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The Global Conceptual Curriculum
The purpose of curriculum is no longer about describing the knowledge that a young person must know when they leave school but rather a curriculum must know define the education experience that the learner will now be engaged in. This then automatically includes not only reading writing and the subjects but also what we used to refer to as the ‘hidden curriculum’. 166
The ‘hidden curriculum’ has expanded dramatically, to the point where it is now becoming the dominant aspect of modern curriculum design. We have already highlighted the ability of learners to be able to apply the Learning Process and to be competent, as being critical to them being able to take increasing agency over their learning. Competence needs to be developed explicitly, rather than educators modelling the competencies and expecting learners to pick up on those and imitate our actions.
We have also seen the need to redefine our understanding of intelligence. Last century intelligence was about how well the student did in their tests that asked them to recall knowledge and then, on occasion apply that knowledge to a specific context that they had learned. Hopefully by now you are starting to rethink and recalibrate our perception of intelligence and see it as a characteristic of all learners rather than just for some of them.
We also need to recalibrate our notions surrounding soft and hard subjects and the marginalisation of the soft subjects as domains less able students should do, while the ‘intelligent’ students engage in mathematics English and the sciences. These are all historical notions that we, as educator-learners, need to realign in our thinking. The simple reason for this is that our brains have mapped and automated the concepts that underpin our existing practice and over the years these concepts have become automated, and unchallenged, and these habits need challenging. The difficulty is changing these automated responses and creating new ones.
There are four other domains that also need unpacking including the role of technology and its impact on the way in which we are all now learning. Technology provides us with access to almost unlimited knowledge and a set of tools that allow us to apply that knowledge, via the Learning Process to creatively be innovative and ingenious.
The rise of technology as a learning enabler is accompanied by the transformation of classroom architecture and the transitioning of classrooms into shared spaces where each educator’s learning practices are ‘on show’. This change involves a complete mindset shift for teachers who are migrating into shared spaces and flexible learning environments. Innovative Learning Environments (ILE’s), are encouraging a more personalised approach to the Learning Process.
The use of data to inform practice is also being taken on board by many schools to ensure that the learning is targeted, specifically at the individual learner’s needs. This can be time consuming but the reward for the effort put in is huge. By experimenting and applying the Action Learning (Research) process, educators can get a better grasp of the learner’s progress and then this allows formative assessment becomes a reality and hugely beneficial for both learners and educators.
The final couplet of processes that underpins an effective curriculum in this century is the move to both the competencies and the learning domains being mapped conceptually. The contexts for those concepts are left to individual schools to customise to the learner’s vocabulary and their experience.
166 The chapter 22 summary video can be found here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClyeWM5rquE if you are reading the book, otherwise click on the video icon at the top of the page
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