AI in Education
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3
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The Discerning Learner, Part 2: Introducing the Framework
In Part 1, I reflected that the 21st Century Competencies framework, as valuable as it was, was built for a different moment. The world has changed again and educators need a new shared language. Here's what I've come up with.
I'm calling it the Discerning Learner Framework. It's built for children aged 18 months to 6 years and is organised around one question: what does it mean to raise a child who thinks for herself, creates with intention, and uses the tools available to her (including AI), with judgement?
I had a chat with my AI about this when it asked me, "What's the word that sits at the heart of what you want these children to become?"
I responded with this:
Hmm what’s the word.. not resilience, not really adaptability either.. it’s something like maybe discernment. A discerning human who uses tech advancements to her benefit. Someone who creates rather than solely consumes.
Discernment, the capacity to look at a situation, a tool, an idea, and know what to do with it. A discerning child is not just equipped; she is someone.
The Discerning Learner Framework will have three layers.
The Human Edge Competencies is the first layer. Seven capacities that I believe children need to develop deeply, before and alongside their engagement with technology. These are not skills in the conventional sense. Rather, they are orientations. Ways of being in the world that AI cannot replicate, and that no amount of screen time will build on its own.
The Five Pillars is the second layer. If the competencies answer what we are developing, the pillars answer how we organise the curriculum to develop them. They are the practical handles that teachers and curriculum designers reach for when planning what happens in the classroom day to day.
The Mastery Indicators is the third layer, and in some ways the most important one. Most early childhood frameworks tell you what to cultivate. They rarely tell you how to know if it's working. The mastery indicators will be the set of observable markers, organised across three stages of development, that help educators and parents see where a child actually is in building each disposition. Alongside each indicator is a question for the educator: has this child had enough real opportunities to practise this capacity this week?
I will unpack each layer in parts 3, 4 and 5 of this blogpost series.
A framework that only names capacities is a philosophy. One that also organises the curriculum is a plan. One that does both, and also tells me how to assess progress is, in my opinion, a complete system. The Discerning Learner Framework is my attempt to build all three layers from the ground up, for the early years, and for the world that my children are actually growing up in.
In the next post of the series: Seven Human Edge Competencies and why each one matters.
