Module 4 - Competence

Module 4 – Competence 
In this module you will consider the implications of Competence for both CLIL teachers and CLIL students. 
Competence is one of the 5 Cs of CLIL. It refers to the measurable or observable knowledge, skills, abilities, and behaviours critical to successful performance. 

Competences reflect successful learning outcomes. They are often subject-specific and are an automatic part of any teacher’s lesson planning. 

Learning Stages:

1. Go to your Learning Diary and do Task 1 – Subject-specific competences. 
2. Competence as one of the 5 Cs of CLIL can have a wider application than just Content knowledge. It is useful to consider Competence in other applications
For example, 'CLIL Teacher competences' support the development of a rich CLIL learning environment in a wide variety of contexts. 
Look at the diagram below, which shows areas of competence for CLIL teachers, and consider the relative importance of each to you in your own teaching context. 



3. Go to your Learning Diary and do: 

Task 2 – Assessing your own competences as a CLIL teacher 
Task 3 – Planning to develop your competences. 
4. If you would like to read about CLIL Teacher competences in more detail, click here. 


5. ‘Can Do’ statements are a useful way of defining competences . 

An excellent example of their use for defining language competences is seen the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. This internationally recognised framework describes language ability in a scale of levels which ranges from A1 for beginners to C2 for those who have mastered a language. 



6. Go to your Learning Diary and do Task 4 – Assessing your level of English. 


7. In the Module on Cognition, we looked at Bloom’s Taxonomy of Thinking Skills. However, as well as thinking skills, Bloom’s Taxonomy describes different types of knowledge. 


• Factual knowledge (the basic elements of a subject), eg knowing musical symbols, or major natural resources 
• Conceptual knowledge (how parts of the whole are related), eg how periods of geological time are classified, or models used to explain ideas, such as the Theory of Evolution 
• Procedural knowledge (how to do something), eg whole number division, or how to conduct a scientific experiment 
• Metacognitive knowledge (understanding of how to learn), eg how to write an outline summary of a text, or the best method (for the individual student) of learning new information 

Click here to see an interactive diagram showing the relationship between thinking skills, activities and different types of knowledge.



8. Can Do statements as learning outcomes are often a combination of the thinking skills in Bloom’s Taxonomy and and the types of knowledge he defined. 

We can use Bloom’s Wheel to write Can Do statements using a verb to describe the cognitive process, together with the type of knowledge that the student is expected to develop.  See the examples clearly labelled in the table below:  

Cognitive Process	Can	Do (the Thinking Skill)	Knowledge
Remember	I can	recognise & recall	the dates of important events in recent american history
Understand	I can	give examples	of different painting styles
		classify	minerals
		write a summary	of a video presentation
Apply	I can	divide	one whole number by another whole number
Analyse	I can	structure	evidence for and against a particular interpretation of a historical event
		recognise	the point of view of the author of an article
Evaluate	I can	determine	if conclusions follow from data
		judge	if the solution to a problem is valid
Create	I can	devise	a procedure for completing the task
		design	a model of a building

 

    9. Go to your Learning Diary and do Task 5 – Writing Can Do statements.