creative commons licensed (BY-NC-ND) flickr photo by Let Ideas Compete: http://flickr.com/photos/question_everything/4447757532
The big announcement that came out of the recent review into the Australian Curriculum was that it was crowded. There is nothing new about this perspective. People have been making noise for a long time, particularly in regards to the primary curriculum, since the introduction of subjects such as science and history in the Early Years. However, is this really the case or is there something else at play?
One of the areas that people often get caught up with is the interdisciplinary learning. These strands span the areas of:
Communication
Design, Creativity and Technology
Information and Communication Technology
Thinking Processes
I have been in many different settings and I have yet to see these strands implemented effectively. I remember sitting in a session nearly ten years ago where the presenter explained that the purpose of the strands is not about adding to the curriculum, but about intermingling them through all area of learning. Coming from an inquiry pedagogical point of view, she suggested that it is about making learning more explicit. Although it may be inherent within good teaching, by making it clearer in the curriculum, this removes some of the ambiguity.
There is a view that acknowledges the development of these capabilities as an important role of schooling but regards them either as forms of pedagogy or as attributes that students acquire through a process of osmosis. That is, if the right conditions of learning are put in place and the right learning experiences provided, students will naturally pick up, acquire and develop these attributes. And of course for many students this is the case.
But this same argument was used for many years in relation to the acquisition of literacy skills, that is, that if the right learning conditions were put in place, all children would learn to read. That view has been almost universally rejected in favour of one that recognizes the importance of explicit instruction within a context of rich, meaningful learning conditions.
Sadly, this desire to create a rich and meaningful context is often lost on many educators who begrudgingly worry about who is assessing what, missing the point that the students are more often than not already doing the skills within their learning whether they choose to realise this or not.
I was again faced with this connundrum this week as we were put in a team to write the ‘ICT’ comment bank. Returning to the VCAA guidelines, there is reference made to electives. However, from my reading there was no reference to making ICT an explicit subject. I know I should be glad that students have the opportunity to ‘study’ ICT, but really they should be doing many of these things within their own learning. As +George Courospoints out, “Technology should be at the point of instruction and be as accessible in learning as a pencil; it shouldn’t be an event. How many pencil labs do you have in your school?” The problem is that ICT is often confused with computer science. I have subsequently spent the last two years trying to shake the moniker of the ‘ICT’ teacher, instead focusing on topics such as media, publishing and robotics as the drivers for deeper learning and investigation.
The question that I have then is whether it is the curriculum really is over-crowded or do we just need to think more creatively about how we cover the different domains? How are you combating the crowd and covering all facets of learning, I would love to know.
13 thoughts on “Crowded Curriculum or a Wrong Mindset – The Challenge of Incorporating Interdisciplinary Strands”
creative commons licensed (BY-SA) flickr photo by mrkrndvs: http://flickr.com/photos/aaron_davis/16756943331
The other day, I was lucky enough to observe Kathy Palmer demonstrate Back-to-Front Maths, a problem-based approach which focuses on identifying and working through misconceptions. Whereas a lot of traditional pedagogical practices are about fluency, Back-to-Front is about developing a deep understanding. Going beyond learning by memory and association to understanding the why behind it all. As Tierney Kennedy explains on the website:
Back-to-Front Maths begins with problem-solving, where students explore brand-new concepts and then use their findings to derive algorithms and formulae. It works by creating light-bulb moments for students and enabling them to discover for themselves underlying mathematical principles, rather than providing explanation-and-practice pedagogy.
The challenge is often in finding a way to disrupt students’ usual thinking so that they don’t just get the ‘answer’, but the deep process behind it. All this while at the same time making students feel that they are valuable, that their opinion matters and that it is not only OK to be wrong, but an essential part of learning.
I had previously had some experience with Back-to-Front, having used some of the tasks and activities when I ran intervention. However, it was a lot different actually seeing it being demonstrated, rather than simply having it explained in theory. Personally, I had made the error of meticulously following each step outlined in the tasks. What Palmer demonstrated was the importance of having a curious and inquiring mindset above all else. If that means picking out just part of an activity and leaving the rest then that’s fine, because what is more important is depth not breadth. This also allows for more flexibility in regards to adjusting activities based on feedback.
I had a similar experience with thinking strategies. A few years ago we had a staff meeting where we were all told that we were teachers of numeracy and given a list of strategies to support. As a English/Humanities teachers, I felt a little bit lost and although the posters went up into the classroom, I did not really know what to do with them. Something that stood out with Palmer’s demonstration was a reference to the various strategies as she taught. They were not an ‘explicit’ focus, rather they were celebrated any time a student demonstrated it, followed with the comment ‘that’s what great mathematicians do’. We get so caught up how and when to teach interdisciplinary subjects, complaining of a ‘crowded curriculum’, when really we often engage with them each and every day. The challenge, in my view, is actually being confident with the different skills and strategies ourselves so that we can clearly call them out in the classroom. At the heart of this is language and instruction.
Unlike the traditional conception of problem-based learning, which is associated with resolving a big question or problem, Back-to-Front is about providing tasks and problems which provide enough ambiguity for students to find their own way. Although the focus maybe on ‘number’ or ‘measurement’, lessons involve students coming upon their own discoveries. What becomes important then is language and how we use it. Although many of us have the tendency to answer questions with ‘yes or no’ and correct student misconceptions, the challenge is to use language to help students clarify why they think the way they do. Sometimes the best thing to do is to simply start with the initial instructions and recount a student’s explanation of things. Not only does this allow the student in question to think through their own problem, but it also allows other students who may be confused to come on board. In addition to verbalising learning, emphasis is given to non-verbal forms of explanation, such as visualising things, physically jumping them out and using different materials to make things. Having said this, Palmer made the point that you can’t put out the spot fires of misconception all the time. Sometimes you need to let a misconception through to the keeper and come back to them later with a different perspective.
In the end, my take-aways were:
Celebrate vocabulary, thinking and strategies in the moment.
Stop sometimes and do a quick vox pop to reassess where people are at.
Come back to the explanation of the task in a short and sharp manner whenever possible to maintain focus.
Sometimes it is best to come back to some spot fires later in a focus group using a different task.
Emphasise process over product, that is celebrate having a go, putting in effort, identifying errors and misconception, because “that’s what great mathematicians do”.
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‘.
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?
Despite the resemblance, an accretive robot is not the same thing as what in software architecture is known as a [big ball of mud](http://www.laputan.org/mud/). Big balls of mud are the result of organic growth logics going wrong and stalling out due to insufficiently thoughtful organization. Accretive growth is marked by ongoing incorporation of bits and pieces into an improvised, emergent architecture that has a small, conceptually coherent kernel and a large, wild shell. It is the material-embodiment analogue to the AI/big data principle of “simple code and lots of data beats complex code and little data.”
Venkatesh Rao unpacks the different between organic and inorganic choatic growth, which he labels as accretive growth. Interestingly, with accretive growth, goals are “very unimportant”:
Goals themselves will evolve as chaotically as the body and mind of an accretively growing entity, and will matter much less. In fact, the more I think about complex, large scale systems, the more I realize “goals” are a very unimportant feature of their behavioral profile. Accretive growth logics prioritize the next round of growth, self-perpetuation, and survival, not long-term goals.
In the end, Rao captures the biggest challenge of all in my opinion in highlighting that organic growth often wins out as it is easier to implement.
Scaling with accretive growth logics is much harder than scaling with organic growth logics. It takes conscious intelligence and more active steering to do. Very simple creatures can grow organically. It takes human intelligence to invent organ transplants that work. Dumb, unmanaged accretive growth isn’t a thing.
creative commons licensed (BY-SA) flickr photo by mrkrndvs: http://flickr.com/photos/aaron_davis/16756943331
The other day, I was lucky enough to observe Kathy Palmer demonstrate Back-to-Front Maths, a problem-based approach which focuses on identifying and working through misconceptions. Whereas a lot of traditional pedagogical practices are about fluency, Back-to-Front is about developing a deep understanding. Going beyond learning by memory and association to understanding the why behind it all. As Tierney Kennedy explains on the website:
The challenge is often in finding a way to disrupt students’ usual thinking so that they don’t just get the ‘answer’, but the deep process behind it. All this while at the same time making students feel that they are valuable, that their opinion matters and that it is not only OK to be wrong, but an essential part of learning.
I had previously had some experience with Back-to-Front, having used some of the tasks and activities when I ran intervention. However, it was a lot different actually seeing it being demonstrated, rather than simply having it explained in theory. Personally, I had made the error of meticulously following each step outlined in the tasks. What Palmer demonstrated was the importance of having a curious and inquiring mindset above all else. If that means picking out just part of an activity and leaving the rest then that’s fine, because what is more important is depth not breadth. This also allows for more flexibility in regards to adjusting activities based on feedback.
I had a similar experience with thinking strategies. A few years ago we had a staff meeting where we were all told that we were teachers of numeracy and given a list of strategies to support. As a English/Humanities teachers, I felt a little bit lost and although the posters went up into the classroom, I did not really know what to do with them. Something that stood out with Palmer’s demonstration was a reference to the various strategies as she taught. They were not an ‘explicit’ focus, rather they were celebrated any time a student demonstrated it, followed with the comment ‘that’s what great mathematicians do’. We get so caught up how and when to teach interdisciplinary subjects, complaining of a ‘crowded curriculum’, when really we often engage with them each and every day. The challenge, in my view, is actually being confident with the different skills and strategies ourselves so that we can clearly call them out in the classroom. At the heart of this is language and instruction.
Unlike the traditional conception of problem-based learning, which is associated with resolving a big question or problem, Back-to-Front is about providing tasks and problems which provide enough ambiguity for students to find their own way. Although the focus maybe on ‘number’ or ‘measurement’, lessons involve students coming upon their own discoveries. What becomes important then is language and how we use it. Although many of us have the tendency to answer questions with ‘yes or no’ and correct student misconceptions, the challenge is to use language to help students clarify why they think the way they do. Sometimes the best thing to do is to simply start with the initial instructions and recount a student’s explanation of things. Not only does this allow the student in question to think through their own problem, but it also allows other students who may be confused to come on board. In addition to verbalising learning, emphasis is given to non-verbal forms of explanation, such as visualising things, physically jumping them out and using different materials to make things. Having said this, Palmer made the point that you can’t put out the spot fires of misconception all the time. Sometimes you need to let a misconception through to the keeper and come back to them later with a different perspective.
In the end, my take-aways were:
Celebrate vocabulary, thinking and strategies in the moment.
Stop sometimes and do a quick vox pop to reassess where people are at.
Come back to the explanation of the task in a short and sharp manner whenever possible to maintain focus.
Sometimes it is best to come back to some spot fires later in a focus group using a different task.
Emphasise process over product, that is celebrate having a go, putting in effort, identifying errors and misconception, because “that’s what great mathematicians do”.
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Problem Based Learning in Mathematics – My Reflection on Back-to-Front Maths by Aaron Davis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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‘.
Also on:
Putting aside questions of logistics, I think that the ‘crowded curriculum‘ debate encapsulated in the NSW review is intriguing.
How schools choose to implement and enact the curriculum will still be at a school level, right?
Also on:
Source: Accretive Growth Logics by @ribbonfarm
Venkatesh Rao unpacks the different between organic and inorganic choatic growth, which he labels as accretive growth. Interestingly, with accretive growth, goals are “very unimportant”:
Source: Accretive Growth Logics by @ribbonfarm
This has me thinking about SMART goals and curriculum planning in education, and how these might be done differently by being accretive. I wonder if this is what the adaptive Modern Learning Canvas was trying to achieve.
In the end, Rao captures the biggest challenge of all in my opinion in highlighting that organic growth often wins out as it is easier to implement.
Source: Accretive Growth Logics by @ribbonfarm