Conflicts in Curriculum

In education, we so often focus on the promotion of learning that the actual way in which the curriculum operates to encourage knowledge is overlooked. While there are many different ways to encourage learning, some of which were explored in my last blog, the curriculum ultimately drives the way in which students have their learning delivered to them, as well as the incorporation of various learning styles. Rather than seeing the way in which these items are broken down for educators, students are only ever exposed to the manner in which the teacher chooses to incorporate their personal beliefs on learning styles into the classroom. In my opinion, this needs to change. Transparency allows for a better mutual understanding of how knowledge is presented in the classroom and how learning styles are incorporated into the student’s daily lives. This would allow students to realize they’re the product of a unique system and that their learning is both individualized as well as personalized, with the teacher and student both interacting with and exerting control over the way in which individuals learn.

In many ways, Interweaving Curriculum and Classroom Assessment: Engaging the 21st-Century Learner breaks down the way in which students learn, step by step demonstrating the way in which the curriculum is built and exactly what is included in its creation. From the use of “big ideas” and “enduring understandings”, to the way different learning styles and types of knowledge are considered, this book makes it very clear that the curriculum is created to serve the students, combining both what they need to learn with the various ways in which they learn. However, it becomes clear that, while all of the needs are satisfied in the curriculum, rarely are all of them applied by teaching staff.

Although the hierarchy of knowledge is fascinating and the overarching idea of a unifying framework would ideally suggest that all of these elements work in tandem, I have never seen a classroom that unites all of the aspects of the hierarchy of knowledge and how it “connects to the do” with the “Do” being partially represented in Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy of Thinking Skills. Often in high school, a teacher would focus on only remembering and analyzing, the steps attached to facts and big ideas/concepts respectively. While the other factors (creating/evaluating and understanding, respectively connected to enduring understandings and topics) were occasionally touched on, none were as important as fact recall or analysis. Most tests were based upon multiple choice, short answer and occasional essay questions, all of which relied predominantly on a combination of fact recall and analytical questions. While this calls into account the problematic nature of tests and the way they limit the ability of teachers to incorporate various learning styles it also becomes clear that tests do not allow for items like triarchic intelligence to be properly considered, as they do not cater to analytical, practical AND creative students on a regular basis. This is superbly limiting to students, with learning becoming the result of a blanket curriculum rather than the individual elements that create the curriculum.

The curriculum was clearly created with the knowledge that these intelligences exist as well as the way in which they are perceived to function as a unifying framework. So why then is it so hard in practice to combine all of these factors? This indicates, at least to me, that perhaps we are more unwilling to move on from the old story model of teaching than we first appeared. In an idyllic, new story teaching approach, tests would be shaped to the hierarchy of knowledge and the learning styles but also offer the sort of integrative thinking as discussed in Chapter One of Interweaving Curriculum and Classroom Assessment: Engaging the 21st-Century Learner  in order to create the best overarching framework to propel new story teaching. Instead, we are presented with old story tests and class structures, suggesting that a new teaching method must be applied to tests. Perhaps different tests could be given out throughout the year to benefit each type of learner, or more choices could be incorporated into the tests such as the different assignment options as discussed last week. If we are going to truly commit to new story teaching, we have to work harder to integrate it throughout the classroom, not just the curriculum.

I leave you with this graphic about Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy and the verbs that can be used in association with each step. Think about how many times you’re seen at least one verb from each section on a high school test and feel free to discuss in the comments whether inclusion of multiple categories on tests is a thing of the future or an ideal of the past for you!

Source: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/81909286947483033/

Until next time,

A. Gallacher