ASDAPAClarifying the confusion?

The front and the back of the thing!Margaret Bendall - Team Solutions

Tensions … (1) The Stapling Syndrome)

The “front” (vision, principles, key

competencies and values) and the

“back” (Achievement Objectives)

Tensions … (2) Whole school/teachers

The development/design of a “School Curriculum” andthe development of ways of “putting it into practice”.The development of “NZC in the classroom” (which

may be too narrow a concept in the end?)School leadership at whole school and school leadership

at faculty/department level, sometimes talking pasteach other?

Celebrate, share at staff meetings and support alldevelopment/engagement, with alignment of all NZCwork with the school’s curriculum understood as an

eventual necessity?

Tensions … 3 Challenge and retreat

(with thanks to Dr Graeme Aitken)• Complexity in the design of the NZC - autonomy withinguidelines, a number of elements and concepts to beintegrated in our understanding; cognitive overload.• Eisner “What members of the field of education ingeneral and curriculum in particular have increasinglycome to understand is that given a competition betweenthe general and the particular, the particular will winevery time.”

Tensions 3 - continued…

• Spillane - teachers do not deliberately resist or

misconstrue but we need sense-making interactions between individual cognition, social situation and clarity of design.

• Aitken - look for connections with your own world,

understand and clarify for everyone involved the

thinking behind the NZC, the whole picture.

(with thanks to Dr Graeme Aitken)

Tensions …4 Curriculum - Subjects?

• Curriculum = Learning Areas? Subjects? Or even AOsand standards?• Classroom or school curriculum?Curriculum = “What we intend our students to learn”?(Sir Ken Robinson): i.e. academic AND social outcomes,in all the learning experiences that the school values.(No “extra” or even “co” curriculum? “What we intendstudents to learn also includes guidance/studentsupport? Leadership? D of E? etc )• Implications for reporting?• “Natural Links” between Learning Areas? (CoherencePrinciple, p16 Intro, and P38 Designing a SC)

The front and the back - the hinges!

Expectations when the NZC is mandated.• Requirements for Board of Trustees - throughprincipal and staff, develop and implement acurriculum Years 1-13 underpinned by and consistentwith the principles, in which the values areencouraged and modelled and explored by students,and that supports students to develop thecompetencies …• And see the rest of this statement, page 44.

The front and the back - the hinges!

• School Curriculum - is there merit in a model thatbegins with “what we intend kids to learn”, our visionfor our graduates (vision, values, KCs, and …)• Then perhaps answers the question “what sort oflearning environment will promote this kind oflearning?”• In this second frame - our commitments? (e.g. to thebest Pedagogy? To highly engaging learningexperiences in and outside classrooms that ensure thedelivery of our curriculum? To Learning Areas at macrolevel?And to making “links between L.As? and …)• Do the NZC Principles underpin this learning environment.

The hinges - The NZC Principles (that willunderpin all school decision-making)

The principles put students at the centre of teaching andlearning, asserting that they should experience a curriculumthat engages and challenges them, is forward-looking andinclusive and affirms New Zealand’s unique identity.• High expectations• Treaty of Waitangi• Cultural diversity• Inclusion• Learning to Learn• Community Engagement• Coherence• Future focusPage 44 “the school curriculum be underpinned by andconsistent with …”

Beyond the Learning Environment -drawing in tools/vehicles/initiatives?

• Strategies that help us deliver principles?e.g. Ka Hikitia, as a strategic approach to the NZCprinciple of The Treaty of Waitangi - to “acknowledge theprinciples of the Treaty of Waitangi and the biculturalfoundations of Aotearoa New Zealand. All students have theopportunity to acquire knowledge of te reo Maori me onatikanga”• “Vehicles” such as Te Kotahitanga, which helps usdeliver on “the best pedagogy”• Initiatives, which can be aligned with commitments inthe Learning environment and/or the curriculum itself(what the school intends our kids to learn)? Or … dropthem? Schools tend to do too much, often without clearlinks between one initiative and the next?

Putting it all into practice in highlyengaging learning experiences!

• What will happen with our schemes?

Those commitments made specific?

• What needs to change in planning “lessons”? The objective is to draw all of this down into specific learning experiences?

• Learning objectives - both academic and social?

Consciously teaching/learning what students need to know and be able to do.

Putting it all into practice in highlyengaging learning experiences!

• Starting with pedagogy? (= one possible way ofthinking about this) - identifying naturally arising KCs(to “develop”, p44), values (to “model, explore,encourage”p44), principles (to be “consistent with…p44)• NB. AOs and assessment/standards come last in thisapproach to planning, NOT first! They are applied wherethey fit…it is up to us not to allow assessment to takeover the curriculum?

Pedagogy: the key to implementation.

A key principle: Learning to Learn• “The foundations of human capital are laid down inschools” OECD Economic Report on NZ• People need to be increasingly adaptive - but what IS“life-long learning”?e.g. Dispositions are the best predictors of success in life(PISA, OECD Programme for International Student

assessment)• The importance of being “ready and willing”- accounts for half variation in performance.

Professor Guy Claxton: Professor ofLearning Sciences, University of Winchester

• Life-long learning dispositions include: curiosity,resilience, the ability to “manage distraction”,experimenting, imagining reasoning …(and we all inevitably “teach” dispositions - are they thelife-long learning dispositions/key competencies?)E.g. Avoid producing “certaholics”, who shift blame, arerisk-averse (see Dweck)• Life-long learning dispositions flourish where teachersand principals are in the process of “cheerfully findingout” and demonstrate “confident uncertainty” ….

Professor Guy Claxton: Prof. of LearningSciences, University of Winchester

• … where visitors hear talk about what is being learned,where teachers are in professional learning circles,where students are being asked real questions aboutimproving learning.• … where student voice is engaged, “as crew notpassengers” in the business of learning. (We knowstudents love learning “challenging things that matterto someone, learning collaboratively, having somechoice and some scope to organise themselves …”)

And schools are already doing it well …

• Professor John Hattie, Visible Learning

• And your guest schools …

Kia kaha!