In this article, I share provocations about assessment, learning and identity, which I discovered on Twitter. I share some tweets and my reflections and thinking.
Tag: Curriculum
Learning Alignment Model
In this post, I want to introduce you to a Learning Alignment Model that I have developed with some of my partner schools over the last few years.
It is not a step by step process to design learning, but more of a high-level thinking model to engage with that uncovers some interesting potential tensions in our classroom work.
As you will see the model also helps explain a little about the line of sight from whole school strategy through to the actual process of learning.
Starting Points
There have been a few sources of inspiration for this Learning Alignment Model.
First would be the work of Dylan Wiliam and his simple, yet a powerful, statement that “children do not learn what we teach.” In explaining this Wiliam refers to the work of Denvir and Brown (1986) who explored the developmental path of learning number concepts with 7-9-year-olds.
Wiliam explains that despite targeted instruction children do not learn what we teach. You can access a webinar here in which Dylan Wiliam explains this in more detail, have a look from the 01:48 mark.
This discrepancy and unpredictability remain a powerful provocation. It is something that I experienced throughout my teaching, but I never stopped to question or reflect why. This model helps to surface that provocation.
The second instigation is the various definitions of curriculum. When you explore the work of curriculum development, various sub-sets of the curriculum emerge. For example these eight ideas:
The recommended curriculum derives from experts in the field. Almost every discipline-based professional group has promulgated curriculum standards for its field.
The written curriculum is found in the documents produced by the state, the school system, the school, and the classroom teacher, specifying what is to be taught.
The supported curriculum is the one for which there are complimentary instructional materials available, such as textbooks, software, and multimedia resources.
The tested curriculum is the one embodied in tests developed by the state, school system, and teachers. The term “test” is used broadly here to include standardized tests, competency tests, and performance assessments.
The taught curriculum is the one that teachers actually deliver. Researchers have pointed out that there is enormous variation in the nature of what is actually taught, despite the superficial appearance of uniformity (Gehrke, Knapp, & Sirotnik, 1992).
The learned curriculum is the bottom-line curriculum—what students learn. Clearly, it is the most important of all.
In addition, there is often reference to the hidden curriculum (a term coined by Jackson, 1968) is the unintended curriculum-what students learn from the school’s culture and climate. And the excluded curriculum is what has been left out, either intentionally or unintentionally.
These definitions are taken from Planning And Organizing For Curriculum Renewal by Allan A. Glatthorn, Judy F. Carr and Douglas E. Harris.
This model of curriculum design and development is at the core of my own model.
A final core provocation for me was the concept of Constructive Alignment from John Biggs the author of the SOLO taxonomy. He explains:
In constructive alignment, we start with the outcomes we intend students to learn and align teaching and assessment to those outcomes.
The idea of alignment provides an accelerant for how these parts work together. I wanted to create something that combined the three concepts and focused more on the learning experience than just the curriculum.
I share it as an ongoing work in progress and I would be grateful for your comments and critique.
When you review the model I want you to take into account a few ideas about how it might be used and thought about.
Supporting Notes and Explanations
- It deliberately emphasises learning over assessment or curriculum.
- Instead of saying planning I have used “Designed Learning” as I think this is richer articulation of what needs to occur. Start with the learner.
- I felt I needed to add the word “Experience” in to the upper levels to distinguish from the core level of “Learning” at the base.
- There is a connection between a broader whole school vision statement (Conceptual) and the designed learning. How each classrooms aligns itself to those core values and how that flows down to the learning that occurs.
- As you move down the model there is less control. We can write visions statements down and collaborate on learning design, but as soon as those ideas are enacted there are more variables.
- There can be a big difference between what we design, what we teach and what the actual student experience ends up being. This was highlighted to me recently when a young teacher reviewed some video of her lesson introduction and realised how much she was talking. Her perception of that was very different than the actual experience students had.
- The base level Learning was added later as the model developed as I wanted to include the cognitive process we do not see. How do we know that learning has happened? In order to be able to better understand this we need better proxies for learning. This leads to discussions about assessment design which is a bridge between instruction and learning.
- Write these out on cards and consider how they pair together and influence each other. Explore how they are sometimes aligned and sometimes very much disconnected.
- There is a major assumption inherent in the model that better alignment = better learning. I am not sure this is always true. Sometimes great learning happens when we least expect it and often when we do not plan or design for it. Does all learning have to be designed?
- This alignment could be different for every child. When we move the model from curriculum and design to learning, we have to consider the actual experience and change in long term memory will be different for every student.
Here is the model in plain text format.
| Conceptual Learning Experience | Vision statement / teaching and learning principles or frameworks |
| Designed Learning Experience | Planning and programming / Curriculum documentation |
| Enacted Learning Experience | Teaching and facilitation |
| Actual Learning Experience | The student’s direct experience of teaching and learning |
| Learning | Changes in long term memory |
To finish, I want to share some summary questions that you can use when exploring the model and that act as further provocations for thinking about the design of learning.
Accompanying Questions and Provocations
- How do you know that learning has occurred?
- What can you do to better understand the student experience?
- What is the difference between planning and designing?
- What proxies for learning do we use?
- How does the student experience of learning align with what our community values the most?
- How is every learning experience an expression of what we are striving to achieve as a whole school?
- How can we make the best use of unexpected teachable moments with the same rigour as those that we design?
- How might we use formative assessment to bridge between teaching and learning?
- How can we improve our skills in assessment design?
I still have plenty of areas I want to explore with this model and I would be delighted to hear your reaction and response.
Follow my blog with BloglovinAt the Frontier of Redefining School
Over the weekend I have been doing some maintenance on this blog. I looked back on the archive and dug around in the old posts. It reminded me of the commitment to change I had when I became a teacher.
I was quick to align myself with other people making a change in the profession. It seemed that technology was a wave we were riding, a wave that would take us to change. I still think that technology as a catalyst has a huge role to play in the renewal of education and schools, but I think a different frontier is going unnoticed.
Every time a school builds a new set of learning spaces or a school system decides to build a new school, there is the opportunity for “school” to be completely redefined.
I am fortunate to be involved with some of the newest schools in Australia, both in the current design phases and in post-occupancy. Each example is an opportunity to push the system of “school” and to wash away the vestiges of an educational model that does not serve the needs of our young learners.
My projects involve establishing the base principles of teaching and learning as early as possible in the design process. Even before an architect is involved. The groundwork of establishing the First Principles of the overall project is essential and vital work. All too often this is not invested in and poorly conceived.
I was delighted to read Ira Socol’s post titled “What does it mean to build a school or to rebuild a school?” in which he echoes similar endeavours.
“I really ask all the architects here,” I said in response to an architect who had asked educators to be better clients — with bigger dreams, “to help develop those better clients by asking, at the very start, “what do you want your children to be?” Don’t ask about spaces or number of students or timelines or budget, not yet. Make that first question, “what do you want your children to be?” and help us remake education.”
If that first question is about spaces and student population, as Socol points out, it short-circuits the dialogue. No longer is there a value base being established or a shared morality, it becomes a wish-list discussion.
His question “what do you want your children to be?” cuts to the heart of what should be driving any educational architectural process. But this is equally true of existing schools and their existing practices. It is often much more challenging to escape old ideas.
If you want your children to be creative, to be collaborators, to be great communicators, to know how to make choices, to know how to build their own work and/or learning environments, to be kind, to be curious, to learn throughout their lives from the great wide world, to engage with technology well, to build healthy relationships and lead healthy lives… well… can you really do that within the closed boundaries of traditional schools? Can you do that with age-separated learning? with closed classroom doors? with separated subject areas? without seating choices? without technology choices? without culturally engaged learning groups?
When you reflect on the questions Ira Socol shares, you rapidly realise the physical environment is dependent on many other forces. They are intertwined and connected. When we tug on one another is affected.
| QUESTIONS | PRINCIPLES AND DEPENDENCIES |
| Can you really do that within the closed boundaries of traditional schools? | Privacy, safety, community, partnerships |
| Can you do that with age-separated learning? | Age Vs Stage, readiness, collaboration, community, personalised |
| Can you do that with closed classroom doors? | Functional learning spaces, community, partnerships, |
| Can you do that with separated subject areas? | Curriculum design, team teaching, interdisciplinary projects, collaboration |
| Can you do that without seating choices? | Student choice, agency, functional learning spaces, investment in furniture, different learning modes |
| Can you do that without technology choices? | Strategic technology integration, curriculum design, Student choice, agency, |
| Can you do that without culturally engaged learning groups? | Community, partnership, collaboration, curriculum and learning design |
We need to take the re-invention of education seriously. We need to mean it when we say “we’re going to build a new school,” or, “we’re going to rebuild an old school,” so that we imagine into existence something completely new — and thus give our architects free range to develop true child-centric learning spaces.
Although I agree with refreshing our perspective on the importance of these projects, I do think the best architects understand how to create child-centric learning spaces. Decades of expertise, projects and practice mean that educational architecture is understood. It is often the lack of ambition of the client, (the school or school system) that foreshadows any real innovation.
Architects and design teams look for guidance as to how hard they can push. How far they can stretch the brief and express a truly imaginative response? They look for the educator’s guidance on the extent to which they can “imagine into existence something completely new”.
This is where the precedent and the past catch up with educators. Facing real opportunities for innovation, we limit projects to incremental versions of what we already have. Worse yet, we continue old practices in new buildings.
Aesthetically beautiful with contemporary function, but pedagogically nostalgic.
An idea that Ira Socol explains more clearly than I did, in my recent post about the morality of educational architecture, is the inter-generational tension of school design. Schools are places for children built by adults.
Our education system was built from the very beginning on adult needs and adult priorities.
When adults do not design with empathy, we are designing an adult biased experience. Or at least for the school, we wish we had. Not the school for children we are yet to meet.
I will finish by sharing this final paragraph from Ira’s great blog post. There is so much truth here that we all should grapple with.
When we build a school, or rebuild a school, we need to insist on doing the right thing, and doing it completely. We must create a learning space that is physically safe, psychologically safe, emotionally safe for every child. And that learning space needs to be surrounded by a community, a nation, and a state with that same abundance. Only then can our kids truly be kids, and truly be kids on their way to being healthy adults. Adults who will be way better than we adults have been.
Make sure you have a read of the post in full here: “What does it mean to build a school, or to rebuild a school?“
Set Your Compass: Share Your Direction
All too often we don’t co-construct our curriculum with the children in our class. What occurs is a complete lack of clarity about where, as a group of learners, we are heading. In fact the direction we are going in is all too often very much laid out for the learner – the route is set by the teacher and the outcomes are already known.
Curriculum planning in this vein doesn’t cater for the tangent or the divergent thinker- well it might entertain it briefly but will eventually settle back on the steady path to where we were always going.
Curricular of this ilk are not setup for serendipity. If I knew exactly the music that was going to be played on the radio all of the time, well in advance and had no control over it, I would miss out on those beautiful moments when you hear a wonderful track that hasn’t been played for ages and there you are in that completely unexpected moment savouring every note.
Much of this is to do with teacher control and the lack of willingness to let go of the reins and venture from the path a little. But it is also to do with a lack of ambition about what we plan, many models of curriculum, as well as units of work, are legacy systems:
A legacy system is an old method, technology, computer system, or application program that continues to be used, typically because it still functions for the users’ needs, even though newer technology or more efficient methods of performing a task are now available.
If the direction of a unit is already laid out, involving the learner in the direction is fruitless, for the learner at least, for no alteration can be made anyway.
In his book How Children Fail, John Holt reflected in 1958:
It has become clear over the year that these children see school almost entirely in terms of the day-to-day and hour-to-hour tasks that we impose on them. This is not at all the way the teacher thinks of it. The conscientious teacher thinks of himself as taking his students (at least part way) on a journey to some glorious destination, well worth the pains of the trip.
He continues to explain that he recognises a disconnect with what we as teachers perceive as a learning journey and how children truly see this. How many schools do you think could still be described in these terms?
At one of our partner schools in South London the pupils of Rosendale Primary School negotiate their learning. They have a clear direction and input into the course that is going to be set – not only that they have the ability to define how they get there. The pupil’s prior knowledge, skills, interests and passions are the starting point for much of the project learning that takes place.
With a vested interest the pupils at Rosendale have a much clearer understanding of the learning as a journey – they know what needs to be done and have made choices that help to define this and make it real and meaningful to them. It is not simply a set of tasks imposed on them by a legacy system.
Most of the time with these more open models we have to set our course into the unknown a little, we have to be willing to take the path less trodden.
When the teachers and Year 3 and 4 pupils of Thorney Close Primary School took on the challenge of running their own TEDx we didn’t know if we would be successful, there were a great deal of unknowns. At one point we didn’t have a venue because Take That were playing at the Stadium of Light!
With uncertainty often comes failure and we felt that for real and so did the children, but would they learn from it – absolutely!
Here are some reflections on the process by one of the teachers involved:
I learnt to trust the children and to let them go in the direction they want, trust that they’re going to make the right decisions with a little bit of guidance but not as much structure as we normally would give. So to sit back more and to listen more, and just ask the odd few questions – without waiting for that answer that the teacher wants to hear.
One of my favourite ways to describe this sense of a general direction, unclear and yet thoughtfully open, is the idea of a “fuzzy goal”. Taken from the opening to the wonderful book Gamestorming by Sunni Brown, David Gray and James Macanufo – a fuzzy goal can both describe our philosophical approach to change as well as the direction of a student led unit.
Like Columbus, in order to move toward an uncertain future, you need to set a course. But how do you set a course when the destination is unknown? This is where it becomes necessary to imagine a world; a future world that is diferent from our own. Somehow we need to imagine a world that we can’t really fully conceive yet—a world that we can see only dimly, as if through a fog.
Pic navigation (cc) by marfis75
Khan Academy Is Not The Progressive Model You Are Looking For
There has been a great deal written about Khan Academy just recently and the concept of personalised instruction and how this is somehow revolutionary or some sort of game changer. But why is it engaging at all? Where does this type of instruction lead us?
In my opinion the instructional maths videos posted on the Khan Academy are “resources” and the structure surrounding it suggests some sort of recipe for how to best use it. We might call this the “pedagogy” as this term refers to strategies or styles of instruction – and the full-fat version of Khan Academy use has it’s own style, heavily tilted towards personalised instruction and feedback.
Looking at the videos as stand alone resources or items that could be used to support teaching and learning in the classroom – how do you rate them? In my opinion they are not particularly engaging – just a close up version of what you see on a board. In my teaching of maths at primary level I wouldn’t use them directly to support my teaching – I might at a push use them as additional materials for children to access – but I may as well do it myself. So if the videos don’t have anything engaging in them, it must be somewhere else, right?
The Khan Academy is a dressed up YouTube channel and purportedly the statistical tracking and indication of “progress” is what is driving any sense of engagement. So are students engaged in the maths or the pointification? Well if the instructional clips aren’t edge of the seat stuff it must be the notional suggestion of a game that drives clicks and engagement.
My son is just learning to read and he is also learning some spellings, he is 5 years old. He gets about 6 spellings to learn at a time – I have always found spelling strategies and policies that are “learn this word” to be utterly pointless and frustrating. This is similar to learning basic maths too – if George sounds out a word whilst he is reading or trying to write and is using that word in context, he is making a much deeper connection with that concept than if he attempts to learn it on it’s own.
Another off shoot of this list / drill approach is that parents cling on to the score, the outcome, the stats (that are everywhere in the Khan Academy) and as a result begin to build this mentality about what achievement is in school. It is a grade – a score out of 10. No context. We have a cultural fascination with grades and I don’t think Khan Academy does anything but strengthen this fervent point of view.
Seth Godin suggests that it is long overdue to actually create something with these tools – “Knowing about a tool is one thing. Having the guts to use it in a way that brings art to the world is another. Perhaps we need to spend less time learning new tools and more time using them.”
During the last 7 months I have been exploring design thinking as a style of instruction and as a structure to plan curricula that is meaningful and relevant to children. We have had the opportunity to work with a wide range of schools and teachers at all age levels in rethinking their approach to the curriculum. As Ewan puts it:
“it’s not about instruction-giving, the very basis of traditional teaching or “instruction”. It’s about providing structures within which people can operate, structures that use different constraints, not fewer constraints, to achieve more choice and therefore breadth of learning, collaboration and depth of learning.”
This approach has a huge emphasis on the role of the student in their curriculum, they play a vital role in what gets planned and how this plays out in their experience of school. Dan Meyer, a former maths teacher, touches on this approach to curriculum content in his TEDxNYED talk.
What Salman Khan is missing is the connection with the real life around us, that which Dan explores, the context that we need to fully engage in difficult conceptual knowledge. A child using Khan Academy will be able to get a personalised set of exercises, tailored just for them, but not the meaningful choice driven application of those ideas.
Dan Meyer explains that providing students with a real life example of a mathematical challenge levels the playing field for all students as it is more about intuitive problem discovery than spoon feeding text book style. Gever Tulley, the creator of the Tinkering School, explains this succinctly by suggesting that:
“The opportunities for engaged learning are inversely proportional to the knowability of the outcome.”
When we know the outcome of our work, if we have too rigid an outcome in our mind for the topic we are working on, our students are likely to be less engaged. (From the video above you can see Dan restructuring a problem with this in mind.)
To me this refers to the “guess the answer in the teacher’s head” syndrome, which when expanded can (sadly) apply to the whole curriculum topic for weeks an weeks of school. We are all making a musical instrument as that is what we have always done.
I don’t see how Khan Academy can have a place in a creative curriculum model, at least not the model of instruction used, the resources themselves may have some value. But it all seems to be propping up a model that should be vanishing from our schools, not resurfacing.
Resources such as these will just make teachers think that they are taking innovative approaches to their teaching and learning. It will stall the changes that are needed in many schools across the world to make maths and other curriculum subjects more meaningful and engaging – we need more “problem finders“, critical thinkers and indeed children developing the capacity to become “patient problem solvers”. We don’t need games and points to bring rote, de-contextualised, meaningless styles of learning back from the abyss where they should rest – we should be kicking them back over the edge!
Dave Gibbs, a teacher and consultant from the UK summed this up really well: “To me it (Khan Academy) seems like a new way of teaching the old way. Not fit for today’s learners, or indeed teachers.”