Stages

Preamble

This approach assumes that the school and or teachers are working on a specific curriculum theme that is understood to have some potential to improve student achievement and go some way is dealing with the challenges teachers encounter in their classrooms.

For instance, teachers often encounter problems with lack of student engagement, and or their teaching doesn’t seem to be working for some students. Alternatively some teachers report that their classrooms are often characterized by struggles to sustain positive relationships with the students whilst also demanding that they engage in challenging learning tasks.

Without being exhaustive, some options for curriculum development projects include: project based learning approaches, engaging more significantly with ‘student voice’, co-construction of negotiating the curriculum, connecting student lives and learning, and/or engaging with the local community. Another option is to work on designing challenging learning tasks.

For the stages outlined below you’ll need to insert your own curriculum theme which is especially significant for terms 1 and 2. You can find resources for some curriculum themes in the Student Voice and Learning Tasks section of the website.

The stages have been programmed around two staff meetings per term.

The program:

Date, time and venue

Purposes and activity

Term 1

Workshop A

Week 3

Provocation

This workshop will outline a provocation for [theme] and share some international models of curriculum and pedagogy. Participants will be thinking out aloud about the challenges of their classrooms.

Homework: Reading and research task

Term 1

Workshop B

Week 8

This workshop continues on from Workshop A and specifically unpacking key characteristics of [insert theme] curriculum and pedagogy and where in their teaching these could be developed. Cross referencing Australian Curriculum and the SACE.

Homework: Reading and identifying a possible curriculum re-design project

Term 2 Workshop C

Week 3

Re-designing curriculum and pedagogy:

This workshop will focus on re-designing a unit of curriculum that will be taught in term 3 through the frame of [insert theme] curriculum and pedagogy.

Homework: Reading and continuing curriculum re-design.

Term 2 Workshop D

Week 8

Designing action research projects

In this workshop participants will be introduced to an approach to action research that aims to explicitly examine a curriculum and pedagogical redesign initiative. We will share our initial ideas for a project and workshop how these could be action researched.

Homework: Working on designing action research

Term 3 Workshop E

Week 3

Refining the designs

This workshop will continue to refine design for the action research projects, and working on theoretical and practical details.

Homework: Teaching the new unit and doing some action research

Term 3 Workshop F Week 8

Reporting back on what’s happened

Everyone will report back on what happened and share aspects of their ‘data’.

Homework: Begin to develop a short presentation of your findings using template to scaffold.

Term 4 Workshop G

Week 3

What did we learn?

Participants will share their findings in the small group with a view to developing some insights across the various projects and also to refine presentations for the final workshop

Homework: Refine powerpoint presentations

Term 4 Workshop H

Week 7

Presentations and what is next

Convene a seminar style event for participants to share their projects with others and this could include others form their own school, and colleagues from other schools who are interested in this theme.