Task One

In recent years there have been several commentators critiquing school curriculum. As a result, educators have been shifting their attention to rethinking current curriculum. Curriculum is a guide for educators to set clear what should be learned and how to approach the teaching method. On some issues, there is not complete consensus on what students should know, how much they should know, how deeply they should know, and in what ways teachers should approach the instruction. The purpose of considering curriculum is to best benefit learners; either from the viewpoint of what should they learn or how they should be taught.

I am a foreign language teacher. One of the most important principles for developing the curriculum is that the content of what we teach must be meaningful for our learners. To define this more precisely, students should feel what they learn in the classroom is somehow connecting to other subjects they are learning and/or their experience beyond the school. The learning experience is an opening conversation between students and teacher. In the world language curriculum of my district, all the themes and units are addressed by questions. For example, our first theme at P1 is “Who am I?” Students will discover or communicate with their teacher in the target language to learn how to describe themselves in the target language. They learn what they need or want to know about themselves in the language. Also for the assessment there are no completely standard answers. This approach of teaching is student centered and conversational based; not teacher/lecture driven. Students have the opportunity to talk about themselves, what happened to them at home, or what they just learned at school (in the target foreign language, of course). I prefer this question-based model of foreign language curriculum because it is links the students’ actual thoughts and experiences with the foreign language, which reinforces learning.

Wiggins advocates that educators should move their focus from “covering the curriculum” to “creating curriculum”. Wiggins’ opinion implies that students would be better served if all the standard content and outcome statements were taught in question form. Students would actively inquire and discover the knowledge for themselves. Most of the assessments should be about big ideas and have an open ended format. Teachers are more like coaches rather than instructors. To be honest, I love this idea. The goal of education is that learners become thinkers – they learn to think for themselves.

However, I have reservations. This new approach demands more of the learners: their engagement and willingness to learn. This is a huge challenge for the big education environment. It seems not all students show up ready and willing to be active learners. Most students need standard guidance, especially in the early education stage. For some engaging and promising students, I believe this approach will benefit their learning greatly. In theory I love Wiggins’ idea. However, I don’t think all students are driven and engaged enough to make the Wiggins approach mainstream. It might be best for advance programs. Given that I teach students of broad academic competencies, for now I do not buy that we need a new approach to curriculum.

Come on in, EDG 615

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