N2NEC
What are Key Competencies?
Quick Definitions of Concepts:
Key Competencies: skills, values, motivations, attitudes that work together to enable a capable person
Capable person: the individual who learns over the course of a lifetime when and how to mobilize and combine resources to respond to individual and collective opportunities and challenges.
Foundational Statements: The principle conditions that cultivate and challenge learning environments for NWT citizens.
Quick Explanation of the Relationship between the Concepts:
The NWT capable person is a relational individual. S/he does not stand apart from the world of which s/he is a part. The NWT capable person develops key competencies within relationships. The foundational statements can be construed as features of the world in which the capable person belongs. With this understanding, the collective always lives, albeit in particular ways, within the individual and the individual capable person is always an essential part of the collective.
To this end, although curriculum is still oriented toward the individual, it will be important to consider the curriculum in light of this requirement that the individual be construed as a relational individual. In this way, the NWT capable person brings the possibilities for orienting him or herself in the world in ways that are true to with the foundational statements.
A fundamental understanding within NWT Education Renewal work is that all people, inside or outside of the school, are learning, growing, and contributing. As such, the term ‘learner’ is used throughout this document to include students, educators, Elders, family, and community members who make up a learning community. The work of Education Renewal was established and is progressing through focused research and engagements (consultations/conversations) with people across the territory.
Data was coded from these engagements and others that asked the question, "Could you tell us what you consider to be the characteristics of a capable person?" The following key competencies of the capable person living in and being a part of the NWT community emerged: