I like this blog post. It’s inspirational in the way it suggests how ‘disruptive’ teaching might help our students challenge the status quo through learning in a digital rich age. Sadly however, it stops short of making suggestions around how we might help our students to become disruptively deep learners. Of course it is no small task to suggest ‘hows’ when we are faced with so many new kinds of teaching and learning approaches. From modern learning environments that can deprivatise practice (enhancing teacher collaboration and learning) and allow us to better respond to learning needs to a plethora of ICTs that might provide increased learning outcomes right through to more flexible curriculums that recognise the importance of student choice and contexts and personalised learning. Some of these curriculums, like ones that include project-based learning, may also need to be structured in ways that differ quite radically from timetabled subjects. Decisions around what is learned about in schools and how to best teach it are gradually recognising the importance of how learners need to know about the actual learning process itself, how they can develop solutions in response to complex problems and how effective collaborative skills are essential in all of this.
While reading about exciting ideas around what exciting teaching could look like can be really inspirational, developing some of the necessary detail to actually take the plunge and implement it in a school can be really challenging. If we really want to provide the kind of learning that can give rise to “a kind of slow ash—of new ideas that aren’t always packaged how you asked, and don’t always do what you want them to do” there’s also some hard work to do. We will most likely face challenges as we try things that may not have been done before and we all know that the road is littered with exciting new approaches to curricula and learning that didn’t quite pan out. The reality of actually implementing teaching and learning that might provide our students with more options than traditional approaches can really stretch both our mental models and question many of the ways we’ve done things in the past.
Five years into a school where we have modern learning environments and a substantial part of the curriculum devoted to project-based learning and teachers tutoring a small group of students across all areas of our curriculum, I’ve noticed a few things that might be worth passing on. So if you’re presently looking at new ways of offering students more opportunities in a digitally enhanced, information saturated and slightly manic 21st century, the following guidelines might help in the slightly-less inspirational, quite difficult and ongoing “putting in the detail” / implementation part of the journey:
1) When developing structures and resources that can enable a shared vision and best practice in a new approach to curriculum, collaboration is essential - Yeah, we all know that collaboration is the new thing but in this context, it’s even more important. Constructing a curriculum that sits outside, across and between (or however you look at it) normal subject specialisms and in ways that require a high degree of learning personalisation is likely to demand more strengths or related expertise that any one person has. Collaboration sits as a bit of a prerequisite for the next 4 suggestions too…
2) Another specific thing we need to collaborate on is, supporting each other to identify the new skillset needed to operate effectively as “disruptive” teachers. It can be really challenging to see how radically this skillset may differ from the skills we’ve been required to have traditionally as teachers so far. Without useful support from each other, not only will we be unable to adequately identify the new skills we need, we’ll also may not be able to navigate our way through the difficult times when we realise just how short of them we are.
3) Collaboration is also excellent for unearthing mental models that may need revision for us to adequately understand how a particular approach or change might benefit our learners. Because useful collaboration is a process which can stretch us, it’s also important that we build a culture that supports challenging and supportive interaction. We also need to recognise the importance of conversations that may be challenging to start with but are more likely to lead to substantial professional learning for all parties. Check out OTLCs for info on how challenging conversations can actually be more useful in the long term for developing useful professional relationships. And remember, OTLCs aren’t just a tool for management unit holders!
4) Structures and resourcing may need to be context-free. Even two iterations into a national curriculum that involves a high level of abstraction and massive potential for useful learning, we still face challenges as archaic assessment systems which are, in some ways, less stressful for teachers because they make some parts of our job clearer cut continue to wrestle with NCEA in the public arena. Standards-based assessment and project-based learning in particular are two areas where a high level of teacher professional understanding and judgement are necessary to give students some pretty incredible learning opportunities through a context that is meaningful to them. But are our moderation practices and culture of professional learning up to the challenge?
5) Implement in phases and use everyone’s strengths. Don’t spend hundreds of people hours working on a complete educational ‘product’ (or go out and buy one) only to discover that it doesn’t fit the context. Of course, building a plane during flight is actually pretty risky too so something does need to be done to start with. As further support structures and resources are developed, work to identify strengths and interests of everybody involved and get them developing! If a curriculum change is solely driven by one member in a leadership team, or even developed by an entire leadership team without taking advantage of all the teachers in an institution who are keen to contribute, then at best the system won’t well as well as it could.
So there’s my five guidelines on crazy new curriculums! And good luck with whatever you’re trying at present!
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