Office of Learning and Teaching

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Designing a curriculum for the future Secondary
Schools

• Office of Learning and Teaching

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Student Learning Whole School Self Assessment
Tool

• Learner at the centre
• Leadership
• Integration of student learning initiatives
• Organisational structures and learning
  environment
• Performance and development culture

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Student Learning Whole School Self Assessment
Tool
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Questions for reflection

• Whole school level
• Individually, rate your current situation against
  each of the five areas.
• Whats your evidence for your placement?
• Compare your ratings within your team.
• Finalise your school rating.
• Groups within your school
• Would you give the same rating to each of the
  groups within your school? Why/why not?
• What can you learn from those groups that
  have/havent made progress?

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• Why bother?
• Our curriculum challenges

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The economic challenge is to develop in young
people the skills, knowledge and personal
qualities they need for a world where work is
undergoing rapid and long- term change The
technological challenge is to enable young people
to make their way with confidence in a world that
is being shaped by technologies which are
evolving more quickly than at any time in
history.

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The social challenge is to provide forms of
education that enable young people to engage
positively and confidently with far-reaching
processes of social and cultural change. The
personal challenge is to develop the unique
capacities of all young people, and to provide a
basis on which they can build lives that are
purposeful and fulfilling. Creative and Cultural
Education- All Our Futures Summary, 2000
Prepare our students for high levels of
challenge, complexity and individual
responsibility
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Two types of knowledge

• FRAGILE KNOWLEDGE
• can be
• Missing (exposed to, but cant remember)
• Inert (its there but you cant do anything with
  it)
• Naïve (simplistic, stereotypical or wrong)
• Ritualistic (pattern useful for school task,
  nothing more)

• GENERATIVE KNOWLEDGE
• focuses on
• Retention of knowledge
• AND
• Understanding of knowledge
• AND
• Active use of knowledge.
• (David Perkins)

requires GOOD THINKING
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A good performer in Math had this to say about
her strategy

• I know what to do by looking at the examples.
  If there are only two numbers I subtract. If
  there are lots of numbers I add. If there are
  just two numbers and one is smaller than the
  other it is a hard problem. I divide to see if it
  comes out even and if it doesnt I multiply.
• Smart Schools David Perkins (1992) p.25

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• Desforges and Cockburn (1987) reported on
  research from UK - They noted that students used
  considerable ingenuity to avoid thinking about
  classroom tasks wherever possible. Students were
  predominantly task focused, and were more
  interested in completing a task rather than
  comprehending it.
• Is this true for your students?
• If yes, where did they get this view?

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What do your students value?

• What are your students perceptions of
• the role of the teacher?
• the role of the student?
• what is effective learning?
• They work to pass and not to know, alas they pass
  and do not know! Bertrand Russell

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MY PERCEPTIONS OF MYSELF AS A LEARNER
Amanda McGraw
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Building learning capacity

• What is it?
• learning skills?
• learning dispositions?
• Ready, willing and able

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Positive learning dispositions
Guy Claxton, 2006
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Building on what students know and are able to do
(Vygotsky)
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• Instruction is powerful only when it is
  sufficiently precise and focused to build
  directly on what students already know and to
  take them to the next level. While a teacher does
  and must do many things, the most critical is
  designing and organising instruction so that it
  is focused.
• Without focus, instruction is inefficient and
  students spend too much time on completing
  activities that are too easy and do not involve
  new learning or too little time on tasks that are
  too difficult and involve too much new learning
  or relearning.
• Breakthrough Fullan,Hill Crevola (2006)

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Student engagement/disengagement

• What is the current level of student engagement
  in Years 7-10?
• Does it vary from year level to year level?
• Is it an issue for all students, for some
  students?
• What do you currently do to address engagement?
• Should engagement be a prerequisite or an outcome?

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Victorian Essential Learning Standards

• Changing world
• Generative knowledge/Deep understanding
• Building learning capacity
• skills and dispositions
• Building on what students
• know and are able to do
• Student engagement

• Can the Victorian Essential Learning Standards
• assist us to address some of these challenges?

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Victorian Essential Learning Standards
Three core, interrelated strands
Physical, Personal and Social Learning Discipline
-based Learning Interdisciplinary Learning
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Dimensions in all domains are based on an
underlying continuum of learning. Standards
define what students should know and be able to
do at different levels. Progression points
provide examples of what typical progress towards
the standard may look like.
Level 6
Level 5
Level 4
Level 3
Level 2
Level 1
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The learner at the centre
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• Requires whole school curriculum planning
• and attention to the learning culture of the
  school.

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A curriculum for the future .

• Which direction?
• Where are we now?
• What are the issues, dilemmas and challenges we
  face?
• Where do we want to be?

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• There is no such thing as best practice or even
  next practice in abstract. You cannot say
  what is good teaching, good school organisation,
  good leadership, (or even good curriculum?) until
  you have specified what it is you want youngsters
  to have gained, in the light of the particular
  world they are being readied for.
• Guy Claxton 2006

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OUR EDUCATIVE PURPOSE
What is powerful to learn?
What is powerful learning and what promotes it?
Who do we report to?
LEARNER
Victorian Essential Learning Standards
Principles of Learning and Teaching
Students Parents Colleagues School System
How do we know it has been learnt?
Assessment Advice
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Curriculum Planning Modules
Module 1 - Whole school curriculum planning to
suit our students Module 2 - Planning programs
for cohorts of students
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Module 1 Whole school curriculum planning to suit
our students

• Activity 1.1 Characteristics of effective
  whole school curriculum planning
• Activity 1.2 School context
• Activity 1.3 Victorian Essential Learning
  Standards
• Activity 1.4 Drivers for student learning
• Activity 1.5 Curriculum design
• Activity 1.6 Learning, teaching and
  assessment

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Characteristics of effective whole school
curriculum planning

• Use template 1.1B in your school team to audit
  your current practices.

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Module 1 Whole school curriculum planning to suit
our students

• Activity 1.1 Characteristics of effective
  whole school curriculum planning
• Activity 1.2 School context
• Activity 1.3 Victorian Essential Learning
  Standards
• Activity 1.4 Drivers for student learning
• Activity 1.5 Curriculum design
• Activity 1.6 Learning, teaching and
  assessment

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SCHOOL CONTEXTWhere are we at with student
learning?
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Equity funding, ESL funding MIPS funding LSF
funding Other
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School Context

• What are our goals and targets?
• What are our key improvement strategies?

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Module 1 Whole school curriculum planning to suit
our students

• Activity 1.1 Characteristics of effective
  whole school curriculum planning
• Activity 1.2 School context
• Activity 1.3 Victorian Essential Learning
  Standards
• Activity 1.4 Drivers for student learning
• Activity 1.5 Curriculum design
• Activity 1.6 Learning, teaching and
  assessment

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Victorian Essential Learning Standards

• Everyone (leadership team and teachers) must be
  familiar with
• characteristics of learners (adolescents)
• domains
• dimensions
• purpose of each domain dimension
• standards
• learning focus statements

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Module 1 Whole school curriculum planning to suit
our students

• Activity 1.1 Characteristics of effective
  whole school curriculum planning
• Activity 1.2 School context
• Activity 1.3 Victorian Essential Learning
  Standards
• Activity 1.4 Drivers for student learning
• Activity 1.5 Curriculum design
• Activity 1.6 Learning, teaching and
  assessment

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Curriculum drivers

• Curriculum drivers
• are a way of structuring learning to connect
  domains and dimensions in the Victorian Essential
  Learning Standards
• reflect our students learning needs and provide
  a structure for them to achieve the Standards

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Drivers for student learning

• Curriculum drivers may reflect
• what we want our school to stand for
• the diverse needs, backgrounds, perspectives,
  interests, achievements and ways of learning of
  our students
• the big ideas that we want our students to
  engage with deeply
• the future learning needs of our students
• particular domains

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Drivers for student learning some examples

• Environmental sustainability
• Studies of Asia
• Globalisation
• Multiculturalism
• Healthy school
• Civics and citizenship leadership
• The Arts

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Humanities some essential questions

• Why do people seek to discover what is unknown?
• How does learning about other cultures help us
  understand ourselves?
• What does it mean to come of age and how does
  it differ across culture, time and gender?
• Can we all be individuals as equal parts of a
  whole?
• What keeps people of different cultures from
  living/working successfully together?
• How does reflection on your work and thinking
  help you understand?
• How do we find out the truth about things that
  happened long ago and far away? How do you see
  through bias?
• (from Ron Ritchhart Intellectual Character)

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English some essential questions

• From English KLA GWSC
• How does studying our texts inform us about the
  world we live in?
• How does the study of literature (our texts)
  deepen our understanding of the human condition?
• How does reflecting on my English skills in
  journals and reflective pieces improve my ability
  to communicate?
• How does being able to use the conventions of
  English improve our ability to communicate?
• How does the use of diverse spoken language
  skills aid in communicating with an audience?

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English some essential questions, cont

• How does knowing how to create a dynamic
  interaction of various spoken language skills
  improve our ability to engage an audience?
• How does writing about my experiences differ from
  other kinds of writing?
• How should imagination be used in developing
  skills in the English language?
• How does studying an issue develop our ability to
  think using the English language?

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Module 1 Whole school curriculum planning to suit
our students

• Activity 1.1 Characteristics of effective
  whole school curriculum planning
• Activity 1.2 School context
• Activity 1.3 Victorian Essential Learning
  Standards
• Activity 1.4 Drivers for student learning
• Activity 1.5 Curriculum design
• Activity 1.6 Learning, teaching and
  assessment

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Possible design options

• Incorporate the interdisciplinary and physical,
  personal and social strands of the Standards into
  existing discipline-based subjects and broaden
  their focus in this way.
• Integrated approach where one or more disciplines
  and other relevant domains are combined and
  addressed through key questions or themes.
• Combine all three strands in the context of
  extended projects that students are to complete.
• Mix of integrated and domain specific subjects
• Different approaches at different year levels
• A mix of approaches at each year level
• PLUS others

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What might a future curriculum look like?

• Learning would be structured mainly through
  projects. Some projects would be individual,
  while many would be group-based.
• Problems and goals would not be completely
  predefined by the curriculum. Students would
  repeatedly practise identifying and solving
  problems, rather than having them placed before
  them.
• Learning would take place in a range of contexts
  and use a range of methods. Projects would not
  all be research-based or within a traditional
  classroom environment. Students would be
  involved in doing as much as in thinking or
  knowing.

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• Alongside more traditional, teacher-centred
  assessment, students work would be evaluated by
  field experts, peers, parents and so on. It
  would be evaluated for different kinds of skills
  and knowledge - interpersonal, thinking
  strategies, self-organisation, depth of
  understanding and so on.
• Thinking and self assessment would be embedded
  across the curriculum. Students would focus
  particularly on learning to make connections
  between different contexts - the transfer and
  application of knowledge across different
  domains.
• Skills would be revisited and practised over
  time, so that knowledge gained earlier in an
  educational career could be applied creatively to
  new problems.

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• Students would gain depth of understanding in a
  number of disciplines, or domains of knowledge,
  including traditional academic subjects. They
  would also learn explicitly how to combine
  interdisciplinary knowledge in completing a
  project goal.
• The Creative Age- Knowledge and Skills for the
  New Economy. DEMOS 1999.

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Curriculum Models

• Look at different curriculum design models from
  various schools.
• What are their strengths?
• What are their limitations?

Community views? Implementation issues?
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Reporting (as distinct from teaching)

• Who will report to parents on each of the
  domains?
• Consider
• elements of domains and dimensions covered in
  each subject/program
• identification of teachers who will report on
  particular domains and students
• coordination of information for reporting
  purposes if more than one teacher has assessment
  information on a domain/s for particular students

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Transition Model for reporting against the
Standards 2007 to 2008
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Module 1 Whole school curriculum planning to suit
our students

• Activity 1.1 Characteristics of effective
  whole school curriculum planning
• Activity 1.2 School context
• Activity 1.3 Victorian Essential Learning
  Standards
• Activity 1.4 Drivers for student learning
• Activity 1.5 Curriculum design
• Activity 1.6 Learning, teaching and
  assessment

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The learner at the centre
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What promotes powerful learning?

• Principles of Learning and Teaching P-12
• The learning environment is supportive and
  productive
• The learning environment promotes independence,
  interdependence and self-motivation
• Students needs, backgrounds, perspectives and
  interests are reflected in the learning program
• Students are challenged and supported to develop
  deep levels of thinking and application
• Assessment practices are an integral part of
  teaching and learning
• 6. Learning connects strongly with communities
  and practice beyond the classroom

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How do we know if it has been learnt?

• Identifying purpose of assessment is a key
  consideration for curriculum planning
• Assessment for learning occurs when teachers
  use their inferences about student learning to
  inform their teaching (formative)
• Assessment as learning - occurs when students
  reflect on and monitor their progress to inform
  their future learning goals (formative)
• Assessment of learning occurs when teachers use
  evidence of student learning to make judgments
  about student achievement against goals and
  standards (summative)

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Implementation issues
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Key questions to be explored

• For next year?
• What is the most appropriate curriculum design
  based on the learning needs of our students and
  staff knowledge and expertise?
• Will the same curriculum design be appropriate
  for all cohorts of students?
• How will we arrange students, staff and resources
  to best implement our curriculum design?
• In two years? In five years?

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Evolution or revolution?

• Steady as she goes with as little tinkering as
  possible
• Continue with process of curriculum change we
  have already begun and incorporate changes as
  needed
• Use this as a catalyst to reconceptualise our
  curriculum
• a big bang or evolutionary change?

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Possible questions for reflection

• What are the existing structures in our school
  that may be preventing us from moving forward?
• What is our plan for the next few years?
• Whats working for us? Whats working against us?
• What do we need to do when we get back to school?
• How do we build this into our Strategic Plan and
  Annual Implementation Plan?

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Student Learning Whole School Self Assessment Tool
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