At the recent NZCER Curriculum Conferences a whole lot of conversations were started about the new curriculum, 21st Century learning and what this means for schools. We are hoping these conversations can be continued here. If you get lost finding your way around the blogs or can’t decide where to put your comment or question, just post it here.

You can read more about the Curriculum Conference series here: http://nzcer.org.nz/default.php?cPath=21_394_396

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One criticism I do have of the seeming trend against ‘filling’ students up with knowledge in favour of making them ‘competent to find it’ is that an overwhelming number of my students have a debilitating lack of basic general knowledge. This in turn contributes to their difficulty in assessing the usefulness of knowledge they do ‘find’.

@Adam Smith
Hi Adam, thanks for your comment! I think many people have similar concerns about question of knowledge and its place in 21st century learning. A short response to this is to say that 21st century learning (at least as we think about it) is not simply about focussing on the learning PROCESS at the expense of learning CONTENT, but rather moving ourselves towards a new way of thinking about the interactions and interconnections between learning as a process, and the “stuff” of learning. It does require us to rethink some of our conventional ideas about learning content, but it certainly doesn’t mean that knowledge isn’t still fundamentally important in learning. You might find it interesting to discuss this with Ally on her blogposting which asks “how do we decide what to teach?”. I’ll also see if we can get a blogthread going so we can all discuss your comment/criticism further!

I agree with Adams comment and this has been one of our focii in terms of developing a conception of what 21st C learning is. Unfortunately in the curricula documents there is very little definition around what achievement objectives actually are and this led to a vagueness around what content, contexts and concepts might or might not be valuable for learners to learn. In the recent project “Whatever Next?” We asked the question ” what are the concepts that underpin learning within the competencies and the learning areas. What we next did was to look at 20 international curiculum frameworks resulting in hundreds of concepts for each learning area and competency and then distil them down to the core ideas. Out of this distillation process we arrived at between 20 and 30 concepts for each of the curriculum areas and the competencies. The next stage was to then develop a a developmental cognitive sequence of understanding building up to the understanding of the concept framework. The subsequent process was to turn those concepts into learning intentions and then allow schools to choose their local contexts and this would define the content. We have now completed this project and if you wish me to send you a sample I can do that. Just e-mail me at mark@work.co.nz . In this way we are focusing on understanding rather than just learning random pieces of knowledge which may or may not be useful for the future. All the best with your work.

Hi Mark, I’m really interested in your comments. I too think it is really important that we put some time into really thinking about what are the core “big ideas” that we need to be developing in the different learning areas and why these ideas are important? One of the challenges I see is getting the balance right between breaking things down into small enough pieces to be able to “get a handle” on what the idea involves but at the same time keeping a view of the big picture. I’m also interested in your idea of developing “a developmental cognitive sequence of understanding” and wonder whether the sequence is the same for all learners. Is there a fairly predicatable linear progression or is learning more idiosyncratic and networked? I am particularly interested in primary/junior secondary science education and will take you up on the offer to email you for a sample of the work you have been doing – thanks. It would also be good if you could contribute some of your thinking in this area to our “shifting schooling” blog thread. I raise some questions in a blog there called “How do we decide what to teach?” and would be really interested in your comments. Thanks.

If you are exploring the Thinking Objects section of this site (they are under resources) you will see that you can now make comments on the objects. Have a look at Miles Barker’s feedback on one of the Thinking Objects and join in the discussion about what interim steps teachers might be able to take to move their practice towards something more future focused. Maybe if we had some more concrete ideas about how to start we’d feel more confident about trying something different.