Integrating 21st century competencies into a K-12 curriculum reform in Macau

Abstract

ABSTRACT In recent decades, the term “competencies” has been widely discussed and become an impetus for innovating school curriculum and instruction. This study focused on a recent K-12 curriculum reform in Macau with the purpose of exploring the issue of integrating 21st century competencies in the subjects-based curriculum documents, i.e., Requirements of Basic Academic Attainments (RBAAs). Based on an analytical framework of 21st century competencies, the distributions of those competencies embedded in “curriculum goals” of 39 RBAAs across the K-12 schooling were analysed. Key findings can be summarized in three ways: (1) the category of “Ways of thinking” takes the most proportion while that of “Tools for working” takes the least from primary to senior secondary with “Living in the world” being most concerned in pre-primary; (2) discrepancies exist among the distributions of ten 21st century competencies across the K-12 schooling and (3) some competencies are more concerned in some certain learning domains. The results of this study have provided two implications for the issue of integrating 21st century competencies in the school curriculum in the rest of the world: a reasonable relation should be taken between key competencies and curriculum goals and different competencies will be emphasized at different educational stages and for different subjects.