Planning Backwards

Hello again Internet,

This week we will be looking at the processes used in the establishment of learning goals, quality assessments, and marking schemes. Before we begin however, I'd like to take the opportunity to include a little disclaimer; my knowledge here has little experience to build off and my basis isn't exactly what I'd consider solid. The first steps to this long process of creation hinges on mythical "curriculum documents" that I have been assured exist somewhere. I have not actually seen them (or even their format), so I will be assuming that they are rather clear and concise. My readings for the course this blog is for have told me to refer to them on numerous occasions to "highlight key phrases" and the like, but never went much more in depth than that. So, Internet, we'll go forward and pretend we can follow these vague initial steps.

After looking for these key ideas in our curriculum documents, the general idea is to work backwards from broad concepts to the specific. The first step is to pick a topic which must be deduced from curriculum documents. My readings tell me, "if you know the curriculum well, you will have good ideas," so I can only assume that since we don't know the curriculum at all, we will currently have bad ideas. Regardless, once we have our topic, the next step is to further deconstruct said curriculum document and group similar concepts and ideas together. Keeping a broad context in mind (like how this lesson will fit in with the students yearly goals) is important at this stage, so it can be helpful to examine learning goals for both younger and older grade levels for comparison. I find these instructions rather specific, but I believe the steps must be malleable, as I have heard curriculum documents differ from province to province.

Once our deductions are clustered into neat, little packages, we must then organize them to find out what our students must eventually Know, be able to Do, and Be (a less important aspects, one that some provinces omit entirely). With these ideas established, overarching concepts and enduring questions will be more easily identifiable. We must then keep these new concepts at the forefront of the lessons in order to guide students towards the desired learning objective. After this, we must simply become more and more specific. Next is to decide the style/number of projects, and finally, daily lessons that will help students reach a point intellectually where completion of the projects are feasible.

Now the entire time I read these steps I could not get over how robotic they sounded. Sure, the conclusion to my reading stated that, while the process was presented linearly, in the real world it is hardly ever like that, but my question is why should I learn it in such a specific, linear manner. Everything I've learned about teaching a class until this point has told me to include students in the planning process; to make them a part of their own learning. Now, suddenly, I'm told how to create these extremely traditional units. All my professors preach constructivism as the method of the future, but it shocks me how few actually practice it. If constructivist methods are so much better than traditional ones, then those methods should start in teacher education. Instead, I get a one off sentence saying "some teachers like to include their students in the creation of rubrics." That's fantastic for some teachers, but that doesn't help me at all. How about learning how to include students?

The specific, linear method of designing curriculum and assessment is great and all, but I feel it will rarely apply to the classroom. I feel I would be much better off looking at these curriculum documents firsthand and working through how to create this lesson plans instead of vague descriptions based on documents I have never seen. My rant got a little out of hand towards the end their, but it needed to be said. This time I'll leave you with a piece by Heironymus Bosch, the man who painted the surreal before it was cool. The title, A Violent Forcing of the Frog, makes about as much sense as this piece does, but it definitely reflects how I feel after my little rant.

Until next time, Internet,

cjarvis

A Violent Forcing of the Frog

Heironymus Bosch

Hello Internet & Initial Observations

Hello Internet,
For the inaugural post to Adventures in Education it would seem best to introduce myself. I'm currently in my penultimate year of teacher education at Brock University in Ontario, Canada. This blog is actually for one of my courses, and due to this, it will deal primarily deal with my musings surrounding education, curriculum, and learning in general. My degree will cover teachable subjects in both visual arts and English. They are similar in many aspects, as they both provide opportunity to look closely at the creations of others and, in addition, create works of your own.

However, the method in which these two subjects are taught, are, in my opinion, vastly different. As such, I'll need a variety of teaching methods and strategies in order to cover both of these. I'm getting ahead of myself though, we're just starting out on our Adventure. It will be an interesting practice to see if my thoughts change throughout the development of this blog, though!

Let's start with curriculum, shall we? The actual definition is a bit hazy; curriculum means a lot of different things to different people. Clandinin and Connelly define it as "life", a definition that I find next to useless. The International Baccalaureate Organization claims it consists of what is to be learned (written curriculum), how it is learned (taught curriculum), and how it is to be assessed (learned curriculum). I find this explanation a lot easier to comprehend, but I would like to make the addition of a fourth component, the hidden curriculum (which includes biases and thought patterns unintentionally communicated to students). Other courses I have dealt with previously always stressed the importance of this "hidden curriculum", so I was surprised when it wasn't even mentioned in my reading. Let's file this thought away for later; it still may surface later on.

Next up is the concept and different styles of assessment. The three types outlined are assessment for learning (AfL), assessment as learning (AaL) and assessment of learning (AoL).Honestly, prior to reading about these different types, I had no idea they were defined as such. Most teachers I have encountered use a combination of all three types of assessment seamlessly. So much so, I had thought the concept and practice of assessment was taught under a single heading. My text further stated that that a combination of AfL, AaL, and AoL, which helped to assuage my initial confusion. As these concepts are in no way distinct or separate, I have to question why they are taught separately at all? They seem to be intertwined in such as a way as to be inseparable, so why not teach them as one large concept? Perhaps further analysis will yield some answers to my questions.

It is undoubtedly an exciting time to become a teacher. We are at an interesting fork in the metaphorical road that is education. A transition is occurring between traditional methods and new, constructivist inspired practices. We, as future educators, will be an integral part of this transition, and I, for one, can't wait to see what directions we take this!

To finish this post off, I'll leave you with an artwork by one of my favourite artists, Alex Gray. The Artist' Hand (1997) applies perfectly to our knowledge of curriculum and assessment thus far. The layers and changing nature of the hand depicted reflect the many layers and complexity of education. Nothing is solitary here; everything is interconnected. In addition, we as the artist (architect, educator, etc.) have the ability to change our very reality. Use this power wisely, I know I will!

Until next time Internet,

cjarvis

Alex Gray

The Artist's Hand (1997)