Curriculum / Global Curriculum / Grade 8

Grade 8 Thinking & Life.

10textbooks

250lessons

180competencies

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The whole year, lesson by lesson.

Textbook 1Values, Self-Image, and Emotional Self-Understanding

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

What Is a Value?

Chapter 2

Values in Conflict

Chapter 3

How Self-Image Forms

Chapter 4

Building a More Accurate Self-Understanding

Textbook 2Emotional Regulation, Stress, Discipline, and Rest

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

What Emotional Regulation Means

Chapter 2

Understanding Stress

Chapter 3

Balancing Effort and Rest

Chapter 4

Discipline and Motivation

Textbook 3Healthy Relationships and Empathy Across Difference

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

What Makes a Relationship Healthy?

Chapter 2

Warning Patterns and Adult Support

Chapter 3

Empathy Across Difference

Chapter 4

Support, Boundaries, and Mutual Care

Textbook 4Communication and Conflict Resolution

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Preparing for a Difficult Conversation

Chapter 2

Positions, Interests, and Needs

Chapter 3

Generating and Evaluating Solutions

Chapter 4

Follow-Through, Repair, and Limits

Textbook 5Logical Fallacies and Sound Arguments

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Attacking, Misrepresenting, and Limiting the Choice

Chapter 2

Popularity, Authority, Emotion, and Circular Reasoning

Chapter 3

Generalization, Slippery Slopes, and Weak Causal Claims

Chapter 4

Building a Sound Argument

Textbook 6Everyday Ethics and How People Justify Actions

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

What Is an Ethical Justification?

Chapter 2

Common Forms of Moral Justification

Chapter 3

Ethics of Everyday Information and Relationships

Chapter 4

Ethics of Work, Consumption, and Digital Life

Textbook 7Psychology as a Science

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Scientific Questions About Behavior

Chapter 2

Observation, Surveys, Interviews, and Case Studies

Chapter 3

Correlation and Experiments

Chapter 4

Samples, Replication, Ethics, and Claims

Textbook 8Perception, Interpretation, and Bias

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

From Sensation to Perception

Chapter 2

Ambiguity and Illusions

Chapter 3

Expectations, Stereotypes, and Interpretation

Chapter 4

Bias, Evidence, and Intellectual Humility

Textbook 9Media Manipulation, AI-Generated Content, and Online Wellbeing

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Evaluating a Media Message

Chapter 2

Persuasion and Manipulation

Chapter 3

Introductory AI-Generated Content

Chapter 4

Online Wellbeing

Textbook 10Risk, Financial Judgment, Knowledge, and the Good Life

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Risk and Reward

Chapter 2

Financial Judgment and Advertising Influence

Chapter 3

What Is Knowledge?

Chapter 4

What Is a Good Life? — Grade 8 Community of Inquiry

Every coin is a 15-minute lesson.

Explained simply, shown with pictures, then put to the test. Stars are chapter reviews. The trophy is the final review.

See how a lesson works

Every competency, covered.

The 180 competencies set for Grade 8 Thinking & Life, and every one has lessons behind it.

Values, Self-Image, and Emotional Self-Understanding

19 competencies

Compare two justifications without introducing named ethical frameworks.
Select relevant, credible, and sufficient evidence.
Explain online wellbeing through purpose, attention, emotion, self-image, sleep, movement, relationships, conflict, and safety.
Identify intellectual humility as willingness to recognize limits and revise.
Identify an assumption within a philosophical position.
Explain a value as something a person considers important when judging choices or life direction.
Distinguish a value from a preference.
Distinguish a value from a short-term goal.
Distinguish a value from a rule or external expectation.
Identify possible evidence that a stated value is reflected in behavior.
Recognize conflict between two personally important values.
Explain that values may develop through experience, relationships, culture, reflection, and learning.
Construct a nonprivate and provisional values profile.
Explain self-image as a person’s mental picture and evaluation of themselves.
Identify feedback, comparison, media, success, failure, relationships, labels, and stereotypes as possible self-image influences.
Distinguish self-image from complete identity or objective fact.
Identify an incomplete, exaggerated, outdated, or unsupported self-description.
Build a more evidence-based and compassionate self-description.
Revise a view of oneself after considering context, evidence, values, and change.

Emotional Regulation, Stress, Discipline, and Rest

26 competencies

Explain emotional regulation as influencing how emotion is understood, expressed, timed, and acted upon.
Distinguish regulation from suppression or denial.
Identify when changing a situation, interpretation, attention, expression, or action may be appropriate.
Select a regulation response suited to the context rather than applying one universal technique.
Explain that some emotions may need acceptance and support rather than immediate removal.
Recognize when emotional intensity or persistence requires trusted-adult support.
Explain self-regulation as managing attention, emotion, action, and effort toward a considered purpose.
Explain stress as a general response to perceived demands, uncertainty, pressure, or change.
Identify a stressor in a fictional or general situation.
Explain that interpretation and perceived resources may affect stress.
Identify general short-term signs of stress without diagnosing a condition.
Recognize when severe, persistent, or medically concerning stress requires adult or professional support.
Distinguish productive effort from effort that has become ineffective, unsafe, or unsustainable.
Explain the role of rest and recovery in sustained performance.
Identify sleep, breaks, movement, recreation, social support, and task change as possible forms of recovery.
Recognize diminishing returns from continued effort in ordinary language.
Explain discipline as acting according to a considered commitment despite changing motivation.
Distinguish discipline from punishment, overwork, and self-criticism.
Use priorities, routines, boundaries, environmental support, or accountability to support discipline.
Recognize when a plan should be adjusted because of new information, health, access, or changing circumstances.
Explain that motivation may vary with meaning, autonomy, competence, progress, support, and physical condition.
Connect a task with a personally meaningful reason where appropriate.
Use a manageable commitment when motivation is low.
Avoid interpreting one lapse as complete failure.
Evaluate whether a self-management plan supports both responsibility and wellbeing.
Construct and revise a sustainable self-regulation plan.

Healthy Relationships and Empathy Across Difference

15 competencies

Identify responsibility to prevent, stop, correct, or repair foreseeable harm.
Present a competing position fairly.
Explain a healthy relationship as a pattern supporting respect, safety, honesty, mutuality, consent, boundaries, communication, and repair.
Distinguish an ordinary disagreement from a repeated harmful relationship pattern.
Identify repeated control, coercion, humiliation, isolation, fear, manipulation, or boundary violation as warning patterns.
Explain that care and loyalty do not justify controlling another person.
Explain mutuality as both people’s needs, views, and boundaries receiving reasonable consideration.
Recognize that trust develops through patterns and may require time to repair.
Clarify expectations concerning communication, privacy, availability, belongings, participation, and shared responsibilities.
Recognize when peer conflict resolution is inappropriate because of fear, coercion, repeated harm, or unequal power.
Explain empathy across difference as attempting to understand experience without claiming complete knowledge.
Ask respectful questions and allow correction when learning about another person’s experience.
Avoid treating one person as representative of an entire group.
Represent another perspective accurately while maintaining one’s own boundaries and judgment.
Seek appropriate adult support when relationship safety is uncertain.

Communication and Conflict Resolution

16 competencies

Evaluate whether a justification considers affected people.
Evaluate whether a justification applies its principle consistently.
Compare severity, reversibility, and time horizon.
Identify an assumption within a philosophical position.
Recognize that trust develops through patterns and may require time to repair.
Communicate difficult feedback specifically and respectfully.
Select an appropriate time, place, and method for a difficult conversation.
Distinguish facts, interpretations, feelings, needs, and requests in a conflict.
Identify positions and underlying interests in a conflict.
Generate several possible conflict responses.
Evaluate a proposed solution for fairness, feasibility, safety, and follow-through.
Create a clear agreement and method for reviewing it.
Recognize when peer conflict resolution is inappropriate because of fear, coercion, repeated harm, or unequal power.
Explain empathy across difference as attempting to understand experience without claiming complete knowledge.
Seek appropriate adult support when relationship safety is uncertain.
Select a regulation response suited to the context rather than applying one universal technique.

Logical Fallacies and Sound Arguments

20 competencies

Explain a logical fallacy as a recurring pattern of reasoning that may weaken support for a conclusion.
Identify a personal attack that substitutes criticism of a person for evaluation of the claim.
Identify a misrepresentation of another person’s position.
Identify a false either–or that ignores relevant alternatives.
Identify unsupported slippery-slope reasoning.
Identify popularity used as sufficient proof.
Identify authority used as automatic proof outside appropriate evidence and expertise.
Identify circular reasoning in which the conclusion is restated as its own support.
Identify a hasty generalization from too few or unrepresentative cases.
Identify an irrelevant conclusion or distraction from the actual issue.
Identify emotional appeal treated as sufficient proof.
Identify post hoc reasoning that assumes an earlier event caused a later one.
Explain why naming a fallacy does not by itself refute a conclusion.
Distinguish a genuine fallacy from a reasonable simplified argument in context.
Construct a clear and appropriately narrow claim.
Define important terms and make assumptions visible.
Select relevant, credible, and sufficient evidence.
Address a serious counterargument or counterexample.
Qualify a conclusion according to the strength and limits of the evidence.
Evaluate and revise an argument for clarity, support, fairness, and uncertainty.

Everyday Ethics and How People Justify Actions

21 competencies

Identify the moral question within a complex everyday dilemma.
Distinguish moral reasons from legal, customary, practical, emotional, or popularity-based reasons.
Identify how a person justifies an action.
Recognize character, intention, rule, promise, duty, rights, care, fairness, harm, benefit, loyalty, consent, or responsibility as possible forms of justification.
Distinguish a justification from an excuse.
Evaluate whether a justification uses accurate facts.
Evaluate whether a justification considers affected people.
Evaluate whether a justification applies its principle consistently.
Identify assumptions underlying a moral justification.
Compare two justifications without introducing named ethical frameworks.
Analyze honesty and deception in an ordinary case.
Analyze promises, privacy, and responsible disclosure.
Analyze gossip, rumor-sharing, exclusion, or bystander choices.
Analyze academic honesty and fair collaboration.
Analyze consumption, waste, shared resources, or ordinary environmental responsibility without prescribing a political view.
Analyze digital posting, consent, attribution, and correction.
Identify responsibility to prevent, stop, correct, or repair foreseeable harm.
Construct a qualified ethical judgment using facts, justifications, affected people, consistency, and consequences.
Present the strongest reasonable alternative judgment fairly.
Revise an ethical judgment after criticism, new facts, or recognition of an overlooked perspective.
Represent another perspective accurately while maintaining one’s own boundaries and judgment.

Psychology as a Science

17 competencies

Qualify a conclusion according to the strength and limits of the evidence.
Explain psychology as the scientific study of behavior and mental processes.
Distinguish a psychological question from advice, diagnosis, or moral judgment.
Formulate a focused and ethically appropriate psychological research question.
Explain an operational definition as a clear description of how a concept will be observed or measured.
Describe naturalistic observation and one major limitation.
Describe surveys or interviews and identify wording or self-report limitations.
Describe a case study and explain why one case cannot automatically represent everyone.
Describe a correlational study and explain why correlation alone does not establish causation.
Describe an experiment as manipulating one factor while comparing outcomes under controlled conditions.
Identify independent and dependent variables at an introductory level.
Explain the purpose of a comparison or control group.
Explain random assignment at an introductory conceptual level.
Explain why samples should reasonably represent the population being discussed.
Explain replication as repeating research to see whether findings remain reliable.
Identify informed participation, privacy, voluntary withdrawal, and protection from harm as basic ethical principles.
Evaluate a psychological claim by asking about method, sample, ethics, evidence, limitations, and replication.

Perception, Interpretation, and Bias

16 competencies

Identify post hoc reasoning that assumes an earlier event caused a later one.
Define important terms and make assumptions visible.
Select relevant, credible, and sufficient evidence.
Address a serious counterargument or counterexample.
Evaluate and revise an argument for clarity, support, fairness, and uncertainty.
Examine perception as a possible source of knowledge.
Explain why uncertainty may remain even when a belief is well justified.
Identify intellectual humility as willingness to recognize limits and revise.
Explain perception as the organization and interpretation of sensory information.
Explain how attention, context, expectations, and prior knowledge may influence perception.
Recognize that ambiguous information may support more than one interpretation.
Identify how stereotypes or expectations may bias interpretation without diagnosing an individual.
Evaluate a psychological claim by asking about method, sample, ethics, evidence, limitations, and replication.
Avoid treating one person as representative of an entire group.
Identify when changing a situation, interpretation, attention, expression, or action may be appropriate.
Identify an incomplete, exaggerated, outdated, or unsupported self-description.

Media Manipulation, AI-Generated Content, and Online Wellbeing

21 competencies

Evaluate a media message through creator, audience, purpose, format, evidence, context, selection, and distribution.
Identify what action, belief, feeling, or identity response a message appears designed to encourage.
Identify relevant information emphasized and omitted.
Identify sponsorship, commercial interest, institutional interest, or other relevant relationship.
Evaluate whether images, music, editing, statistics, testimony, or design support the message fairly.
Distinguish persuasion from manipulation.
Identify urgency, fear, shame, outrage, false scarcity, social proof, repetition, or obstructed refusal.
Identify hidden sponsorship, selective disclosure, or deceptive interface design.
Explain how personalization may increase persuasive impact at an introductory level.
Construct a response that restores time, information, alternatives, and voluntary choice.
Explain that AI systems may generate text, images, audio, video, summaries, or answers.
Explain that AI-generated content may contain errors, invented details, or fabricated citations.
Recognize that realistic appearance does not prove authentic origin or factual accuracy.
Ask whether AI use was disclosed and what human checking occurred.
Verify important generated claims using independent credible sources.
Explain online wellbeing through purpose, attention, emotion, self-image, sleep, movement, relationships, conflict, and safety.
Recognize harmful comparison, compulsive checking, escalating conflict, or repeated displacement of responsibilities as reasons for adjustment or support.
Identify positive digital uses supporting learning, creativity, accessibility, organization, friendship, and recreation.
Construct a balanced online-wellbeing plan with boundaries, supports, and review points.
Revise a media or technology judgment after new evidence or reflection.
Identify feedback, comparison, media, success, failure, relationships, labels, and stereotypes as possible self-image influences.

Risk, Financial Judgment, Knowledge, and the Good Life

40 competencies

Explain risk as uncertainty involving possible benefit and possible harm.
Identify the possible reward or benefit motivating a risky choice.
Identify possible harms and who may bear them.
Compare likelihood using cautious ordinary language rather than invented numerical probabilities.
Compare severity, reversibility, and time horizon.
Identify safeguards that may reduce but not eliminate risk.
Explain that risk and reward may be distributed unevenly among people.
Distinguish a considered risk from an impulsive or pressured risk.
Recognize when a financial or safety risk requires trusted-adult guidance.
Evaluate a purchase through purpose, need, value, quality, durability, maintenance, repair, and alternatives.
Recognize subscriptions, trials, memberships, and recurring services as ongoing commitments.
Explain borrowing as accepting an obligation to return or repay, without calculation.
Identify warning signs of scams, pressure, hidden conditions, or unrealistic promises.
Distinguish saving for a goal from accumulating resources without a purpose.
Identify emotional appeal, identity appeal, status, social proof, scarcity, influencer promotion, sponsorship, and defaults in consumer messages.
Recognize that an advertised discount, reference price, or “free” offer may require additional checking.
Distinguish product promotion from independent evaluation.
Construct a qualified financial judgment without performing financial calculation.
Reflect on personal risk tendencies without assigning a fixed personality type.
Revise a consumer or financial decision after examining incentives, risks, conditions, and alternatives.
Explain epistemology at an introductory level as inquiry into knowledge and justified belief.
Distinguish knowledge, belief, truth, justification, and certainty in introductory language.
Ask whether a true belief held by luck should count as knowledge.
Examine perception as a possible source of knowledge.
Examine memory as a possible source of knowledge.
Examine testimony and expertise as possible sources of knowledge.
Examine reasoning and inference as possible sources of knowledge.
Distinguish firsthand knowledge from secondhand knowledge without ranking one as always superior.
Explain why uncertainty may remain even when a belief is well justified.
Identify intellectual humility as willingness to recognize limits and revise.
Formulate a deep question about what makes life good.
Compare pleasure, achievement, character, relationships, freedom, security, knowledge, purpose, contribution, and balance as possible elements.
Ask whether one element is necessary, sufficient, or neither for a good life in introductory language.
Use a thought experiment to test a view of knowledge or the good life.
Identify an assumption within a philosophical position.
Trace a practical implication of a philosophical position.
Present a competing position fairly.
Construct a provisional philosophical argument.
Address an objection, counterexample, or uncertainty.
Revise a position through structured community inquiry.

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The whole year, lesson by lesson.

Textbook 1Values, Self-Image, and Emotional Self-Understanding

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

What Is a Value?

Chapter 2

Values in Conflict

Chapter 3

How Self-Image Forms

Chapter 4

Building a More Accurate Self-Understanding

Textbook 2Emotional Regulation, Stress, Discipline, and Rest

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

What Emotional Regulation Means

Chapter 2

Understanding Stress

Chapter 3

Balancing Effort and Rest

Chapter 4

Discipline and Motivation

Textbook 3Healthy Relationships and Empathy Across Difference

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

What Makes a Relationship Healthy?

Chapter 2

Warning Patterns and Adult Support

Chapter 3

Empathy Across Difference

Chapter 4

Support, Boundaries, and Mutual Care

Textbook 4Communication and Conflict Resolution

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Preparing for a Difficult Conversation

Chapter 2

Positions, Interests, and Needs

Chapter 3

Generating and Evaluating Solutions

Chapter 4

Follow-Through, Repair, and Limits

Textbook 5Logical Fallacies and Sound Arguments

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Attacking, Misrepresenting, and Limiting the Choice

Chapter 2

Popularity, Authority, Emotion, and Circular Reasoning

Chapter 3

Generalization, Slippery Slopes, and Weak Causal Claims

Chapter 4

Building a Sound Argument

Textbook 6Everyday Ethics and How People Justify Actions

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

What Is an Ethical Justification?

Chapter 2

Common Forms of Moral Justification

Chapter 3

Ethics of Everyday Information and Relationships

Chapter 4

Ethics of Work, Consumption, and Digital Life

Textbook 7Psychology as a Science

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Scientific Questions About Behavior

Chapter 2

Observation, Surveys, Interviews, and Case Studies

Chapter 3

Correlation and Experiments

Chapter 4

Samples, Replication, Ethics, and Claims

Textbook 8Perception, Interpretation, and Bias

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

From Sensation to Perception

Chapter 2

Ambiguity and Illusions

Chapter 3

Expectations, Stereotypes, and Interpretation

Chapter 4

Bias, Evidence, and Intellectual Humility

Textbook 9Media Manipulation, AI-Generated Content, and Online Wellbeing

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Evaluating a Media Message

Chapter 2

Persuasion and Manipulation

Chapter 3

Introductory AI-Generated Content

Chapter 4

Online Wellbeing

Textbook 10Risk, Financial Judgment, Knowledge, and the Good Life

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Risk and Reward

Chapter 2

Financial Judgment and Advertising Influence

Chapter 3

What Is Knowledge?

Chapter 4

What Is a Good Life? — Grade 8 Community of Inquiry

Every competency, covered.

The 180 competencies set for Grade 8 Thinking & Life, and every one has lessons behind it.

Values, Self-Image, and Emotional Self-Understanding

19 competencies

Compare two justifications without introducing named ethical frameworks.
Select relevant, credible, and sufficient evidence.
Explain online wellbeing through purpose, attention, emotion, self-image, sleep, movement, relationships, conflict, and safety.
Identify intellectual humility as willingness to recognize limits and revise.
Identify an assumption within a philosophical position.
Explain a value as something a person considers important when judging choices or life direction.
Distinguish a value from a preference.
Distinguish a value from a short-term goal.
Distinguish a value from a rule or external expectation.
Identify possible evidence that a stated value is reflected in behavior.
Recognize conflict between two personally important values.
Explain that values may develop through experience, relationships, culture, reflection, and learning.
Construct a nonprivate and provisional values profile.
Explain self-image as a person’s mental picture and evaluation of themselves.
Identify feedback, comparison, media, success, failure, relationships, labels, and stereotypes as possible self-image influences.
Distinguish self-image from complete identity or objective fact.
Identify an incomplete, exaggerated, outdated, or unsupported self-description.
Build a more evidence-based and compassionate self-description.
Revise a view of oneself after considering context, evidence, values, and change.

Emotional Regulation, Stress, Discipline, and Rest

26 competencies

Explain emotional regulation as influencing how emotion is understood, expressed, timed, and acted upon.
Distinguish regulation from suppression or denial.
Identify when changing a situation, interpretation, attention, expression, or action may be appropriate.
Select a regulation response suited to the context rather than applying one universal technique.
Explain that some emotions may need acceptance and support rather than immediate removal.
Recognize when emotional intensity or persistence requires trusted-adult support.
Explain self-regulation as managing attention, emotion, action, and effort toward a considered purpose.
Explain stress as a general response to perceived demands, uncertainty, pressure, or change.
Identify a stressor in a fictional or general situation.
Explain that interpretation and perceived resources may affect stress.
Identify general short-term signs of stress without diagnosing a condition.
Recognize when severe, persistent, or medically concerning stress requires adult or professional support.
Distinguish productive effort from effort that has become ineffective, unsafe, or unsustainable.
Explain the role of rest and recovery in sustained performance.
Identify sleep, breaks, movement, recreation, social support, and task change as possible forms of recovery.
Recognize diminishing returns from continued effort in ordinary language.
Explain discipline as acting according to a considered commitment despite changing motivation.
Distinguish discipline from punishment, overwork, and self-criticism.
Use priorities, routines, boundaries, environmental support, or accountability to support discipline.
Recognize when a plan should be adjusted because of new information, health, access, or changing circumstances.
Explain that motivation may vary with meaning, autonomy, competence, progress, support, and physical condition.
Connect a task with a personally meaningful reason where appropriate.
Use a manageable commitment when motivation is low.
Avoid interpreting one lapse as complete failure.
Evaluate whether a self-management plan supports both responsibility and wellbeing.
Construct and revise a sustainable self-regulation plan.

Healthy Relationships and Empathy Across Difference

15 competencies

Identify responsibility to prevent, stop, correct, or repair foreseeable harm.
Present a competing position fairly.
Explain a healthy relationship as a pattern supporting respect, safety, honesty, mutuality, consent, boundaries, communication, and repair.
Distinguish an ordinary disagreement from a repeated harmful relationship pattern.
Identify repeated control, coercion, humiliation, isolation, fear, manipulation, or boundary violation as warning patterns.
Explain that care and loyalty do not justify controlling another person.
Explain mutuality as both people’s needs, views, and boundaries receiving reasonable consideration.
Recognize that trust develops through patterns and may require time to repair.
Clarify expectations concerning communication, privacy, availability, belongings, participation, and shared responsibilities.
Recognize when peer conflict resolution is inappropriate because of fear, coercion, repeated harm, or unequal power.
Explain empathy across difference as attempting to understand experience without claiming complete knowledge.
Ask respectful questions and allow correction when learning about another person’s experience.
Avoid treating one person as representative of an entire group.
Represent another perspective accurately while maintaining one’s own boundaries and judgment.
Seek appropriate adult support when relationship safety is uncertain.

Communication and Conflict Resolution

16 competencies

Evaluate whether a justification considers affected people.
Evaluate whether a justification applies its principle consistently.
Compare severity, reversibility, and time horizon.
Identify an assumption within a philosophical position.
Recognize that trust develops through patterns and may require time to repair.
Communicate difficult feedback specifically and respectfully.
Select an appropriate time, place, and method for a difficult conversation.
Distinguish facts, interpretations, feelings, needs, and requests in a conflict.
Identify positions and underlying interests in a conflict.
Generate several possible conflict responses.
Evaluate a proposed solution for fairness, feasibility, safety, and follow-through.
Create a clear agreement and method for reviewing it.
Recognize when peer conflict resolution is inappropriate because of fear, coercion, repeated harm, or unequal power.
Explain empathy across difference as attempting to understand experience without claiming complete knowledge.
Seek appropriate adult support when relationship safety is uncertain.
Select a regulation response suited to the context rather than applying one universal technique.

Logical Fallacies and Sound Arguments

20 competencies

Explain a logical fallacy as a recurring pattern of reasoning that may weaken support for a conclusion.
Identify a personal attack that substitutes criticism of a person for evaluation of the claim.
Identify a misrepresentation of another person’s position.
Identify a false either–or that ignores relevant alternatives.
Identify unsupported slippery-slope reasoning.
Identify popularity used as sufficient proof.
Identify authority used as automatic proof outside appropriate evidence and expertise.
Identify circular reasoning in which the conclusion is restated as its own support.
Identify a hasty generalization from too few or unrepresentative cases.
Identify an irrelevant conclusion or distraction from the actual issue.
Identify emotional appeal treated as sufficient proof.
Identify post hoc reasoning that assumes an earlier event caused a later one.
Explain why naming a fallacy does not by itself refute a conclusion.
Distinguish a genuine fallacy from a reasonable simplified argument in context.
Construct a clear and appropriately narrow claim.
Define important terms and make assumptions visible.
Select relevant, credible, and sufficient evidence.
Address a serious counterargument or counterexample.
Qualify a conclusion according to the strength and limits of the evidence.
Evaluate and revise an argument for clarity, support, fairness, and uncertainty.

Everyday Ethics and How People Justify Actions

21 competencies

Identify the moral question within a complex everyday dilemma.
Distinguish moral reasons from legal, customary, practical, emotional, or popularity-based reasons.
Identify how a person justifies an action.
Recognize character, intention, rule, promise, duty, rights, care, fairness, harm, benefit, loyalty, consent, or responsibility as possible forms of justification.
Distinguish a justification from an excuse.
Evaluate whether a justification uses accurate facts.
Evaluate whether a justification considers affected people.
Evaluate whether a justification applies its principle consistently.
Identify assumptions underlying a moral justification.
Compare two justifications without introducing named ethical frameworks.
Analyze honesty and deception in an ordinary case.
Analyze promises, privacy, and responsible disclosure.
Analyze gossip, rumor-sharing, exclusion, or bystander choices.
Analyze academic honesty and fair collaboration.
Analyze consumption, waste, shared resources, or ordinary environmental responsibility without prescribing a political view.
Analyze digital posting, consent, attribution, and correction.
Identify responsibility to prevent, stop, correct, or repair foreseeable harm.
Construct a qualified ethical judgment using facts, justifications, affected people, consistency, and consequences.
Present the strongest reasonable alternative judgment fairly.
Revise an ethical judgment after criticism, new facts, or recognition of an overlooked perspective.
Represent another perspective accurately while maintaining one’s own boundaries and judgment.

Psychology as a Science

17 competencies

Qualify a conclusion according to the strength and limits of the evidence.
Explain psychology as the scientific study of behavior and mental processes.
Distinguish a psychological question from advice, diagnosis, or moral judgment.
Formulate a focused and ethically appropriate psychological research question.
Explain an operational definition as a clear description of how a concept will be observed or measured.
Describe naturalistic observation and one major limitation.
Describe surveys or interviews and identify wording or self-report limitations.
Describe a case study and explain why one case cannot automatically represent everyone.
Describe a correlational study and explain why correlation alone does not establish causation.
Describe an experiment as manipulating one factor while comparing outcomes under controlled conditions.
Identify independent and dependent variables at an introductory level.
Explain the purpose of a comparison or control group.
Explain random assignment at an introductory conceptual level.
Explain why samples should reasonably represent the population being discussed.
Explain replication as repeating research to see whether findings remain reliable.
Identify informed participation, privacy, voluntary withdrawal, and protection from harm as basic ethical principles.
Evaluate a psychological claim by asking about method, sample, ethics, evidence, limitations, and replication.

Perception, Interpretation, and Bias

16 competencies

Identify post hoc reasoning that assumes an earlier event caused a later one.
Define important terms and make assumptions visible.
Select relevant, credible, and sufficient evidence.
Address a serious counterargument or counterexample.
Evaluate and revise an argument for clarity, support, fairness, and uncertainty.
Examine perception as a possible source of knowledge.
Explain why uncertainty may remain even when a belief is well justified.
Identify intellectual humility as willingness to recognize limits and revise.
Explain perception as the organization and interpretation of sensory information.
Explain how attention, context, expectations, and prior knowledge may influence perception.
Recognize that ambiguous information may support more than one interpretation.
Identify how stereotypes or expectations may bias interpretation without diagnosing an individual.
Evaluate a psychological claim by asking about method, sample, ethics, evidence, limitations, and replication.
Avoid treating one person as representative of an entire group.
Identify when changing a situation, interpretation, attention, expression, or action may be appropriate.
Identify an incomplete, exaggerated, outdated, or unsupported self-description.

Media Manipulation, AI-Generated Content, and Online Wellbeing

21 competencies

Evaluate a media message through creator, audience, purpose, format, evidence, context, selection, and distribution.
Identify what action, belief, feeling, or identity response a message appears designed to encourage.
Identify relevant information emphasized and omitted.
Identify sponsorship, commercial interest, institutional interest, or other relevant relationship.
Evaluate whether images, music, editing, statistics, testimony, or design support the message fairly.
Distinguish persuasion from manipulation.
Identify urgency, fear, shame, outrage, false scarcity, social proof, repetition, or obstructed refusal.
Identify hidden sponsorship, selective disclosure, or deceptive interface design.
Explain how personalization may increase persuasive impact at an introductory level.
Construct a response that restores time, information, alternatives, and voluntary choice.
Explain that AI systems may generate text, images, audio, video, summaries, or answers.
Explain that AI-generated content may contain errors, invented details, or fabricated citations.
Recognize that realistic appearance does not prove authentic origin or factual accuracy.
Ask whether AI use was disclosed and what human checking occurred.
Verify important generated claims using independent credible sources.
Explain online wellbeing through purpose, attention, emotion, self-image, sleep, movement, relationships, conflict, and safety.
Recognize harmful comparison, compulsive checking, escalating conflict, or repeated displacement of responsibilities as reasons for adjustment or support.
Identify positive digital uses supporting learning, creativity, accessibility, organization, friendship, and recreation.
Construct a balanced online-wellbeing plan with boundaries, supports, and review points.
Revise a media or technology judgment after new evidence or reflection.
Identify feedback, comparison, media, success, failure, relationships, labels, and stereotypes as possible self-image influences.

Risk, Financial Judgment, Knowledge, and the Good Life

40 competencies

Explain risk as uncertainty involving possible benefit and possible harm.
Identify the possible reward or benefit motivating a risky choice.
Identify possible harms and who may bear them.
Compare likelihood using cautious ordinary language rather than invented numerical probabilities.
Compare severity, reversibility, and time horizon.
Identify safeguards that may reduce but not eliminate risk.
Explain that risk and reward may be distributed unevenly among people.
Distinguish a considered risk from an impulsive or pressured risk.
Recognize when a financial or safety risk requires trusted-adult guidance.
Evaluate a purchase through purpose, need, value, quality, durability, maintenance, repair, and alternatives.
Recognize subscriptions, trials, memberships, and recurring services as ongoing commitments.
Explain borrowing as accepting an obligation to return or repay, without calculation.
Identify warning signs of scams, pressure, hidden conditions, or unrealistic promises.
Distinguish saving for a goal from accumulating resources without a purpose.
Identify emotional appeal, identity appeal, status, social proof, scarcity, influencer promotion, sponsorship, and defaults in consumer messages.
Recognize that an advertised discount, reference price, or “free” offer may require additional checking.
Distinguish product promotion from independent evaluation.
Construct a qualified financial judgment without performing financial calculation.
Reflect on personal risk tendencies without assigning a fixed personality type.
Revise a consumer or financial decision after examining incentives, risks, conditions, and alternatives.
Explain epistemology at an introductory level as inquiry into knowledge and justified belief.
Distinguish knowledge, belief, truth, justification, and certainty in introductory language.
Ask whether a true belief held by luck should count as knowledge.
Examine perception as a possible source of knowledge.
Examine memory as a possible source of knowledge.
Examine testimony and expertise as possible sources of knowledge.
Examine reasoning and inference as possible sources of knowledge.
Distinguish firsthand knowledge from secondhand knowledge without ranking one as always superior.
Explain why uncertainty may remain even when a belief is well justified.
Identify intellectual humility as willingness to recognize limits and revise.
Formulate a deep question about what makes life good.
Compare pleasure, achievement, character, relationships, freedom, security, knowledge, purpose, contribution, and balance as possible elements.
Ask whether one element is necessary, sufficient, or neither for a good life in introductory language.
Use a thought experiment to test a view of knowledge or the good life.
Identify an assumption within a philosophical position.
Trace a practical implication of a philosophical position.
Present a competing position fairly.
Construct a provisional philosophical argument.
Address an objection, counterexample, or uncertainty.
Revise a position through structured community inquiry.