1 Part 3 Embedding the New Curriculum. 2 a. Systems, Policies and Routines Once your new curriculum has been introduced, an important element of the embedding.

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Part 3

Embedding the New Curriculum

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a. Systems, Policies and Routines

Once your new curriculum has been introduced, an important element of the embedding process is ensuring that it is supported by all the school’s systems and routines. If not there will have to be changes.

As you will remember, at the beginning of the curriculum development process decisions were made regarding the school’s values and curriculum aims.

If the curriculum is to be truly effective, all the messages students receive from their day to day experience of the school life must be consistent with and supportive of these agreed values and aims.

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Some possible questions for schools to ask themselves

Inconsistency undermines effectiveness and searching questions are the first step to driving it out, for example:

o Does the language used by the adults in our school and the messages conveyed through display support the development of agreed curriculum aims and values?

o Does policy and practice relating to roles and responsibilities provide all students with opportunities to develop associated skills?

o Do school decisions relating to health and welfare reinforce curriculum messages? For example the food provided in school? The trips, visits and clubs on offer?

o Does the system for sanctions and rewards truly reflect school values and encourage appropriate behaviours?

o Is the school’s practice with respect to setting and marking of homework consistent with policy relating to the place of homework in supporting learning?

This is not an exhaustive list. Clearly there are further questions to consider.

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Activity 4

Do all the school systems, policies, procedures and routines give learners messages which are consistent with curriculum aims?

What other questions need to be considered?

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b. Consistent messages

The dominant message that schools in England have routinely and consistently conveyed is the primacy of examination outcomes.To achieve the necessary paradigm shift so that the importance of both knowledge and skills is continually reinforced, strategies are needed for transmitting consistent messages to this effect to students, to staff and to the wider community. These messages need to be regularly communicated through all the school’s channels and by all key personnel.

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The Power of Display

We all know the importance of first impressions. It is often claimed that a visitor can detect the ethos of a school within five minutes.

So what messages does the display in school give to learners who attend every day? How do we make sure that the school’s walls and noticeboards give young people the same messages as the curriculum?

Clearly display can and should focus on topics currently being covered in lessons but there is much to be gained from display about the process of learning itself.

Creativity

Critical thinking

Team working

The TrunkThe quality of pupils’ learning

experiences

Magnetism

Parts of a plant

Picasso

Churchill

The Romans

RhythmProperties of materials

Thinking skills

Personal skills Essential lit, num & ICT

Social skills

Enquiry skills L2L skills

Do you remember the tree modelof the curriculum?

The Tree Model in Practice

The model is very useful for explaining how a focus on skills, attitudes and competencies leads to deeper learning.

It shows how the roots support the branches and the leaves.

It can prove a valuable embedding tool in documentation, in the classroom, in the corridors and in the foyer.

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Create

Evaluate

Apply

Understand

Remember

Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning Objectives is a useful visual image to remind colleagues of the rationale behind the new curriculum

It can also be a valuable visual prompt to encourage learners to drive themselves to higher challenges and deeper learning

Higher order thinking

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c. Assessing Breadth of Learning

In unit 6 we covered the impact of the ‘pincer movement’ of Ofsted and league tables on schools.

This led to a narrow range of measurable outcomes being used to determine how schools were judged by inspectors and by their communities.

Thus data has come to dominate schools and the tests from which the data is derived have become the driving force with an impact across all areas of school life.

It is therefore little wonder that schools have not had sufficient focus on skills, attitudes, values and competencies.

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Assessing what we value or valuing what we can assess?

Written tests and examinations are familiar to everyone who is or ever was a school child. They are relatively easy to set, administer and mark and they provide data which can be used in a variety of ways, particularly to judge performance.

However, we know from the stick man exercise in unit 1 and from a wealth of other evidence that many of us describe a successful student principally as someone with a wide range of desirable skills, attitudes, behaviours and competencies.

So we certainly value what we can easily assess through tests but…

To what extent do we assess what we really value?

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An Assessment State of Mind

Much has been made of Finland’s success in international education comparison tables in recent years. Finnish students take no formal examinations until they reach the end of their time in school so they do not attribute their success to the rigour of their exam system.

One of the reasons often given for our failure to focus sufficiently on the development of skills and attitudes is the fact that they are difficult to assess.

How do we make sure that students make progress in terms of their non-cognitive development?

To what extent is assessment part of the solution?

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To assess or not to assess?

In Australia, where a National Curriculum is being introduced for the first time, they have identified seven skills and competencies which they term general capabilities. At a national level, rather than carrying out formal assessments of every child, the decision has been taken to monitor progress in different capabilities on a rotating basis through a sampling process. How can we ensure that learners are making good progress without establishing an elaborate and burdensome assessment system in our schools? Should our schools follow the example of Australia?To what extent could self-assessment contribute?Do we need to assess and monitor non-cognitive development at all?

In Unit 5, we explored in some depth the theory and practice of measuring and assessing skills. Whatever the decision with regard to the approach for assessing wider non-cognitive development, its adoption should not hold up the implementation of the new curriculum and the associated overhaul of teaching and learning.

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Activity 4

• The future with respect to ‘assessment after levels’ in England remains open to question. Hence many schools are unclear about how they will assess learning of knowledge in the traditional sense.

• What thoughts do you have about if and how you will assess wider learning? How do these thoughts align with your ideas about benchmarks from your Unit 6 homework?

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Principles of a World Class Curriculum A world-class curriculum will:• be based on clear, shared values, aims and principles that put the learner at the heart of the

curriculum and recognise their role as citizens of the world• provide exciting opportunities for the intellectual, physical, emotional, social, scientific, aesthetic

and creative development of every learner• ensure the development of competencies for learning and life and a sense of hope and agency in

every learner• encourage independence of mind and action and the development of individual interests and

talents• excite the imagination, encourage curiosity and develop creativity• secure learners’ knowledge, skills and understanding of the world's major branches of learning,

disciplines and subjects• ensure understanding of how learning in different disciplines is interconnected and relevant to life,

to global issues and to world events past, present and future• provide clear and relevant pathways for learning and the flexibility to respond to developing needs,

interests and contexts• locate learning in the context of the learner’s life and local community and also within a national

and international dimension• address contemporary issues as well as the big ideas that have shaped the world

We looked at the World Class Curriculum Principles in Unit 6. You may wish to revisit them and check your newly implemented curriculum against them.

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So finally your homework for Unit 7.

This unit has been about, as UNESCO put it, the challenge of ‘ensuring coherence and congruence between curriculum policy documents, the actual pedagogical process and learning outcomes’.

Carry out a ‘pre-mortem’ on your curriculum as / before you implement it. This idea behind this technique is that:a. you think of everything that might possibly go wrong and

thwart your plans for achieving your ambitious curriculum aims.

b. you ensure you have each eventuality covered so that it can be avoided before it happens.

Good luck with your implementation.