How can curriculum reform contribute to educational recovery in Scotland and elsewhere?

Editor's Notes

• #2 Explain that Our curriculum analysis have identified 4 ways how countries and schools aim to keep pace with a rapidly changing world. Digital curriculum: include digital content or organisational features to implement curricular elements, online materials, tools, depositories, hardware, software and other applications. The definition varies across countries/jurisdictions and is evolving as schools experiment with a greater number of digital applications. Cross-curricular content and competency-based curriculum are built across disciplinary or subject boundaries in an effort to enable students to connect knowledge in a more holistic way, to meet students’ interests and serve society. Flexible curriculum allows schools, teachers and local bodies to adapt, implement or modify curriculum by providing educators with freedom to craft learning content, goals, pedagogies and assessments. Personalised, individualised, differentiated or tailored curriculum: a curriculum that is tailored to students’ individual needs, skills and interests; its main purpose is to improve learning by customising instruction for each learner, considering his/her prior knowledge, learning style and pace of learning. Personalised curriculum combined with technology provides the opportunity for students to learn anywhere, anytime. For schools and teachers, personalised curriculum makes it possible to adapt the curriculum to the specific characteristics and needs of each learner. Suggest: These curriculum types are not new; however, under so-called “normal circumstances” before the Covid19 pandemic, curriculum change towards these directions were slower than anticipated. However, the pandemic has created necessity for and accelerated these changes to ensure students’ continuous learning as well as student well-being, in particular, for students with disadvantaged backgrounds.
• #3 Explain that all the innovative curriculum - the digital, cross-curricular competency-based, and flexible curriculum – facilitate personalised curriculum. For example, ‘personalised learning’ is not new, but – in the past – it was considered as an expensive form of curriculum and teaching as it requires more teachers to personalise learning for each student; however, the use of technology starts to surface emerging cases that personalised curriculum can be financially viable, e.g. automatic Chabot feedback or marking students’ homework. Highlight that the Covid19 pandemic revealed how students learn differently, in particular, different pace of learning – along with other differences such as different learning styles/ strategies, different prior knowledge, different means to learning at home, etc. If we are to serious about changing the way how we teach – to suit ourselves to how students learn, we need an ecosystem change. Curriculum needs to be redesigned to recognise that student learning progression is not always llinear and cannot be always standardised (the curriculum is developed based on a standardised, linear learning- progression model) and shift towards a non-linear/ spiral, holistic model (recognising that each student has his/her own learning path and is equipped with different prior knowledge, skills and attitudes when he/she starts school) Such emerging examples of a ‘spiral curriculum’ are reported from Estonia, Ireland and New Zealand – where grade repletion will not be considered as ‘duplication’ but deliberately curriculum repeats topics across grades, learning cycles and education levels to reinforce students’ understanding of ideas or concepts they are learning. A “spiral curriculum” allows curriculum space for students to progress through their learning by stages rather than in a rigid, linear progression through each grade. This approach allows for more coherence of curriculum content across grades and thus reduces the risk of unnecessary duplication. It also gives teachers and schools some flexibility to readjust the content to their students’ learning progression, so that teachers review content in a meaningful way to deepen students’ learning. Such an approach guards against shallow learning over a broad range of topics that results from curriculum overload. Changes in assessments need to accompany that change, from standardised testing and rubric-model to engaging multiple assessments for different purposes. A linear, rubric model at one particular point in time would not allow assessing students’ spiral learning progression, which proceeds iteratively but deeper at each iteration. To make this happen, changes in the role of students also need to happen, where students become active learner, and become an owner of and be responsible for their own learning, and become a co-constructor of the learning environment and thus of new knowledge ---- - from sitting, listening to and trying to understand what teachers are teaching, passively receiving teachers’ knowledge. To monitor all these changes in the learning ecosystem, the accountability system needs to change from the industrial age-accountability/ compliance model which his designed to detect errors and fix them, to a new accountability system where the system will hold all the stakeholders accountable for what they are responsible for connected accountability through networks, transparency, and trust.
• #4 SEN students are highlighted by most countries/jurisdictions (92%). Cross-curricular content and competency-based curriculum can facilitate their learning. For example, in Australia, teachers can adapt content and pedagogies for students with disabilities in ways in which the use of the general capabilities and the cross curriculum priorities can enhance the learning needs of individual students. 72% of participating countries/jurisdictions reported that they provide special curriculum provision for language learners, non-native speakers and/or immigrants. Reflecting on historical legacy, 56% reported that curriculum provision considers the specific needs of indigenous or minority students. Flexible curriculum can facilitate their learning. Some countries/jurisdictions design a needs-based language curriculum specifically for migrant students, to give them access to instruction in their mother language or to training in the language of instruction of the host country. For example, in Finland students from multilingual families are offered optional lessons in their mother language. The city of Helsinki offered optional lessons in 40 different languages in 2015. Students with an immigrant background are also entitled to take part in instruction preparing them for public basic education for one year. Mexico put in place multi-grade schools for children of migrant agricultural day-labourers. Well over one-third of countries/jurisdictions include provisions for gifted or talented students (42%). Flexible and personalised curriculum can support such students, for which teachers need specific training and support. In New Zealand, teachers are provided with an extensive range of (non-mandatory) support and guidance for particular focus areas, including special education and gifted education. Around one third of countries include provisions for early school leavers or potential dropouts (31%). Digital curriculum provides myriads of new opportunities for such students. In Ireland, an initiative called iScoil offers early school leavers (age 13 16) an alternative path to learning, accreditation, and progression via an online learning community. Learning is tailored to students’ needs, interests and abilities, and is undertaken by students at home or in a local blended-learning centre. Each student is assigned an online mentor. The initiative receives funding from the state under the What Works initiative, and referrals to the service are made by the Education Welfare Service under Tusla, the Child and Family Agency 28% address socio-economic disadvantages and 14% address geographic disadvantages. Digital Curriculum and Personalised curriculum can support such students if designed and implemented properly. For example, in India, since the initial Covid-19 lockdown period, state governments of Haryana, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, and Madhya Pradesh has collaborated with one of the largest non-governmental science and math education organisations and provides system-wide interventions in economically and geographically disadvantaged schools. They provide after-school instruction, making extensive use of technology for interactive and personalised online classrooms, aiming at reducing learning gaps in math and science among students. It now reaches over 800,000 students every day through more than 6,000 teacher-moderated WhatsApp groups.
• #5 But, compared to ‘critical thinking skills’, we can see more challenges with teacher preparedness in teaching cross curricular skills and involving students to decide on their own procedures for solving complex tasks. With regards to ‘students deciding on their own procedures’, it requires careful differentiation approach – show next slide as a reminder for implication from PISA.
• #6 Design principles within a discipline 1. Focus: A relatively small number of topics should be introduced in each grade to ensure the depth and quality of students’ learning. Topics may overlap in order to reinforce key concepts. 2. Rigour: Topics should be challenging and enable deep thinking and reflection. 3. Coherence: Topics should be sequenced to reflect the logic of the academic discipline or disciplines on which they draw, enabling progression from basic to more advanced concepts through stages and age levels. Design principles across disciplines 4. Transferability: The curriculum should be structured in ways that allow students to understand big ideas (or fundamental concepts) underpinning a particular discipline and, furthermore, see the applicability across different disciplines. The curriculum should also recognise how students can develop skills, attitudes and values in particular disciplinary contexts while they can also apply these skills, attitudes and values across different disciplines and contexts. 5. Interdisciplinarity (interrelatedness): The curriculum should provide students with opportunities to discover how a topic or concept can link and connect to other topics or concepts within and across disciplines, and further into their life outside of school.  6. Choice: The curriculum should offer a wide range of topics and project options and provide opportunities to students to suggest their own topics and projects, with the support to make well-informed choices, especially for disadvantaged students. Design principles beyond school 7. Authenticity: The curriculum should provide space and links to the real world, where appropriate. This requires interdisciplinary and collaborative experiences outside school, alongside mastery of discipline-based knowledge in school. 8. Flexibility: Schools and teachers should be able to update, adapt and align the curriculum to reflect evolving societal issues, as well as individual learning needs. 9. Alignment: Pedagogies and assessment practices should be well aligned with the curriculum. Alignment and conceptual coherence between curricula across different levels of education are important to ensure continuity of lifelong learning. While the technologies to assess many of the desired outcomes may not yet exist, new teaching and assessment methods should be developed that value holistic student outcomes, including both learning and well-being outcomes. Initial teacher education and professional development should also be aligned with the curriculum. Design principles for processes 10. Engagement: Teachers, students and other relevant stakeholders should be involved early in the development of the curriculum, to ensure their ownership and facilitate implementation. 11. Student agency: The curriculum should provide a carefully designed space for students to participate in the curriculum design and implementation processes, to ensure the relevance of the curriculum (e.g. motivate them and recognise their prior knowledge, skills, attitudes and values), as well as to ensure that students feel a sense of ownership of their own learning. 12. Teacher agency: Teachers should be empowered to use their professional knowledge, skills and expertise to co-design and deliver the curriculum effectively.