Might now be the time rethink our curriculum?

Our approach to education can at times be baffling. As adults and as parents we reflect on our education and talk about how so little of it ‘stuck’ or is relevant to what we do as adults. We quote Einstein, 'Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.’ and Mark Twain ‘I never let my schooling interfere with my education’ and see in such statements profound wisdom and insights as to the nature of real-world learning. We do this and yet want our children to share the experience of schooling that we had. We marvel at advances in technology and science. Read, occasionally, about advances in brain science and cognition and then agree with politicians and journalists that education should take a 'back to basics' approach. (Bita, N. 2015)

Perhaps the disruption of a global pandemic will prompt a rethinking of how education might be framed to best serve the needs of those who rely on it most? Perhaps now is the time to rethink the curriculum?

As Norman McCulla (2015) writes ‘In opting for narrow definitions of literacy and numeracy and the safe territory of outmoded debates we align ourselves more with a time when the main purpose of schooling was to prepare young people for the burgeoning office work of the Industrial Revolution.’. We cling to dichotomies that present oversimplified images of the options available to educators and debate endlessly direct instruction against constructivist inquiry learning as though one excludes the other and with no recognition that effective teachers pick and choose from a vast toolkit. We ignore that the world is not as it once was and that the jobs we imagine we are preparing our children for will be there when they exit school. We ban students from using the tools they have available thanks to the evolution of technology while as adults relying on these same tools, we insist on basic skills that we never use.

And in this time of a global pandemic, these tools have been forced to the front. We have had little choice but to embrace online learning. With this have come other consequences, a rethinking of how we approach content and how we understand what we want students to learn. What had been a largely private profession built on interactions between teachers and students has been moved into the homes of our clients. This new transparency is forcing many to consider carefully what they teach and how they teach it. There are new levels of uncertainty as we question what we assumed was correct. We are being asked questions about the way concepts are taught and we all have had to accept that we have new teaching partners who had previously been referenced as parents. All of this is encouraging a close looking at the curriculum and how it is taught. What parts of the curriculum matter most, what are the concepts to be mastered and how do we allow the essential dispositions to be learned when they can not be addressed when they are not a natural part of the ‘new’ learning environment?

And then there is our continuing obsession with standardised testing. The importance of achieving positive scores on these tests relies upon the test device measuring aspects of learning that are significant. The reality is that they are both too narrow in focus, measure what is easily measured and are presented in ways foreign to the ways we believe students learn. The consequence is that these tests have an excessive influence on the delivered curriculum students experience as systems place pressures on teachers and schools to perform against these criteria. Should we allow what our children gain from their years of schooling and the manner by which they are taught be shaped by international assessments?

There are alternatives. One possibility is to identify the skills, dispositions and capabilities that our children are most likely to need in their futures. This is not suggested as an abandonment of content, but a reframing of what is viewed as most important. It requires us to rethink what comes first when we plan for and assess learning.

The General Capabilities of The Australian Curriculum

One advantage of a capabilities-driven curriculum is that we can generally agree on a broad set of capabilities, but it is much harder to agree on content, and we must always select what content is covered as there is always more than we have time for. If we move towards a capabilities-driven curriculum, we can allow the content of the curriculum to be adjusted to the needs of local contexts and can be inclusive of student voice. The capabilities, such as creativity, collaboration, communication and critical thinking are adaptable and have utility for engagement with almost all knowledge that might be reasonable to explore in schools. If we wish to move away from a content-driven curriculum where all students engage with the same content at the same time in their learning journey, allowing capabilities to take on the central role is perhaps the best way forward.

The capabilities developed by Partnerships for 21st Centruy Learning

The possibility of a capabilities curriculum is evident within the Australian curriculum and in other frameworks around the world.  The idea that content might be the vehicle through which broadly relevant capabilities that are likely to play a significant role in the lives that students are likely to live would have a transformative effect on education. As Reid identified in 2005 'the (Australian) curriculum is framed both in terms of the capabilities needed to become autonomous, responsible and productive members of democratic societies, and the procedural principles that will inform the kinds of experiences that will help them to become so.

The challenge of the future is real but now is not the time for despair. Education surely has a central role to play and learning and the dispositions of the learner have greater value now than perhaps ever before. Now is the time for new Renaissance for education not as preparation for an unknown future but as the one constant which flows through our lives and allows us to flourish amidst unceasing change.

 By Nigel Coutts

Bita, N (2015) National primary curriculum shifts focus to core skills. The Australian; August 8 2015

McCulla, N. (2015). The Australian Curriculum: Who are we? Professional Educator 14(1). Melbourne. Australian College of Educators. 8-10

Reid, A. (2005) Rethinking National Curriculum Collaboration Towards an Australian Curriculum Commonwealth of Australia

Might curriculum overloading come from "Idea Creep"

There is a general consensus amongst teachers that the curriculum is overly full. I am yet to meet a teacher who espouses a belief that they have sufficient time to cover all of the material that they are supposed to teach. Part of the challenge here is the ever-expanding breadth of the curriculum as a whole. It seems that as society confronts each new challenge, schools are expected to add a new area of study. Keep an eye for Pandemic Preparedness as an addition to the K-6 Curriculum alongside Coping with Isolation and How to Plan for a Bushfire. It seems that someone in a policy office imagines that school timetables are printed on sheets of rubber and can expand to accommodate each new learning objective. In addition to the breadth of subjects and special interest topics that must be covered, is the great depth of curriculum content that is required in each key learning area. Finding time to cover all of this while engaging the students in meaningful learning, rich thinking and experiences that build understandings are considered the greatest challenges confronting most educators. 

In most instances the claim that the curriculum is overcrowded is valid and indeed this has been backed by multiple studies including an extensive report prepared by the Australian Primary Principals Association (PDF). In response to this, Federal and State Governments have both promised curriculum reviews with the hope of delivering a streamlined curriculum. Internationally the situation is the same as reflected by Singapore’s policy of “Teach Less, Learn More” and the broad interest that this approach has gained.  Whether this curriculum streamlining will target the right content to be culled is certainly open for debate. One response is the typical back to basics approach, which translates into a renewed emphasis on drilling core literacy and numeracy skills. Another approach requires a re-thinking of what learning matters most to students in the lives that they are likely to live. This approach invites a close exploration of the purposes of education and invites an analysis of what's worth learning. 

The tendency to make a leap from the claim that the curriculum is overcrowded to a solution based upon streamlining the curriculum is very natural. One begins to explore questions such as “Why is the curriculum overcrowded?” and “How did it become so overcrowded?” and these are certainly questions that might need to be asked. There is also a tendency to skip another possibility, one that relies on an understanding that there are always multiple curriculums in play. 

Allow me to explain further. There is the curriculum that is intended, the one written by curriculum writers, endorsed by government agencies and published to schools. This intended curriculum is then interpreted by teachers and the result is what might be referred to as the implemented curriculum. It is the implemented curriculum that sits most closely to the experienced curriculum. The interpreted curriculum is what results from the planning process and it is these programmes that teachers subsequently teach from. At this layer, the teacher is blending their understanding of the curriculum with their knowledges of the discipline, of pedagogy and their students. This interpreted curriculum is then delivered to students by teachers who may or not have been involved in the planning process and this leads us to what might be referred to as the experienced curriculum. As implied, the experienced curriculum is that which is delivered to students in the classroom and the interpretation of this curriculum must include the perspective of individual students. Many factors will shape the impact of the experienced curriculum and any interpretation of this curriculum that does not account for individual differences and societal diversity will be flawed. 

When we speak of an overcrowded curriculum we must be clear on which curriculum we are referencing. In many cases, we will be speaking of the intended curriculum and the hope will be that the next version of the curriculum will better meet our needs. This results in a collective finger-pointing and lengthy waiting as we hope for a curriculum that is focused on what matters most according to those who share our beliefs and a fear that those whose beliefs are contrary to this might have more of a say. This mindset results in a belief that the curriculum is beyond a teacher’s realm of influence.

The belief that curriculum overcrowding can only be solved by a shift in policy or an act of government ignores the important part that teachers play in interpreting the curriculum. By shifting our perspective to the interpreted curriculum some level of agency is returned to the teacher. We also begin to see that some of the curriculum overcrowding results from how the curriculum is interpreted and it is worth considering how this process occurs. 

I would like to propose that one cause of curriculum overcrowding is a phenomenon I refer to as “Idea Creep”. Just as a creeper vine grows and takes over more and more space, so too do ideas expand and grow in complexity. This can be seen frequently when one closely compares the requirements for a concept or outcome as defined by the intended curriculum of a jurisdiction with what is implemented. Often one finds that the intention of the curriculum writer has been expanded upon and that content intended for the learners at the next level is introduced early. This tends to be common in mathematics and the sciences and particularly in Primary learning environments. 

It seems that teachers will consider the concept that they are asked to teach and in place of considering how to incrementally build an understanding of this concept dive into teaching all that they know about it. As an example, in the New South Wales curriculum students are gradually introduced to the concept of three-dimensional shape. The curriculum clarifies multiple steps from novice learner to competent mathematician. In Stage One (Years One and Two) students are expected to be able to describe, represent and recognise familiar three-dimensional objects, including cones, cubes, cylinders, spheres and prisms. They need to know the difference between a two-dimensional shape and a three-dimensional shape, use some formal vocabulary, describe which attributes of shapes they used when sorting them, make models of shapes in a variety of means and explain how the models were made. Students at this level do not need to know what makes a cube special, they do not need to know why a triangular-prism is named thusly, they do not need to be able to identify a shape from its net and they don’t need to understand isometric projection. 

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A visual interpretation of the NSW Stage One 3D Shape content.

At least some part of the challenge of a bloated curriculum might be resolved if we are able to understand what results in “Idea Creep” and how this might be reduced. Certainly part of the blame for this lies with the manner in which curriculum documents are written. Lengthy introductions, wordy rationales, multiple pages of outcomes and content and all of this written in language that is at best unfriendly to the average time-poor teacher. If a teacher is lucky they may have an hour or two release time to prepare a given teaching programme and are most likely looking after more than one key learning area if they are not singularly responsible for them all. Who can blame a teacher in these circumstances for reading the headline and jumping straight into what they plan to teach? Who in this situation has the time to decipher the code and sort the wheat from the chaff? Part of the challenge also is likely to stem from the need for primary teachers to have expertise across multiple domains, many of which they do not have expertise or significant training in. 

What then might be the solution? Firstly teachers need curriculum documents that are written to be read and interpreted on the fly. Highly visual curriculum documents which clearly identify what needs to be taught and when might ensure “Idea Creep” is minimised. Further, teachers need more time to interpret the curriculum and access to more support in doing so. Spectacular learning experiences are planned for and delivered when teachers are given the time to engage in meaningful collaborative discussion about the curriculum. If the goal is to produce students who have a deep-understanding of the curriculum we also need teachers who have a deep-understanding of it. This understanding is not developed simply from years of experience but from the opportunity to spend time immersed in the curriculum. 

Hopefully an awareness of the dangers of “Idea Creep” will result in a fresh approach to, and broader perspectives on, some of the challenges of curriculum overloading. 

By Nigel Coutts