Understanding By Design

Over the last week I attended the Classroom Strategies that Matter conference held at the Cawfield Racecourse in Melbourne. I have to thank REAP Marlborough, The Marlbough Principal's Association and the New Zealand Principal's federation for their assistance in making this professional development happen. I went to listen to a guru in curriculum design, Mr Jay McTighe who over the course of his career has designed a tool for teachers and leaders of learning to form and manage curriculum across the schooling spectrum.

The first two days were focused primarily at teachers designing lessons for understanding and not just coverage. If we look at the New Zealand Curriculum it lends itself beautifully towards this design framework via the key competencies. Educators are trying to reinforce deep understanding through the thought process and eventually deeper application of the understanding in other learning contexts.

Sound great I know but where all educators are aiming for with any group of students in this modern society is to be able to take the skills and thinking frameworks they have acquired in their learning and apply them to new contexts.

Over the final two days we explored the process of taking the classroom lesson and unit planning design to larger applications, you call this Schooling By Design. Being from the American system and relaying the idea to an Australian concept was interesting to see from a Kiwi educators perspective. Even with the advent of National Standards, we are very fortunate that our curriculum will rely on teachers making OTJ's (observable teacher judgements)married along with assessment data such as one off tests that our schools are listening before labeling students as at, above or below that standard.. Be very wary Ministry of Education, the processes that we are trying to avoid in the form of league tables are very much alive in our Trans Tasman neighbourhood via the myschools website that the Australian Federal Government launched on schools and the standardised national test or NAPLAN I believe is the acronym.

Let's learn from the lessons of other nations and educational systems and realise that what we have here in New Zealand should be protected and nurtured. I say trial the national standards, see how they work and then launch into full implementation. It's like a major car company has a new idea, lets build the car in a few short months, not test it for safety or whether it might be economical on fuel, launch it to the public amidst much fanfare with the result being many people buy one, then finding a couple of months into using it, the motor explodes and the customer is left high and dry with no way to get round. We are an evidence based educational system, so why not trial the standards and see what works and what we need to improve. A year is a long time in a students life but not when it is something as higher stakes as this.

I will leave you to make your mind up about that one.