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Getting to the Source: What Curriculum Leaders Need to Know

(APS Global Conference, July 2012)

Teoh Tiong San, Northland Primary School

Transactional Transformational Curriculum/Instructional Leadership.

Multitude of approaches in the market.Fullan: problem faced by schools is ‘not a

resistance to innovation, but the fragmentation, overload, and incoherence resulting from the uncritical and uncooordinated acceptance of too many different innovations’.

My search for underlying principles about teaching and learning.

Context of TLLM, PERI and 21CC Learning with understanding (TfU, UbD,

Erickson) How People Learn The Learning Sciences

The Finnish experience – understanding the fundamentals

Sharing my personal journey: Focus on the Learning Sciences

From transmission model (Industrial Age) to constructivist model (Knowledge Age)

Key findings Implications on school design and pedagogy

Learning sciences is an interdisciplinary field that studies teaching & learning.

Goal of LS: to better understand the cognitive and social processes that result in effective learning, and to apply this knowledge to redesign learning environments so that people learn more effectively.

Birthdate 1991: 1st international conference and publication of Journal of the Learning Sciences.

1st comprehensive review: R. Keith Sawyer (2006), The

Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences

An industrial age model based on certain assumptions:- Knowledge is a collection of facts about the world

and procedures for how to solve problems.- Goal of schooling: get this knowledge into the

student’s head. Thus an educated person possesses a large collection of knowledge.

- Teachers know this knowledge better, and their job is to transmit it to the students.

- The way to determine the success of schooling is to test students to see how much knowledge they have acquired.

Served industrial economy well – effective in transmitting standard body of knowledge via a standardised (structured, scheduled) way – the factory model.

KBE is based on “the production and distribution of knowledge and information, rather than the production and distribution of things.” (Drucker)

In KBE, knowledge workers manipulate symbols rather than machines; create conceptual artifacts rather than physical objects.

KBE is powered by human creativity and idea generation.

Minister Heng: students being able to ‘connect seemingly disparate dots, and create knowledge even as the context changes’.

Realisation that schools were designed for a vanishing world led to commissioned reports on findings from the learning sciences. Three important books/reports:

1. US National Research Council’s How People Learn. (Bransford, Brown & Cocking, 2000)

2. OECD’s Innovation in the Knowledge Economy: Implications for Education and Learning. (2004)

3. ISTE’s Technology, Innovation, and Educatinal Change. (Kozma, 2003)

1. The importance of conceptual understanding

‘Children retain material better, and are able to generalize it to a broader range of contexts, when they learn deep knowledge rather than surface knowledge, and when they learn how to use that knowledge in real-world settings.’ (Sawyer)

•Research on how experts think and solve problems.•Brain-based learning: brains as a pattern-seeking, meaning-making entity.

Enduring Understanding

Concept Concept

Topic / Theme

FACT

FACT

FACT

FACT

FACT

Structure of

knowledge

Lynn H Erickson (2007)

CARL BEREITER’S THREE WORLDS OF UNDERSTANDING

1st world 2nd world 3rd world

Surface Deep Conceptual/Constructed

Surface info or knowledge of the world

Thinking skills or deeper understanding

Constructed theory of reality

Integration or an organising pattern of pieces of info (Relational)

Deduction of a general rule or theory (Elaborative)

Knowing Thinking Constructing

“The process of learning is a journey from ideas to understanding to constructing.” (J Hattie)

2. Constructivism

Students do not enter the classroom as empty vessels, waiting to be filled; they enter with half-formed ideas and misconceptions about how the world works – naïve knowledge.

Knowledge is not transmitted but constructed. Teachers mediate the construction. [Piaget: ‘Construction is superior to instruction.’]

Brain-based Learning: Plasticity of the brain.

Understanding ‘naïve’ knowledgeImportant to uncover and address this.

Children’s thinking is qualitatively different; they have different knowledge structures. They know differently, not necessarily less.

‘Student-centric’ education – honouring the child.

Teachers need to focus on learning rather than teaching e.g. how to make a complex concept easier to grasp for the learner.

Learning is active and experiential; a contact not a spectator sport. (‘I do, I understand’ -- Xun Zi) . Active engagement in meaningful tasks, manipulating, observing and making meaning. Importance of deliberative practice – the unconscious competence.

Learning is collaborative -- Vygotsky’s social constructivism. Learning as a socio-diologic activity; Classrooms as CoL.

Learning is ‘situated’; meaning constructed in context, thus experiences must be relevant and authentic.

Learning is intentional. The learner consciously makes decision about his learning.

BBL: emotions and learning – safe and nurturing environment for genuine mistakes.

3. Reflection / Metacognition• Learners learn more effectively when they

externalise or articulate their still developing understanding throughout the process of learning. Articulating and learning go hand in hand, in a mutually reinforcing feedback loop. Articulation makes metacognition possible.

• Making learning visible; importance of formative assessment.

• Articulation is more effective if it is scaffolded (Vygotsky’s ZPD), with the scaffolding gradually added, modified or removed according to the needs of the learner.

1. Customised learning• More effective learning when learners are

placed in learning environments suited to their cognitive abilities and needs.

2. Diverse knowledge sources & distributed knowledge

• Teacher no longer the only source of expertise; students learn from a variety of sources: the Internet, actual experts, other institutions, etc.

• Students learn collaboratively from their peers.

• Schools as watering holes where students

reconnect with each other.

• Teachers are facilitators of the learning process.

3. Curriculum• Resequencing of learning materials and

activities that are more aligned to findings from learning sciences about how people learn. Revising Bloom’s taxonomy with new classification of knowledge.

• More coherence and depth (rather than breadth), leading to deep knowledge; concept-based and interdisciplinary.

4. Role of Teacher Teachers as knowledge workers; adaptive

learning experts and co-creators of conceptual artifacts. (in collaboration with peers and students).

Have deep understanding of theoretical principles and latest knowledge of how children learn.

Familiar with the authentic practices of professionals (e.g. scientists, literary critics) in the disciplines they teach.

Highly trained; adept at technology. More autonomy, more creativity, and more

content knowledge. Salaries comparable to other knowledge

workers.

J Bransford, A Brown & R Cocking (eds) (2000), How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School. National Research Council.

L H Erickson (2007), Concept-based Curriculum and Instruction for the Thinking Classroom. Corwin Press.

C Bereiter (2002), Education and Mind in a Knowledge Age. Routledge.

R K Sawyer (2007), “Optimising Learning: Implications of Learning Sciences Research”.

J Hattie (2009), Visible Learning. J Hattie (2012), Visible Learning for Teachers. D H Jonassen et. al (2003), Learning to Solve Problems

with Technology: A Constructivist Perspective. G Wiggins & J McTighe (2005, 2 ed.), Understanding by

Design.