The Kansans Can Competency Framework promotes each of the Design Pillars (Student Success Skills, Community Partnerships, Personalized Learning, and Real-World Application) and the State Board of Education Outcomes. The Framework is aligned with the Kansas Social, Emotional, and Character Development (SECD) Standards, the Employability Skills Framework, and the Rose Capacities. The development of intrapersonal and interpersonal skills should not be a separate initiative or add-on; rather, we aim to provide professional learning, coaching, resources, and other supports to help schools build a sustainable culture and applicable daily practices that facilitate competency development and promote academic learning.
We strive to empower educators to effectively facilitate students’ intrapersonal and interpersonal competency development through academic courses (addressing standards and competencies simultaneously) through consistent, meaningful, evidence-based methods. Following implementation science research, the implementation process guides schools and individual educators from exploration to sustainable implementation of embedded, meaningful, and transferable competency instruction. Our goal is to support educators to empower students to become socially and emotionally engaged, career- equipped, lifelong learners.