I have received a number of interesting questions and comments in response to my 2 blog posts on curriculum. Before I respond directly to some of them I want to make a few general comments to address a few misconceptions.
Numerous writers said – well, sure: voc. Ed. and art have been doing this forever. I am of course aware that there have been courses devoted to learning skills/crafts/trades/arts since the beginning of education. I have for many years – decades, even – held those performance areas up as exemplars (see, for example A True Test in Phi Delta Kappan in 1989). What I am proposing is far more radical. I am not calling for just a performance-based course; I am calling for a complete rethinking of what we mean by “course” “course goals” and (especially) “sequence” in any course. And that includes many voc. Ed and art courses which I think are often not well designed as courses. More on this later.
Secondly, a number of people seem to be blurring important distinctions. Problem Based Learning (PBL) is only one kind of curriculum-design approach to my more general point about future-focused autonomous performance. In fact, many PBL courses are quite weak in the sequencing of problems and the lack of focus on transfer. Similarly, Project-based learning is often haphazard and poorly-designed: it often is just a bunch of random projects in no particular sequence. It easily ends up being the opposite of what I am talking about – i.e. it ends up as almost no design at all. We throw up our hands and put it all on students and their interests. This is neither my goal nor does it solve the randomness problem described by Dewey in his critique of many Progressive schools 80 years ago.
Just because it is hands-on doesn’t make it minds-on.
Readers also surprisingly argued that if it was happening at Exeter then it could not happen in my little rural or big urban school. This is backward: it must happen in your school if it is best practice. We don’t similarly say, oh we could never do basketball the way great DI programs do; oh, we could never do Chorus locally the way Glee does it. I have no idea where this idea comes from but it could not be more wrong. By that defeatist logic, Jaime Escalante and others should never have tried to do AP courses in their schools. The goal is always to emulate best practice. In fact, Exeter’s approach works just fine in large urban classrooms as anyone doing Socratic Seminar knows. We have done model Soc. Seminars in inner-city classes of 50 (inner group discusses, outer group takes notes; roles switch halfway through) for years. Similarly, when I did a model PBL lesson in math in Edison HS in Rochester, the teachers were stunned at how engaged and effective their kids were. It is to our shame that our initial instinct is often to say “it can’t be done HERE…”
Demographics have nothing to do with designing backward from worthy goals and the need for engaging and naturally-developed work. Consider the wisdom in gaming: the games are designed. Brilliantly. For all. Consider what they have accomplished: you are led without feeling coerced to learn even though you have no teachers, you have many choices, and the sequence follows from your choices (yet isn’t random). Please don’t write and say they are ‘only’ games; the issue is what game designers seem to know better than most educators: how to design backward from high-level skill-integrated performance goals with maximal engagement. Read Reality is Broken to learn more about why what game developers know is far more sophisticated than what almost all curriculum developers know.
I was at UNC-Greensboro a month ago. As part of their MALS program they are designing online courses in which the teams are made up of Professors, game designers and instructional designers. Subject matter is as diverse as the history of science, geopolitics and logic. A current course in terrorism culminates in an elaborate simulation of a terrorist group takeover of an oil platform in the Indian Ocean. All prior learning has to be brought to bear, and each decision has different consequences. Fantastic courses.
Quite a few readers said – OK I buy it, but how do you do it in History? The answer follows from the gaming comments. You make historical content the means to addressing history-related challenges and problems, as in a game; and you don’t start with facts, you start with questions and challenges, as in a game.
Simple example. Opening 2 weeks of a US history course: the first assignment might be an oral history of a recent important messy event, say 9/11 or (for littler kids) a key event in the recent life of the school (big playground fight, change of rules, etc.). Essential Q: What happened? Says who? We of course then learn that there is no single answer, and both facts and meanings are all tangled up. BOOM – we’re doing history, in week one, and leaving the unit with serious questions (a key goal). Next lesson: what happened on Lexington Green? Same problem, only now it is our basic history: people have different facts and theories. Next issue takes us into content: why is the ‘Obamacare’ issue so filled with fiery rhetoric? What are the key issues underneath the posturing and politics? BOOM, back we go to the Federalist and a close reading …. Then we start to build timelines for the EQ of What’s the proper role of government?, as we fill in with more inquiry and teaching around that question.
Doing history, learning history on a need to know basis, getting deeper into more and more messy and complex history as we go.
Final assessment at year’s end includes the following EQs: What happened? Says who? How should we assess what they say? How did we get here today – and does it matter that we know? etc.
Obviously this is just a sketch of the direction I am proposing, but I trust you are beginning to see the idea. The content does not determine the flow, the goals of meaning and transfer do. But content matters; it can’t just be projects. It takes artful design.
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6 Responses
Thank you for the great comments and clarifications about project based learning. There is so much more to great education than simply “doing something.” We need to add purpose, autonomy and mastery to the mix.
As a former secondary history teacher (and a UbD “graduate”, trained by Grant), I can only add that frustration sets in quickly when faced with the chaos (Wheatley’s theory resonated with me in grad school which I happened to be in during UbD training) and groundlessness of no longer feeling comfortable with what you’re doing, realizing there’s more to the story. Once you’ve been exposed to backward design, you can’t “un-know it”, and there were days when I wished I’d never gone to Lambertville. There’s so much “unknown”, so much work to be done, and I couldn’t get past the idea that every former student of mine had somehow been cheated, insufficiently educated. My confidence waned. Finding deep purpose in what I taught required a more thorough inspection of my knowledge of the subject. Again, we need to consider (as a nation) the notion that teachers need to spend less time in teacher-training PD and more time delving into their subjects. But I digress…
Designing penetrating questions that would inspire students to examine history from alternative perspectives, to CARE, required time, reflection, discussion, and contemplation, all luxuries teachers cannot afford. I plowed through, unit by unit. I got through three units that year. Over time, you begin to structure your teaching regularly from the natural starting point of questions. “To what degree does perspective influence history?”, “To what extent does our government reflect our values?”, etc. Somehow, you just start thinking this way. It becomes a habit of mind when practiced and valued.
In Mathematics education, we could speak of the difference between doing mathematics and learning about what mathematics other people have developed. I’d much prefer students learn mathematical reasoning through constructing and developing their own mathematics, than learn that mathematics is a dry, dead subject that every aspect of seems well-developed.
I remember, Grant, after you proposed a radical rethinking of course design thinking,
“Yes, for history that would be both possible and important, part to make it more interesting and relevant to students. They have done a little work on this in the UK and Canada on what might be called “historical thinking”.
You have inspired to do more than just think about it.
I shall in the next year take our common Canadian history survey course, offered in several provinces, and see how it can be better shaped around assessment tasks.
I agree with your assessment of PBL as often done- from one “project” to “another”.
As with most of the radical ideas you propose (“radical,” in that they seek out education’s roots) you propose, I am fully on board. However, I am seeking a few clarifications about my role during these culminating tasks.
Let us say that I have planned an ELA unit in which students will address the question: What does it mean to love someone? Through multiple case studies (e.g. short stories, films, novels, etc.), they will build on a schema related to defining the abstract concept of love, will get practice in writing miniature extended definitions throughout the unit (as well as opportunities to support related claims with relevant evidence and logical reasoning), and ultimately will construct an extended definition of love. Since this extended definition answers the essential question, I have conceptualized this as addressing the “meaning-making” goal of the unit. Considering I will probably have to provide feedback opportunities (self, peer, and teacher), this would NOT qualify as a transfer task, right? Would I then, after students complete this meaning-making task, ask for one more novel application wherein students apply their extended definition to a novel situation/simulation/real-life scenario and call it my transfer task?
For example, students might receive a “Dear Abby” letter about a challenging relationship scenario and then have to make some kind of argument of policy (even if communicated through a scene or narrative) would address this concern? What role (if any) should student choice play in this transfer task (i.e. Might they select a medium for the artifact they create? Is this a vital concern or is their addressing the novel task a more pressing concern?) Does this conception of a culminating meaning-making task leading into a transfer task align with your recommendations?
I have been a horribly boring math and science teacher for many years. I work really hard (much harder than my students). I’ve tried new curriculums, I try to find engaging problems and find problems to engage my students and sometimes I succeed (for a little while). Finally this year, I have seen results and I think it is because I worked all last summer on creating courses that made sense, starting from a list of what I wanted them to know by the end. I had to use several resources and texts and couldn’t really follow any set curriculum that we had. I have been intentionally adding “purpose, autonomy and mastery. ” I also had to continually adjust along the way because I hadn’t predicted all of their misconceptions and gaps.I am still boring at times and it still gets tedious but when I had several students exclaim that the math problems I gave them last week were “great problems,” I felt a glimmer of hope. I am glad I discovered this blog.