Tag: Curriculum

Bookmarked Australian curriculum review: strengthened but still a long way from an amazing curriculum for all Australian students (aare.edu.au)

A greater emphasis on the basics in the curriculum might produce a small bump in test results, but the effects of an impoverished curriculum will be much longer lasting, especially for those students who are most marginalised and disadvantaged.

As such, we need to shift the debate away from one that engages in endless cultural and ideological dispute, or one which focuses on the lowest denominators of basic literacy and numeracy, to one that asks how we can meaningfully ensure that all young people, but especially those least advantaged, have access to an engaging, high-quality and rich curriculum.

Stewart Riddle discusses the push for dumbing down the curriculum and explains that the biggest consequence is in regards to inequality. Riddle also discusses this on the TER Podcast.
Liked This much I know aboutā€¦how to develop the school curriculum and take everyone with you by johntomsett ā€“ John Tomsett (johntomsett.com)

School leaders committed to meaningful curriculum design would cover most, if not all, of what is needed to reshape what students learn in their schools if they followed the advisory bullet-points below,Ā especially if they emphasised the importance of effective implementation:

  • Learn about the curriculum for themselves.
  • Show humility by using the language of support rather than the language of accountability when it comes to working with subject leaders on developing the curriculum.
  • Agree the principles of any curriculum redesign, using Dylan Wiliamā€™sĀ Principled Curriculum DesignĀ as a starting point.
  • Define the general terms used to discuss curriculum design, without over-complicating things.
  • Set up a Curriculum Development Group (CDG) comprised of middle leaders and led by the middle leader who has the greatest expertise and is most likely to be trusted by his or her peers to orchestrate the work.
  • Remind colleagues that we have been developing our curriculum for years ā€“ constantly build upon what you have already, like painting the Forth Road Bridge.
  • Give a generous time-frame for curriculum review ā€“ three years for a complete overall is reasonable.
  • Provide time for expert training of middle leaders on curriculum development during CDG meetings.
  • Insist that all members of SLT are trained in curriculum development and work alongside the subject leaders they line manage when they are reviewing their subjectsā€™ curricula.
  • Ensure that curriculum development work is privileged on training days and at subject meetings.
  • Seek expert support if required ā€“ especially in niche subjects like Computer Science.
  • Stress that the debate about the curriculum is central to curriculum development ā€“ there is no off-the-shelf quick fix to developing a challenging curriculum for your students.
  • Fund membership of Subject Associations, which extend the curriculum conversation beyond the confines of your school or MAT.
  • Encourage teachers to join local subject-based curriculum groups and give them time to attend meetings.
  • Emphasise that the National Curriculum is the starting point upon which any individual school curriculum should be based ā€“ we are not starting from scratch.
  • Encourage curriculum development which has local colour; living in York is a gift for any history teacher and I know one school which begins Year 7 with a tourist bus ride around the city for the whole year group.
  • Ensure that a senior leader co-ordinates the curriculum towards vertical coherence ā€“ teachĀ The First World WarĀ in history in the term before English teachĀ The War Poets, not the term afterā€¦
  • Stress repeatedly that any curriculum development is not about pleasing the regulator, but providing a challenging curriculum for all our students.
Bookmarked The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals Could Be Our Standards | Getting Smart by an author (Getting Smart)

Martino is not alone in advocating for the SDG Framework. Indeed, there is an entire international movementā€”Teach SDGs,Ā Moving WorldsĀ and theĀ United NationsĀ themselvesā€”organizing around these 17 goals. There are schools, networks and even individual educators and learners adopting these as their new operating standards.

Ultimately, this pivot to the SDGs is what many are looking for in redesigning what teaching and learning look like.

Michael Niehoff discusses the proposal to redesign of education around the United Nations Global Goals.
RSVPed Attending Assessment of Critical and Creative Thinking

In this session a range of strategies for assessing Critical and Creative Thinking will be explored. Different assessment methods will be introduced within the context of planning for assessment. Examples of student work and associated tasks from Levels 5 and 6 will be used to illustrate the discussion, however this session is suitable for all teachers from F-10.

This VCAA webinar unpacks the Critical and Creative Thinking curriculum and how to go about assessment. The curriculum is broken into three strands:

  • Questions and Possibilities
  • Reasoning
  • Meta-cognition

Some examples of activities include:

Lotus Diagram

The Lotus Diagram is a structured concept mapping activity which provides a means of assessing questioning and reasoning. What was interesting about the example provided was that there may not be an explicit way of completing the task, this ambiguity is where the reasoning comes in.

Compass Points

The Visible Thinking routine, Compass Points, is a way of not only coming up with ideas, but also to step back and help make preconceptions more visible. In regards to assessment, what matters with such as task is how a students may use a particular tool to foster their learning.

Journaling

Showing your thinking in Mathematics provides a means of making your logic and reasoning visible. As a process, this could involve focusing on processes or digging into particular errors.

If students are not being challneged, then they are just practicing what they know

This reminds me of Back-to-Front Mathematics.

Tiered Success Criteria

Sometimes the biggest challenge is getting all students to push themselves further. One method for doing this is using the SOLO Taxonomy to create tiered success criterias to help students managing their own learning and thinking.

My take-away from this session is that from an assessment perspective, a stimulus can provide many different opportunities for assessment. What matters is the lens that you use. I was also reminded of the work of the ATC21s team and the work done to develop assessment methods for collaboration. So often it felt that the process was a subplot to the product of learning.

The VCAA have collected together a number of samples to demonstrate what is possible.

Replied to Will curriculum reform take students back to basics, or prepare them for the future? ([object Object])

After two years, months of consultation and much debate, the government has firmly committed only to decluttering syllabuses – in other words, to act on something everyone agreed was necessary from the outset.

The consultation ensured the teaching profession had a voice, and Masters’ report provided food for thought. But on the question of whether the process has advanced debate, one insider pauses. “I would say not a lot.”

Putting aside questions of logistics, I think that the ‘crowded curriculum‘ debate encapsulated in the NSW review is intriguing.

“He’s [Masters] put his finger on the right problem, and it’s particularly an issue at primary school,” says one insider. “There are kids going from primary to secondary, they can’t write, they can’t read, they can’t spell, they can’t do basic maths. We can’t let kids move ahead without these basic literacy and numeracy skills. But that’s not a curriculum problem. It’s a pedagogy [teaching method] problem.”

How schools choose to implement and enact the curriculum will still be at a school level, right?

Liked 5 steps to creating a sustainable digital literacies curriculum ā€¢ Literacies (Literacies on Svbtle)

The following is based on my doctoral thesis, my experience as Web Literacy Lead at the Mozilla Foundation, and the work that Iā€™ve done as an independent consultant, identifying, developing, and credentialing digital skills and literacies. To go… | Literacies | Dr. Doug Belshaw consults around digital literacies, Open Badges, and educational technology.

Replied to Sweeping changes to HSC and syllabus proposed by government review (The Sydney Morning Herald)

The report proposed reducing more than 170 senior-level courses to a “limited set of rigorous, high-quality, advanced courses”. Vocational and academic subjects would slowly be brought closer so that eventually every course would mix theory and application.

HSC students would also have to complete a single major project, which would allow the development and assessment of skills such as gathering and analysing, as well as so-called general capabilities such as team work and communication.

It is interesting to consider the proposed changes in the NSW Curriculum Review Interim Report against other curriculum frameworks, like New Zealand. It also reminds me of a comment someone once made to me that curriculum is the best guess for tomorrow. I was also intrigued by Marten Koomen’s take, especially highlighting Masters’ Rasch over Reckase. It makes me rethink the use of ‘crowded curriculum‘.
Replied to

Thank you Marten for the link to this, it is intriguing to think how the models we build upon can morph into the natural way of being as if there are no other alternatives.
Liked The Sacred Scripture of Curriculum (maelstrom)

Consider a traditional curriculum document. Almost all of these belong to another world and continue to be written today in the same fashion. There is little here in the ornate, self-indulgent language of the esoteric that is designed to help teachers do their jobs well. These sacred texts are rarely designed for the learner, yet there appears to be a subliminal effort put into ensuring that parents will be bewildered by an encounter.

Bookmarked ‘Big ideas’ and digital literacy: education department calls for NSW schools shake-up (smh.com.au)

Students should be taught digital literacy, there should be a plain-language version of the curriculum, and the role of syllabuses should be reconsidered, the NSW Department of Education has told the NSW curriculum review.

It will be interesting to see what Geoff Masters comes up with in his review of the NSW curriculum. Although the discussion of big ideas and deep learning seem new, this was how VELS was introduced to me some fifteen years ago. I think what is missed is some creativity in how schools and educators approach the curriculum. There are those like Bianca Hewes who are already championing this. I just worry about a back-to-basics approach that is mooted in some circles.
Liked http://edte.ch/blog/2019/04/26/learning-alignment-model/ by Tom Barrett (edte.ch)

The recommended curriculum derives from experts in the field. Almost every discipline-based professional group has promulgated curriculum standards for its field.

The written curriculum is found in the documents produced by the state, the school system, the school, and the classroom teacher, specifying what is to be taught.

The supported curriculum is the one for which there are complimentary instructional materials available, such as textbooks, software, and multimedia resources.

The tested curriculum is the one embodied in tests developed by the state, school system, and teachers. The term ā€œtestā€ is used broadly here to include standardized tests, competency tests, and performance assessments.

The taught curriculum is the one that teachers actually deliver. Researchers have pointed out that there is enormous variation in the nature of what is actually taught, despite the superficial appearance of uniformity (Gehrke, Knapp, & Sirotnik, 1992).

The learned curriculum is the bottom-line curriculumā€”what students learn. Clearly, it is the most important of all.

Bookmarked Your curriculum defines your school. Own it. Shape it. Celebrate it. (teacherhead)

At the Headsā€™ Roundtable event this week I was making a pitch for school leaders to get stuck into a deep curriculum review process ā€“ as many already have. Ā Not because of the expeā€¦

Tom Sherrington discusses the importance of curriculum when defining a school. To support this he provides ten questions to reflect upon. Although written for a secondary audience in Britain, this list is useful to consider. This reminds me of Ewan McIntosh’s post on defining a schools competitive position.
Bookmarked Inter-disciplinary curriculum: why is it so difficult to develop? (part two) by Mark Priestley (mrpriestley.wordpress.com)

Fogartyā€™s work is especially useful for schools seeking to develop a more integrated curriculum, offering a continuum of practice, including:

  • Fragmented ā€“ no joint planning or link making between subjects
  • Sequenced ā€“ arranging teaching so that related topics are taught concurrently within different subjects (e.g. allowing the study of the First World War in History to coincide with the study of war poetry in English).
  • Shared ā€“ joint planning of related disciplines (e.g. identifying commonalities between Science and Geography).
  • Webbed ā€“ the use of thematic approaches to bring content from different disciplines together (e.g. an Africa week when all curriculum areas focus on this single theme).
  • Threaded ā€“ a cross-curricular approach where big ideas (e.g. citizenship, thinking skills) are coherently planned across the curriculum.
  • Integrated ā€“ largely an interdisciplinary organisational approach, which breaks down traditional subject boundaries ā€“ either partially (e.g. hybrid subjects) or fully (e.g. the US middle school approach)
Mark Priestley discusses some of the challenges associated with inter-disciplinary curriculum in Scotland, including the differences between primary and secondary education. It is interesting to consider Priestley’s research and observations alongside Richard Wells’ 2020 project.
Liked What Do We Mean By Knowledge Rich Anyway? by Alex Quigley (The Confident Teacher)

To understand why, I think Professor David Perkins, from Harvard University, can help. Perkins wrote about the troublesome nature ofĀ ā€˜fragile knowledgeā€™. His analysis offers us a more nuanced language to consider how even carefully sequenced curricula may not be well understood by our novice pupils, despite our best efforts.

He describes this ā€˜fragilityā€™Ā in four parts:

  • Missing knowledge. Sometimes important pieces of knowledge are just plain missing. E.g. In a Shakespeare essay, Alex may forget that Macbeth was written with the audience of James I in mind.
  • Inert knowledge. Sometimes knowledge is present, but inert. It lets the student pass the quiz but does not help otherwise. E.g. Alex doesnā€™t think to mention the ā€˜divine right of kingsā€™, which his teacher implicitly wanted him to focus on in his essay.
  • NaĆÆve knowledge. Sometimes the knowledge takes the form of naĆÆve theories and stereotypes, even after considerable instruction. E.g. Alex persists with the notion that Lady Macbeth is solely to blame for her husbandā€™s behaviour in his essay.
  • Ritual knowledge. The knowledge that students acquire often has a ritual character, useful for certain academic tasks but not much else. E.g. Alex pleases his teacher by mentioning the rare rhetorical device ā€˜anadiplosisā€™ in his essay.
Replied to The NSW Curriculum ā€“ Less isĀ Best. by gregmiller68 (Learn and Lead)

Who knows what will come of the NSW Curriculum Review? I trust that Professor Geoff Masters and his team will declutter the curriculum by taking a ā€˜Less is Bestā€™ approach.

It will be interesting Greg what comes of the review. When you say ‘less is best’ I am reminded of New Zealand, my only concern though is whose ‘less’ is best? If this simply results in a ‘back to basics’, then I will be concerned.
Liked Curriculum reform must be based on evidence, not fads by Jennifer Buckingham (The Sydney Morning Herald)

The general capabilities listed in the Australian curriculum ā€“ digital capability, critical and creative thinking, personal and social capability, intercultural understanding, and ethical understanding ā€“ are inarguably valuable for the world of work and for life more broadly. The crucial questions are whether they are really generic skills that can be conceptually sequenced on developmental progressions, and if they can be taught and assessed separate from content knowledge. The evidence at the moment suggests the answer to both questions is no.