ABSTRACT
While a complete guide to methods for supporting mastery of the eight competences is beyond the scope of this book, this chapter provides a brief overview of some methods likely to be especially useful, both in and out of school. All the methods derive from the belief that experiences, and especially acting in complex situations, is the best way to acquire the competences. The simplest approach, which may be necessary to help stage an experience and develop conceptual elements of it is storytelling. Storytelling does not provide much more than limited mental simulation of possible actions, but it does set the stage for other methods. A second method, still mostly experiential but with more action opportunities is informal apprenticeships that can be as simple as simply shadowing someone else who is doing a task. More helpful as sources of practice of the eight competences are scaffolded real tasks, the paradigmatic example of learning by doing. Such tasks become more effective when they accomplish something of social importance, either to an immediate group of students or to the broader community. In addition to scaffolded real tasks, task also can be presented in simulated environments. A simple example of this is the use of standardized clinical cases, involving actors who play the role of patients, in medical education. Beyond real acting situations, there is great potential for tasks performed in simulated environments, often with machine-generated coaching as well. A more general domain that has many of the elements of the approaches just presented is gaming. Returning to the real world, two final possibilities are clubs and sports and government structures. While governance also emerges in clubs and sports, they also involve performances on which teammates are counting, so they present somewhat different elements of socioemotional competence to be practiced. As for governance, because of the increased complexity of the methods for supporting mastery of the eight competences, it makes sense to have students play advisory or even decision roles in shaping how the various practice opportunities arise and how well they work.
