After keynoting the recent SchoolCIO Leadership Summit and then facilitating their “Digital Content” discussion cadre, I was asked to compile some of the highlights of our case studies and conversations into a 100 word scenario for the SchoolCIO Magazine’s followup articles. The word limit made the task feel like a job. But it is in that sort of efficient deconstruction, reflection, and reconstruction process that we gain new insights — that I learn.
One of the linchpin moments of the recent SchoolCIO Leadership Summit was when one of the attendees, in a rather off-handed remark, said — and I paraphrase:
We should not simply be transitioning from print to digital content.
We should be facilitating a transformation from an old and obsolete way of teaching and learning to a new and more relevant way of preparing our children for their future.
This remark brilliantly packaged a lot of the issues that had been struggling with for quite some time. It suggests that we take a step or two back and shift our focus away from a new device for content delivery and refocus on something much broader and suggestive of how the game is changing.
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A 50 word cloud, generated by Wordle, compiling more than 20 definitions of curriculum from the Internet |
The word Curriculum comes to mind as one way of labeling this broader view. Admittedly, the word is fairly slippery, already having different meanings to different people — even among professional educators. Formal definitions range from a zoomed out departmental view, “..the subjects comprising a course of study..” to a closer micro perspective, “..a predefined series of learning events designed to meet a specific goal.” Scan the word cloud to the right.
But as I worked through my notes from the Summit, struggling with the language for my scenario, it occurred to me that a precise and universally accepted definition of curriculum simply has not been very important. Teachers had the textbook; a physical, reasonably durable, easily understood (and operated), dependable, and trustworthy tool that was carefully designed for instruction by experts. We had a practical point of focus that rendered curriculum, as a term, lighter than air, floating to a high and misty place, where its Latin lineage evoked a classical aura to the profession. At least that’s the way I see it.
Today, the textbook, consisting of printed pages glued or sewn together and bound in covers, is obsolete. I believe that its role as the central, dominant, and trusted tool for instructional delivery is been based on a myth and is equally obsolete. Our information landscape has morphed into something that is larger, more dynamic and vibrant, highly personal and yet broadly shared — and almost entirely unforeseen.
This new info-environment has radically changed how we learn.
Therefore, it must also radically change the practices of teaching and the institution of education.
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This is the last book that I bought in order to learn to do something (2000). Today, the idea of buying a book to learn a new programming language seems ludicrous. If we’re not buying textbooks to learn after school, then why should we force them on our children’s learning? |
As the textbook (in the form that I used it in the 20th century) declines, becoming only one optional component of an expanding and shifting array of resources and opportunities, the role of teacher will change.
This notion of crafting learning experiences by orchestrating webs of content, tools, opportunities and connections implies a broad, partly informed, partly intuitive, and largely personal act of crafting curriculum. It happens as a result of education; experience; professional conversations; research; information resources, tools, and skills; a connection to the community; a genuine caring for children and their self-fulfilling future success; and a professional obligation to be a constant learner and model that practice.
This vision of teachers as curriculum curator is inconsistent with a central and arrogantly authoritative blueprint for everything that learners need to be doing for hours, days, and years of their childhoods and youth.
Curriculum should empower learning, not merely guide and filter teaching.
By relying on teacher currated curriculum over state-adopted textbooks, the transformation we may well see is a shift from classrooms of compliant students to environments of skilled, resourceful, and habitual learners.
…Posted using BlogsyApp from my iPad
While I agree with the general statement “We should be facilitating a transformation from an old and obsolete way of teaching and learning to a new and more relevant way of preparing our children for their future.” the real discussion comes when you talk about how. How do you facilitate this, what does the transformation look like… is this a slow transformation or does starting with a clean slate make more sense? Your post reminds me of someone saying how we all need to work for world peace. That’s a great idea, and we’ll all have different ideas about how to bring about world peace, and we’ll fight about what plan for world peace is the best.
Andrew, you bring up some very good points, and you’re right, that the spice is in the conversations about what all of this looks like. First of all, there won’t be one answer. There are too many of us, we have too many channels to express ideas through, and so much of the central conversation is a hodgepodge of similar but not necessarily complementary ideas.
It seems to me that we need two things. First of all, some constraints. Most people won’t change unless they have no choice. So at some level, decisions have to be made. No more paper. No more textbooks, no more report cards. Give me your life preserver and teach yourself to swim.
I think that we also need a few (say three) community agreed upon driving/guiding principals. These are the things we believe our children need to be doing in order to be ready for their future. I won’t try to itemize my version here. It’s too late in the day.
Timely ideas, but I couldn’t disagree more with the conclusion. Kids to shape their own curriculum! Teachers should enable them, but not dictate the direction.
Similarly, I’ve been wondering about the structure of the traditional “lesson plan.” In preparation for sharing the work I’ve been doing with a class of kids looking at topics outside the curriculum: ocean energy conversion technologies-current and future designs, relevant technology,career and learning opportunities, knowledge preparing kids for the future, not the past…I realize that the traditional lesson plan format is not the methodology that I am following instinctively by letting kids determine learning, while I guide and hopefully inspire and motivate the process of inquiry and exploration. I am intrigued by the notion of teacher as curator… how do I share what I am doing with other teachers in a reproducible format?
@Patsy McCarter, It’s an interesting discussion you’ve started about the lesson plan, and I’m wondering if the concept, at least the terminology, is obsolete. It implies a predefined structure (lesson) and an authority-based sequence (plan), not that either of these completely disappear. But it makes the self-directed learner less likely to emerge.
I keep coming back to the term platform. A curator needs a museum, studio, or blogging software upon which to arrange their content. This is what interests me, right now, is the platform on which this happens — a topic, about which, I am currently working on a blog entry. Stay tuned!
I guide and hopefully inspire and motivate the process of inquiry and exploration. I am intrigued by the notion of teacher as curator… how do I share what I am doing with other teachers in a reproducible format?
I believe that giving high school teachers the freedom that college teachers have with curriculum would make learning much more wholesome for those adolescent students.
One of my professors had an amazing knack for knowing how to get the students to ask the questions he wanted them to answer. He was able to do this because he had freedom.
Sometimes I was able to see him work with high school aged students and it was an amazing sight to see.
I agree with your thoughts about textbooks but I wonder about books in general….you write books that many find helpful so how is this different? Perhaps it is about who decides a book is necessary. I can choose to read a book but don’t tell me I have to read a book.