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Free Radical
Teaching and curriculum development - two different professions
Tony Sherborne
10:45 | 16 July 2010
Many schools take the view: we're the people to develop our own science courses. After all, we understand learning, and we know our students best. Resource-sharing websites often reflect this opinion, with materials 'written by teachers, for teachers'.
Someone the upd8 team listens to, Roger Bybee, has recently argued quite the opposite. Roger is the educator behind the learning cycle (7E's), and he has made an important point:
Curriculum materials make a difference. They're not just to be 'pulled off the shelf and used ... as a mere resource or supplement'. They influence what is taught, and how it is taught. And most significantly, they affect student achievement. An effective set materials is a coherent teaching sequence - not a 'hunter gatherer' exercise, taking an experiment from here and a worksheet from there.
But creating such a scheme is a complex job. He recommends teachers 'resist the naive notion of developing these sequences from scratch and to seek out comprehensive curriculum programs that are thoughtfully and intentionally structured by research-based learning'.
That has a ring of truth for us. We've worked with many teachers in creating our courses. Writing a single activity comes fairly naturally. But most find that following the principle of 'backwards design' is a very unfamiliar, and demanding challenge. Rarely have teachers had experience of starting from scratch: carefully defining understandings and skills, working out what that means students can do, and only then crafting experiences to produce the desired results. And that's just the beginning.
We've learned that curriculum development is quite a different job to teaching. So when it comes to changing your scheme, it's just like renovating your home. Do you have the aptitude and time to learn DIY properly. Or do you want the peace of mind of calling in a professional - as long as it's a master builder.
