Exploring the Connection between “Out of Eden Learn” and Competency-based Education

Abstract

Competency-based education represents an important priority for several countries worldwide. Although national governments and international education communities have identified a wide range of competencies as integral for meeting 21st century learning requirements there is a lack of evidence on how can these be effectively taught, learnt, and assessed in the classroom. A promising approach for competency-based education is “Out of Eden Learn”, a research initiative of Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education that incorporates several strategies such as thinking routines and dialogue tools that are carefully crafted to facilitate the development of core competencies among learners. This study looks at the “Skills Labs” competency-based educational reform in Greece and presents the process of using “Out of Eden Learn” to develop a curriculum that is both supportive of fostering the requisite competencies and responsive to the needs of primary teachers. A survey questionnaire was used to investigate the views of 120 teachers who piloted the curriculum in 82 kindergarten and elementary schools across Greece. The findings not only reveal the value of “Out of Eden Learn” approach for competency-based education, but they also indicate the interdisciplinarity and the transferability of its related strategies that can guide curriculum design and teaching practice in an array of international educational contexts.