In an earlier post I mentioned there were five things that were worth spending time and effort on if you wanted to be the best you could be as a teacher or leader. Whether you are about to finish your training, whether you have been teaching for a few years or even many, whether you are a leader…these above anything else are where to build habits.
Understanding the content knowledge needed for any lesson was one of the five. I will write a series of posts about content knowledge and the curriculum.
The Victorian and Australian Curriculum, and I suspect the promised updated version, is by and large a load of rubbish. Rubbish as in garbage, an absolute tosh pot of educational detritus. Unfortunately this is the tool handed to you for planning.
The curriculum, you would think, should be designed to be a roadmap of learning for students. At last I think it should. Since the 1950’s competing idealogical and political thinking has moulded it into what you will be given. You will find only a series of unnavigable roads, dead ends and confusing signposts. Luckily you are at or have been to university so you will have no problems reading your map! But it shouldn’t be that way.
While this is meant to be just an introduction and not a who to know post, it is worth noting here that Greg Ashman writes a short history of education in his book Truth about Teaching: An evidence informed guide for new teachers. Mary Myatt does a similar thing in Curriculum: From Gallimaufry to coherence. While not directly related to Victoria they touch on themes that that to my mind are relevant.
The single biggest failing of the curriculum is that it is vague. Vague doesn’t help when you need to be explicit with your instruction.
Even though Dylan Wiliam argues strongly that ‘pedagogy trumps curriculum’ a teacher or school that devotes time to designing a coherent, knowledge based curriculum will supercharge even high quality instructional practice.
Schools are magnificent places on the whole, filled with people who want to make a difference. Rather than be discouraged by the curriculum schools put their head down and attempt to make sense of it. They spend a lot of time, a lot of time, trying to make something practical that can be used on a day by day basis in the chaos that bubbles underneath the surface of classrooms.
The curriculum cannot afford to offer the dross that it currently does. To be the best they can, to continually improve, teachers cannot afford to waste time trying to decipher what they think the curriculum means.
A coherent, explicit, knowledge based curriculum will also let students be the best they can be. A curriculum should allow all students to have access to the same foundation of knowledge that the wealthiest, healthiest and happiest are privileged to secure.