Smithers: Look at all the wonderful things you have, Mr. Burns: King Arthur's Excalibur, the only existing nude photo of Mark Twain, and that rare first draft of the constitution with the word "suckers" in it. The Simpsons 1989
I want to look at 20th Century approaches to creating a curriculum for 21st Century learners. I want to suggest that the process we have chosen to create a curriculum in New Zealand ensures that we are unlikely to ever achieve what we claim to desire, a curriculum that will meet the future learning needs of the 21st Century Learner.
A key Government goal is the transformation of New Zealand into a knowledge- based economy and society. We need to do this in a way that is distinctive to New Zealand and to ensure that all New Zealanders have a stake in the process, both now and in the future. Education will make a vital contribution to this transformation.
The publication of this draft New Zealand Curriculum gives you the opportunity to engage in discussions about the future learning needs of all students. Hon Steve Maharey Minister of Education. The New Zealand Curriculum Draft for Consultation
Schools across New Zealand are taking a day out from all that teaching and learning stuff to “engage in discussions” about the draft curriculum, with the expectation that they provide any "feedback by 30 November 2006.”
Given the fact that this document is purported to be a co-construction –
So far, more than 15 000 students, teachers, principals, advisers, and academics have contributed to developing the draft New Zealand curriculum, building on the recommendations from the New Zealand Curriculum Stocktake Report, published in April 2003. People have contributed by participating in working groups, providing input online, or taking part in focus groups. Developing the draft curriculum
there is an interesting lack of ownership and confidence in schools I visit about the draft discussion.
Many schools seem bent on bringing in “outside help” to tell their teachers what the new curriculum means on this day rather than spending the day grappling with the big issues themselves. Note to self: There is a whole new income stream for the purveyors of educational snake oil in this initiative.
I did fret a little over what bringing in the expert to interpret the document would mean in terms of the representative quality and diversity of feedback until I found the “official feedback questionnaire”. It is a classic Initiation Response Evaluation document designed to ensure that any feedback fits within MoE prescribed frameworks, is easy to analyse and only allows for feedback ideas that can be framed within an 150 word limit.
• Section A is compulsory, so please fill in all questions.
• You may select the questions you wish to respond to in Sections B and C.
• The comment boxes have a word limit of 150 words.
This questionnaire format of soliciting feedback to inform the draft NZ curriculum, is a 20th century approach to building an education system for the 21st Century learner.
Leftein’s ideas helped me understand the imbalance in the already constructed roles a questionnaire brings to dialogue over the draft curriculum.
The MoE is vested with epistemological authority wrt the new curriculum – the “draft” curriculum ideas collected from the 15 000 invited to contribute to focus groups etc have been officially authorized by MoE curriculum experts and editors. The MoE has controlled the process and the text, producing a “look at the wonderful things you have Mr Burns” hard copy with glossy colour cover, ISBN number 0 7903 1519X and PDF ISBN 0 7903 1521 1, all copyrighted to the Crown.
And then, well then to advise this copyrighted “draft” - the MoE produces the questionnaire with compulsory section one to advise the draft. No wonder some schools are made anxious by the invitation to take part in a dialogue over the curriculum and are choosing to rely on the interpretations of invited others.
You are real good at kneecapping stuff Arti” but what have you got as an alternative way to create curriculum?
Dunno, I am still captured by the ideas from James Boyle Duke University - A closed mind about an open world August 7 2006 Boyle states
Studying intellectual property and the internet has convinced me that we have another cognitive bias. Call it the openness aversion. We are likely to undervalue the importance, viability and productive power of open systems, open networks and non-proprietary production. Test yourself on the following questions. In each case, it is 1991 and I have removed from you all knowledge of the past 15 years.
You have to design a global computer network. One group of scientists describes a system that is fundamentally open – open protocols and systems so anyone could connect to it and offer information or products to the world. Another group – scholars, businessmen, bureaucrats – points out the problems. Anyone could connect to it. They could do anything. There would be porn, piracy, viruses and spam. Terrorists could put up videos glorifying themselves. Your activist neighbour could compete with The New York Times in documenting the Iraq war. Better to have a well-managed system, in which official approval is required to put up a site; where only a few actions are permitted; where most of us are merely recipients of information; where spam, viruses, piracy (and innovation and anonymous speech) are impossible. Which would you have picked?
Set yourself the task of producing the greatest reference work the world has ever seen. It must cover everything from the best Thai food in Raleigh to the annual rice production of Thailand, the best places to see blue whales to the history of the Blue Dog Coalition. Would you create a massive organisation of paid experts with layers of editors producing tomes that are controlled by copyright and trademark? Or would you wait for hobbyists, scientists and volunteer encyclopedists to produce, and search engines to organise, a cornucopia of information? I know which way I would have bet in 1991. But I also know that the last time I consulted an encyclopedia was in 1998.
Try this same thing wrt the New Zealand curriculum …
Set yourself the task of producing the educational curriculum for the 21st Century for a country determined to transform itself into a knowledge based economy and society. A country determined to do this in a way that is distinctive to New Zealand and to ensure that all New Zealanders have a stake in the process, both now and in the future. Would you create a massive organization of paid experts to consult widely and then produce a document that is controlled by copyright? Or would you wait for people from across New Zealander and elsewhere to produce, and search engines to organize, a cornucopia of a curriculum for the 21st Century learner?
Seems that despite the rhetoric in the New Zealand MoE’s “Enabling the 21st Century Learner e learning action plan” – we are not using 21st Century e Learning approaches to transform the way we develop curriculum in New Zealand.
Boyle’s thinking has allowed me to realise that we are ignoring the evidence from the past 12 years from the internet in our approach to curriculum design. It could be simply as Boyle suggests that we see only the potential of closedness and the dangers of openness. It could be that no one has challenged the fact that we are allowing the anxiety of the established players in curriculum development to limit the possibilities for the future.
One thing is for sure, our approach to curriculum design in New Zealand shows that as Boyle suggests "we are unable to see clearly the potential of the commons based communication approaches to produce interesting and invaluable content".
This is sad for two reasons
1. Continuing to use closed (non dialogic) approaches to building curriculum are likely to give us curricula that continue to fail to transform education and New Zealand for the 21st Century.
2. In the wobbly isles we like to think of ourselves as innovative thinkers (#8 wire stuff), and despite all the glossy documentation, Teemu’s question to the FLNW group pasted below shows that we have missed a chance to lead the way on authentic 21st learner curriculum reform .. just as well we were not entrusted with developing a world class encyclopedia 12 years ago
I was yesterday in a seminar arranged by the Finnish MInistry of Education and with several people we discussed if we could put the latest national curriculum on a Wiki so that anyone (well you must at first study the language) may improve it. This "improved" document could then be the bases for the next curriculum.
Have any of you heard about similar kind of project in some other country? I know that the South African national curriculum is in the Wiki Books but is it used to "improve" it or is it just there for people to have a look?
- Teemu
Recent Comments