How the Maldives is preparing to teach essential skills

Participants from the Maldives’ National Institute of Education (NIE) were among education experts from 14 countries who attended a course in 2021. All were members of a Knowledge and Innovation Exchange covering Eastern Europe, Asia and the Pacific Hub (KIX- EAP).

They had come to learn about 3 skills determined to be essential to learning – collaboration, creative thinking and critical thinking – and how new frameworks on these skills could benefit teachers and students.

NIE participants were one of the first to use ACER’s frameworks to inform significant system transformation, starting a systemic integration of them into the curriculum and teaching practice.

How ACER supported the process

Funding from KIX-EAP from 2023-24 set the wheels in motion for a pilot of the integration of collaboration, creative thinking, and critical thinking skills into the national curriculum.

KIX-EAP approached ACER to provide the NIE with technical support to develop 2 reports detailing the challenges and solutions. Part of this involved using ACER’s essential skills development frameworks to build capacity among NIE stakeholders and pilot processes for the integration.

Lead author of the frameworks Dr Claire Scoular travelled to the Maldives in 2023 to provide training for 68 NIE staff, covering professional development, needs analyses, and the development of teacher resources and national guidelines for active student participation. The reports outlined specific challenges and solutions arising from integration into the 2015 National Curriculum Framework

Challenges and solutions

The first report focussed on developing the key competency ‘Making Meaning’ into a practical skills framework. It also highlighted challenges relating to the development of useful teacher resources, professional development initiatives and curriculum documents when seeking to align the intended curriculum with what was implemented.

The second report focused on integrating essential skills into the Grade 4 Mathematics curriculum. It identified challenges such as limited human resources and facilities needed to conduct an in-depth curriculum mapping of essential skills, a lack of teacher knowledge to integrate essential skills into classroom instruction, and time constraints to deliver new content.

To support the successful embedding of essential skills into the ‘Making Meaning’ and Grade 4 Mathematics curriculum, system-wide strategies were identified as ‘next steps’ in each report.

These included further development of education materials and a key competency guide that can be turned into a ‘comprehensive framework’.

Using ACER’s frameworks to enhance systems for 21st century learning

The essential skills framework was developed to support learners in modern schooling, and better prepare teachers to measure and monitor essential skills in their classroom.

Within the framework, evidence-based research was used to define and analyse these skills, referred to as the ‘3Cs’: critical thinking, creative thinking and collaboration, to show how they manifest as observable behaviours in students.

Learn more

This 2021 report gives an overview of an online course delivered to 16 Asia Pacific countries to support systems to build an aligned and sustainable approach to integrating 21st century skills.