Primary Education: Objectives, Skills, and Competencies
Educational Goal
The principal goal is propaedeutic, preparing students to meet and exceed academic standards.
Why Teach Science?
- Contribute to children’s understanding of the world.
- Develop methods for discovery, idea validation, and evidence-based reasoning.
- Introduce concepts that facilitate, rather than hinder, science learning.
- Foster positive attitudes and awareness about science.
General Objectives (Bloom, Hastings, Madaus, 1975)
- Cognitive Domain: Achievement of intellectual and cognitive skills, such as gathering, implementing, and evaluating information; problem-solving; planning and executing experiments.
- Psychomotor Domain: Achievement of manipulative or psychomotor skills, such as handling equipment and materials, and making observations.
- Affective Domain: Development of student attitudes and interests related to science and its study, including assessing scientists’ views and the relationship between science and society.
Primary Education Objectives
- Annex I: Basic skills.
- Annex II: Objectives of different areas, their contribution to basic skills development, content, and assessment criteria for each area in different cycles.
- Annex III: School hours for each cycle in different areas of primary education.
Core curricula encompass the fundamental aspects of the curriculum, including objectives, basic skills, content, and evaluation criteria.
Purposes of Including Basic Skills in the Curriculum:
- Integrate formal (subject-based) and informal learning.
- Integrate learning associated with various content types and apply them effectively in different situations and contexts.
- Guide teaching by identifying essential content and evaluation criteria.
- Inform individual decisions regarding the teaching-learning process.
Key Competencies
- Competency in Linguistic Communication: Using language as a tool for oral and written communication.
- Proficiency in Mathematics: Ability to use and relate numbers, basic operations, symbols, and mathematical reasoning to interpret information and solve problems.
- Data Processing and Digital Competence: Skills to seek, obtain, process, and communicate information, transforming it into knowledge.
- Social and Civic Competence: Understanding social reality, cooperating, coexisting, exercising democratic citizenship, and contributing to societal improvement.
- Cultural and Artistic Competence: Understanding, appreciating, and critically evaluating various cultural and artistic expressions.
- Competency for Learning to Learn: Possessing learning skills and the ability to continue learning effectively and autonomously.
- Autonomy and Initiative: Acquiring awareness, implementing interrelated values and personal attitudes, delaying gratification, learning from mistakes, and taking risks.
Objectives of the Area of Knowledge of the Natural, Social, and Cultural Environment (RD 1513/2006 of 7/12)
Content and Assessment Criteria
- The environment and its conservation.
- The diversity of living things.
- Health and personal development.
- People, cultures, and social organization.
- Changes over time.
- Matter and energy.
- Objects, machines, and technology.