Evolving Conception of Curriculum: A Guide for Student Success

1. Chapter 1: The Rationale and Guiding Principles for an Evolving Conception of Curriculum EQ: Why is it important to think differently about curriculum?

2. Thoughts to ponder… • There are very few professions that require as many decisions to be made and rapidly made as that of teachers. • The quest for learning and the desire to create are essential human behaviors. • The Parallel Curriculum model draws on students’ strengths, needs, interests, goals, questions, perspectives, and prior experiences.

3. Why changes in curriculum? • Changes in Clientele: Students are more technology-driven, information saturated, faster paced, global, multicultural, consumer-oriented, and pluralistic in viewpoints and ideas. • Changes in Intelligence Views: The environment and opportunity can absolutely affect a student’s intellectual capacity. • Education should be about maximizing individual capacity by providing environments and opportunities for all students. • Curriculum should be rich in opportunities for learners to explore and expand a wide range of intelligences and abilities. • Curriculum should be flexible enough to address variability in how talent develops over time. • Curriculum should plan for development of intelligences in ways that are valid. • Learn from the leaders of the past to create curriculum for the future.

4. Curriculum should… • Guide students in mastering key information, ideas, and fundamental skills • Help students grapple with complex and ambiguous issues and problems • Guide students in progressing from novice toward expert levels of performance • Provide students opportunities for original, creative, and practical work • Help students encounter, accept, and embrace challenge • Help students uncover, recognize, and apply essential concepts and principles • Help students develop a sense of themselves as well as their possibilities in the world • Be compelling and satisfying enough to encourage students to persist despite frustration and understand the importance of effort and collaboration

5. Theoretical and Research-Based Underpinnings • Curriculum should address and thus respect individual learner characteristics. • 5 categories of character traits of learners • Cognitive abilities • Academic skills and knowledge • Social and emotional needs and characteristics • Interests • Learning preferences-influenced by… • Gender • Culture • General development • Theories of knowledge should inform our selection of curriculum content. • Curriculum should support escalating levels of student involvement in the discipline. • Curriculum should be based on foundational knowledge which consists of key concepts, basic principles, and methodologies of a field. • Curriculum should represent the essential concepts, principles, and processes. This should include a variety of competencies ranging from comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, to evaluation.

6. Levels of Knowing-William James • Knowledge-Of • This level supports entry or awareness. It involves remembering, recalling, and recognizing. • Knowledge-About • This level includes more advanced levels of knowing like comparing, analyzing, inferring, finding relationships, and explaining. Basic knowing evolves into understanding at this level. • Knowledge-How • This level deals mainly with the application of tools and strategies to create solutions and new knowledge. This level is the problem-solver.

7. Levels of Knowing-Alfred North Whitehead • Romance • We develop an interest in or romance for a particular topic. We want to know about a variety of topics and fields. • Technical Proficiency • People follow up romance with becoming proficient in a particular field. • Generalization • At this level, new information is added and new knowledge and products are contributed.

8. Theoretical and Research-Based Underpinnings Cont. • Each content field includes the methods and techniques that are essential to practitioners and experts in that field. Active learning is an effective way to ignite student interest, curiosity, and participation. • A product orientation encourages the authentic application of abstract and sophisticated ideas. • Concrete Products: Reports, research papers, stories, timelines, dances, editorials, musical compositions, and community service activities. • Abstract Products: Ideas, strategies, attitudes, beliefs and values, and personal and social development. This includes self-efficacy. • Effective curriculum is clearly focused, well organized, engaging, and appropriately challenging. • Curriculum should support Ascending Intellectual Demand (AID) for diverse learners. • Attention to student affect greatly enhances the power of curriculum. If it touches a student then it will be successful.

9. High Quality Curriculum and Instruction should… • Have a clear focus on the essential facts, understandings, and skills professionals in the discipline value most. • Provide opportunities for students to develop in-depth understanding. • Be organized to ensure that all student tasks are aligned with the goals of the in-depth understanding. • Be coherent to the student. • Be mentally and affectively challenging and engaging. • Recognize and support the need of each leaner. • Be fresh, rich, surprising, and joyful. • Provide appropriate choices. • Allow for meaningful collaboration. • Be focused on products that matter to students. • Connect with students’ lives and worlds. • Seem real, purposeful, and useful. • Deal with profound ideas. • Call on students to use what they learn in interesting and important ways. • Aid students in developing a consciousness of their thinking. • Help learners become competent problem solvers. • Involve students in setting their learning goals and assessing their progress. • Stretch the student.

10. Notes on Ascending Intellectual Demand (AID) • Learners vary in their cognitive development as well as in interests and preferred learning modes. • Learners share a common need for high-level, meaning-focused curriculum and instruction. • What a task is presented to a student in their “zone of proximal development” and then scaffolds, coaches, or supports the student in successfully completing the task then the student’s independence zone ultimately expands. • The support system provided to students needs to change to enable the student to work on things at a level of challenge appropriate to their current development. • Brain research suggests that students learn best when the tasks are moderately challenging for the individual. • When a task is too difficult=frustration. When a task is too easy=stagnation and apathy. • When curriculum attends to a students interest, then their motivation and learning improve. • The escalating match between the learner and curriculum is referred to as Ascending Intellectual Demand. • The Parallel Curriculum Model suggests that learners should work consistently with concept-based curriculum that is tasks that call for complex thinking and products that ask students to demonstrate and use what they have learned in meaningful ways.

11. Characteristics of Teachers who Pay Attention to Needs of Students • Reflective about the needs of each student • Responsive in using what they learn about students to craft curriculum and instruction • Respectful of students’ common and distinct cognitive, physical, social, and emotional profiles • Create a classroom that gives students a sense of safety • Provide affirmation or the sense that students are actively supported • Provide validation or the student’s belief that each of them are valuable and have a valid role • Provide affiliation or the sense that each of them belong to and fits within the group • Provide affinity or sense of kinship and common ground • Guide students to be respectful of their own contributions, needs, ideas, and products as well as others • Guide students to be responsive in their work and relationships • Guide students to be reflective about what they learn, how their learning affects who they are, what they believe, what they can do, and how their attitudes and behaviors affect the development and opinions of others

12. Final Thoughts • A particular challenge for teachers is to ensure that students from all cultures and economic backgrounds feel security, affirmation, validation, affiliation, and affinity. • It is vital that teachers understand and appreciate the backgrounds of all students. • We can only make learning personal and relevant by responding to the needs of all learners.

13. Reflection: Discussion Question Do you believe that “we need to think differently about curriculum than we have in the past?” Why or why not?

14. Chapter 2: An Overview of the Parallel Curriculum Model EQ: How do the 4 parallels compare?

15. Thoughts to ponder… • We will look at an overview of the 4 parallels. • Clarify the relationship between PCM, content standards, and knowledge in each discipline • Explain purpose of the PCM • Define the term “parallel” as it is used • Describe the characteristics of each • Curriculum must be flexible enough to address the broad range of needs within a grade level. It is not a “standard” curriculum. • Teachers who develop curriculum for diverse learners must be comfortable with their role as planners and decision makers. • It is not a recipe.

16. Chapter Notes • The PCM suggests developing curriculum that is appropriately challenging using 1, 2, 3, and/or 4 parallel ways. • Term “parallel” indicates several different perspectives that educators may use to design curriculum. • “Parallel” is not separate and distinct models used in planning but should be thought of as a superhighway where lanes run parallel but also allow movement between lanes as vehicles travel in a common direction. • Curriculum should take basic form and function from facts, skills, concepts, and principles that are central to the field of study.

17. A Look at the 4 Parallels • Core Curriculum Parallel—reflects the essential nature of a discipline. It stresses student understanding of the framework through the exploration of key information, skills, concepts, and principles. • Connections Parallel—expands concepts and principles to help students understand how connections are made to numerous topics, time periods, issues, problems, events, cultures, and places. • Curriculum of Practice—use underlying concepts and principles to experience and understand ways to use and apply discipline-based ideas and skills to real-world questions, problems, issues, and needs. • Curriculum of Identity—guides students to understand their own strengths, preferences, values, and commitment by reflecting on their own development, interests, and goals in a field of study.

18. The Core Curriculum—Your unit developed will be based on this parallel. • Is built on key facts, concepts, principles, and skills • Is well organized • Is purposefully focused • Promotes understanding rather than rote learning • Is taught in a context meaningful to students • Causes students to grapple with ideas and questions using both critical and creative thinking skills • Is mentally and affectively engaging and satisfying • Results in evidence of worthwhile student production

19. AID and the Core CurriculumVaried levels of challenge can be achieved in many ways. • Using more basic or advanced reading, resources, and research materials • Adjusting the pace of teaching and learning • Working at greater or less demanding levels of depth, breadth, complexity, and/or abstractness • Applying ideas and skills to familiar and unfamiliar contexts that are similar or dissimilar from the ideas and examples explored in class • Designing tasks that are more open-ended • Developing trait rubrics for tasks and/or products • Encouraging collaborations between students and adult experts in an area of shared interest • Designing work that requires student reflection

20. The Curriculum of Connections • Help students emphasizes the key facts, concepts, principles, and skills of a discipline to see the interrelatedness of knowledge • It asks students to use the key information to make links and examine their similarities and differences • Students explore and describe connections within a discipline, across disciplines and aids them in building breadth of knowledge • Apply skills in varied settings • Use ideas from one context to ask questions about other situations • Use ideas from multiple settings to create new hypotheses • Make analogies between contexts • Develop ways to see unfamiliar things using familiar • Develop an appreciation for multiple perspectives • Understand the role of individuals in the changes within an evolution of the discipline

21. AID & the Curriculum of Connections • Applying understandings or skills in situations that are more familiar or less familiar • Generating more or less sophisticated criteria • Developing solutions, proposals, or approaches that bridge differences • Making predictions about future directions based on patterns • Searching for useful connections among related or seemingly different elements • Looking for patterns of interaction in different areas of connection • Looking at the world through a perspective similar to or unlike the student’s own • Seeking out and evaluating unstated assumptions • Developing systems for making connections • Making visual analogies among ideas

22. The Curriculum of Practice • Help students broaden their understandings and skills through application—they become an expert. They become scholars whose success depends on age and cognitive, academic, and affective development. • Guides students in the journey from novice to expert problem solving and production. Humans learn through guided experience. Doing is more engaging than passive participation. • Learn through experience and in context • Develop awareness of problems in the field and develop clarity • Organize findings in ways useful for accessing information in the field • Recognize key features of various problems and find meaningful patters • Distinguish between relevant and less critical as well as develop authentic strategies for addressing problems • Monitor their own thinking and problem-solving strategies • Become acquainted with and use key tools as well as professional resources and methods • Expand problem-solving ability and know the indicators of quality • Develop and pursue possibilities that the field holds • Develop an awareness of where practitioners work and how those settings impact both the nature of the work and the practitioner

23. AID and the Curriculum of Practice • All students need opportunities to experience what it would be like to be a practitioner, problem solver, and contributor. The main goal is to match a task to a student’s readiness and interests. • Develop a language of reflection about problems • Test person framework of knowledge and understanding through repeated field-based tasks • Compare standards of quality used by practitioners and contributors • Establish goals for their own work based on what they believe to be the next steps in quality • Share high-quality work with experts and work with problems that even adult experts find difficult • Seek understanding and resolution of problems currently posing difficulties in the field • Develop and use a feedback process • Engage in persistent and prolonged written reflection • Compare and contrast their own approaches to discipline-based dilemmas, issues, or problems

24. The Curriculum of Identity • Help students think about themselves, their interests, their aspirations, and their opportunities to make a contribution to the world • Help students understand themselves and their possibilities by looking at their own interests, abilities, and preferences • Understand the discipline more fully by connecting it with their lives and experiences; increase awareness of their preferences, strengths, interests, and need for growth • Sample the discipline in order to understand themselves in relation to it as well as develop an appreciation of the potential of one or more disciplines to help people make sense of their world and live more satisfying and productive lives. • Reflect on and identify their skills, interests, and talents • Understand how they might shape and be shaped by ongoing participation • Develop a clear sense of what types of lives practitioners and contributors to a discipline lead on a day-to-day basis • Explore the positive and negative impacts of the discipline on the lives of the people and circumstances in the world • Examine their own interests, ways of thinking, ways of working, values, ethics, philosophy, norms, and definitions of quality by examining those things as reflected in the discipline • Understand the excitement people in a discipline have as well as the role of self-discipline • Think about how creativity is visible and develop a sense of pride and humility related to self

25. AID and the Curriculum of Identity • Schoolwork is connected to real events, problems, skills, ideas, and opportunities. • Sharing personal reflections and making connections to self • Examining multiple points of view • Working with a mentor or shadowing a professional • Reading biographies of practitioners and making personal comparisons • Examining the characteristics of people who work in the field and make personal comparisons • Making a short- or long-term commitment • Identifying the habits of someone who is passionate about this field.

26. Discussion & Presentation • Look at pages 16 and 17. • Break into groups of 4 or 5. • Present the curriculum parallels to peers. • How do the curriculum parallels compare? • How do the curriculum parallels contrast? • Where do most teachers fall as they develop curriculum? • How do you ensure that students have a well-rounded lesson presented?

27. Pair & Share • How can you create a unit that combines all 4 parallels? • Look at list on page 32 and choose 1 item from each section to discuss the benefit • How do you ensure fidelity to the PCM when developing units?

28. Reflection: Discussion Question The Parallel Curriculum Model is a model for designing and planning curriculum. What model(s) do you currently use to assist you in developing units and/or lesson plans for your classroom and are you willing to try something new (aka The Parallel Curriculum Model)?

29. Preview • Chapter 3 part 1 • Unit Lesson Plans Due October 11 • Unit Activities Due October 25 • Unit Assessments Due November 1