From Aspiration to Evidence: Helping Students Develop the Skills That Matter

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

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Across New Hampshire and nationally, school districts working with stakeholders created Portraits of a Graduate or Visions of a Learner that reflect community values. Increasingly, the portraits identify skills such as collaboration, communication, creativity, and self-direction as essential to students’ success in school, work, and life.

Identifying these competencies is an important first step. Educators must determine how to teach these skills intentionally, give students opportunities to practice them, and gather evidence of students’ growth over time.

That challenge has been at the center of Building Essential Skills Today for the Future (BEST) from the beginning.

The BEST research project began as a Hewlett-funded research-practice partnership with the New Hampshire Learning Initiative (NHLI), NH Social Studies Teachers, Jobs for the Future (JFF), and Center for Innovation in Education (CIE). Using EPICs A Complete Definition of College and Career Readiness, CIE’s Essential Skills and Dispositions: Developmental Frameworks for Collaboration, Communication, Creativity, and Self-Direction and NH Work Study Practices as the research base. The project focused on the enduring competencies of collaboration, communication, creativity, and self-direction—competencies New Hampshire has historically identified as Work Study Practices.

The initial question was straightforward: If these competencies matter to students, how can we instruct and assess them with confidence?

In the process, we learned that the answer was more complex—and ultimately more useful—than simply developing a set of assessments. Teachers and students needed practical classroom tools. The BEST toolkits are built with educators and students, grounded in research and designed for classroom use.

What We Learned

NH teachers and students collaborated to design the BEST tools and resources, including the grade-band progressions, instructional strategies, and assessment tools. These practical tools facilitate making the competencies visible and make instructional design intentional.

Through that work, we learned that students can demonstrate growth in collaboration, communication, creativity, and self-direction over time. We also learned that simply giving students opportunities to collaborate, communicate, create, or work independently does not necessarily result in growth in these competencies. Growth is evident when students recognize themselves using these skills outside of the classroom in their communities.

Intentional instruction matters.

Students benefit when teachers identify the specific skills within a competency, develop clear learning goals and success criteria, and provide opportunities to practice those skills in different learning experiences.

Feedback also matters, and students need opportunities to receive feedback from teachers and peers, reflect on their learning, set goals, and apply the skills again in new contexts. It is an ongoing process, not a one-time event for a grade.

This changes the role of assessment.

Assessment becomes less about assigning a score to collaboration, communication, creativity, or self-direction and more about helping students recognize where they are in their learning, identify evidence of their growth, and determine what they need to work on next.

From Portrait to Practice

Today, many schools and districts have done significant work to develop a Portrait of a Graduate or Learner that reflects what their communities believe students should know and be able to do.

The next challenge is bringing that Portrait into everyday learning.

If collaboration is part of a district’s Portrait, for example, what does effective collaboration look like for a third-grade student? What might it look like in middle school or high school? How do students know what they are working toward? How do teachers intentionally support that development? And what evidence would demonstrate that a student is becoming a stronger collaborator?

The same questions apply to communication, self-direction, and creativity.

The BEST competencies, developmental progressions, learning progressions, instructional strategies, and assessment resources provide one way for schools and teachers to begin answering those questions. They bridge the aspirations represented in a Portrait and the curriculum, instruction, assessment, and learning experiences students encounter every day.

Bringing NHLI BEST Forward

The need to intentionally develop these competencies has increased.

The growing use of artificial intelligence, workplace changes, and an increasing emphasis on durable skills and Portrait of a Graduate competencies reinforce the importance of helping students become effective collaborators and communicators, creative thinkers, and self-directed learners.

For that reason, NHLI is bringing the BEST skills for life work forward—organizing and updating resources so educators can more easily access the project’s research, learning progressions, instructional tools, and classroom examples.

Educators can find the updated BEST competencies and resources on the NHLI BEST site, including grade-band learning progressions, instructional strategies, assessment resources, and tools to use with students.

Where Do You Start?

You do not need to address all four competencies at once.

Choose one competency and consider where it already exists within the learning experiences you provide students.

• What does successful performance look like?
• Do students understand what that looks like?
• Where are students already practicing the competency?
• What opportunities do they have to receive feedback, reflect on their growth, and use the skill again in a new context?

The BEST learning progressions and resources can provide a starting point for those conversations with students and colleagues.

The goal is not to add one more thing to what teachers are already doing. The goal is to make the essential skills students already use more intentional, visible, and connected to their learning.

This is the first of a series of posts where we will take a closer look at each of the four BEST competencies—collaboration, communication, creativity, and self-direction—and share examples of how teachers have used the BEST resources to intentionally teach the competencies, support student reflection and feedback, and gather evidence of learning.

Join us in this series and over at our new, easily-accessible NHLI BEST site.