (We only ask that all TAG participants have at least one year of experience in competency education.)

We will hold a phone call on July 16 at 12 p.m. Eastern time to provide an overview of the TAG process and introduce the key ideas in the draft framing paper.

TAG Topic: Professional Learning & Competency-Based Education

This TAG will focus on professional learning for K-12 competency-based education and will seek to:

• Understand critical differences between professional development in traditional and competency-based education systems;
• Visualize key elements of a possible future state for professional development in a high-quality competency-based education system and identify best practices in professional development for competency-based education;
• Anticipate and understand the shifts in professional development needed to transition to and eventually sustain competency-based education; and
• Identify possible entry points and strategies at multiple levels of practice.

How to Participate

The TAG is open to professionals who have at least one year of experience in competency-based education. (We don’t mean online learning; at CompetencyWorks, we focus on competency education as a system that ensures students demonstrate mastery before advancing. CBE serves as a structural foundation that replaces the traditional structure of sorting kids in school.). We invite you to join this Technical Advisory Group by signing up here.

Please note: TAGs are not designed to support people just learning about competency education. We suggest that those of you who are new to the topic start by reading case studies of districts and schools to get started. You will have an opportunity to learn from these conversations as a report based on professional learning will be published in fall 2018.

How the TAG Works

We are setting up a virtual conversation using a Google Doc. TAG participants can visit the document anytime during the week of the TAG to leave suggestions and comments. We will do our best to incorporate your ideas in real time. At the end of the week, we will do final revisions to produce a briefing paper on this key issue.

Here’s a more detailed look at the process:

1. I will share a document link with registered TAG participants to provide a draft of the issue paper.
2. There will be a phone call at 12 p.m. ET on July 16 to launch the TAG and explain this process.
3. During July 16-20, TAG participants will provide insights on the draft document throughout this assigned one-week virtual session directly in the document.
4. CompetencyWorks and partners will make real-time changes to the papers based on the shared insights and feedback, so we hope TAG participants can check in multiple times throughout the week as ideas develop.
5. After the one-week session, CompetencyWorks and partners will incorporate feedback into revised papers.

Take Advantage of This Opportunity

Please consider taking advantage of the TAG to engage your organization, professional learning community and networks in exploring what professional learning in K-12 competency-based education looks like. You can use the ideas in the TAG paper to catalyze conversation and bring your collective ideas to the TAG. Here’s a sample tweet in case you’d like to share this opportunity on Twitter:

• The @nacol @CompetencyWorks initiative is hosting a Technical Advisory Group on #ProfessionalLearning & #K12 #CompetencyEd. ISO experts. Learn more, sign up, & share: https://www.inacol.org/news/invitation-to-participate-in-professional-learning-competency-based-education-tag-july-16-20-2018/ | Click to tweet.

Katherine Casey is founder and principal of Katherine Casey Consulting.