Building Innovative Curriculum

Building Innovative Curriculum How Schools Create Conditions for REAL Program Improvement Peter Gow Emily Jones Deb Merriam Director of College Counseling Director Academic Dean Beaver Country Day Putney School Francis W. Parker School Charter Essential School ICG Boston 2009

Traditional Sources of Curriculum
Favored textbooks
State or professional organization standards
Expectations sussed out of standardized tests
Predecessors
Brainwaves and instant insights
Independent schools notorious for textbook-driven curriculum, lack of specific faculty training in curriculum and assessment design
October 27, 2009 ICG--Innovative Curriculum

The Question
How can schools can develop a culture of curriculum development that includes the entire faculty, and how can a shared vision inspire everyone in the community?

Past Reasons for Curricular Change
Evolution of textbooks
Hot topics and enthusiasms of the moment—especially in humanities
Understood changes in standardized testing expectations (AP, “Achievements,” SAT)
Sometimes, perceived pressure from families and “marketplace”
“ New blood”

Curriculum Since the 1980s
Informed by new understandings of development, intelligence and cognition (Gardner, Sternberg, a host of others)
Builds on foundational work of Piaget, Erikson, Bruner, Kohlberg, Perkins et al.
Assessment-driven, intentionally designed (“backwards design”); debt to Sizer and Coalition
Understanding-based: Wiggins (Understanding by Design), Project Zero (Teaching for Understanding)
Project-based, problem-based, “authentic,” experiential, multigenre

Institutional Pre-conditions
A sense of need—preferably a desire to move forward educationally
A culture of professional respect
A truly shared understanding of institutional mission, values, and aims
Ideally a professional development program already keyed to this understanding

Needed: An Over-arching Idea (along with the school mission, of course)
Change must be developed under a single comprehensible rubric: “21 st -century learning,” UbD, TfU, Coalition principles
Idea must compel faculty, either as goal or means (stimulating/engaging for them, keep desks full, teach the kids you want to be teaching, it’ll be better—or even easier)
Idea must be accessible to families and students, as well

Steps to Change
Develop professional culture based on shared purposes and shared understandings of how children learn
Create conditions that maximize faculty interaction and conversation around professional and pedagogical matters
Create climate of mutual trust between aims of institution (administration and governors) and role of faculty in achieving these aims
Acknowledge that change is hard

Needed: Resources
Leadership—credible, respected, acknowledged
Time—for learning, collaboration, piloting, evaluation, conversation
Materials—collaborative tools, texts
Expertise—in-house or consulting
Permission—to try things that don’t work as well as planned or hoped for (but not permission to opt out)
Time—for listening and reflecting
Accountability structures

Link curriculum vision to school mission
What are your school’s goals?
Social justice?
Environmental sustainability?
Competence in problem solving?
College admissions?
Individual expression?
What are your underlying premises about learning?

Premise 1: Institutional and personal tolerance of ambiguity is necessary for curriculum growth – and modeling this is good for students.
Levels of tolerance of ambiguity are correlated with
Creativity
Psychological resilience
Intercultural competence

Premise 2: Executive Function is a key component of learning, and can be learned.
Major functions:
Planning for the future and strategic thinking
The ability to inhibit or delay responding
Initiating behavior
Shifting between activities flexibly
Skills:
Plan
Sequence
Prioritize
Organize
Initiate
Inhibit
Pace
Shift
Self-monitor
Control emotion
Complete

Premise 3:
The tradition of separating the study of humanity (the social sciences and humanities) from the study of the rest of the world (the natural sciences) is at least partly to blame for our inability to think intelligently about how we live on the planet. “ The greatest enterprise of the mind has always been and always will be the attempted linkage of the sciences and the humanities.” E.O. Wilson October 27, 2009 ICG--Innovative Curriculum

How is it all going to come out ???

Project based learning
Allows for interdisciplinary (non-disciplinary) learning
Teaches and assesses executive function
Requires, and models, tolerance of ambiguity
“ There is no discipline in the world so severe as the discipline of experience subjected to the tests of intelligent development and direction”
~ John Dewey

Questions for groups
What's one example of curriculum you've designed that in your mind really hits the mark?
What conditions or structures were in place to support this happening?
Finally, what is one thing you want the other groups (teachers/dept heads/admins) here to know about your group?

Building Innovative Curriculum

by Peter Gow on Oct 28, 2009

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