What is leadership in curriculum?
Whatever the answer, the question should not be confused with a related but far different query: What is management in curriculum? Yet, I suspect that few people with curricular responsibilities appreciate how different the questions and answers are – and why real leadership is rare yet sorely needed now.
Management. Curriculum management is an easy-to-grasp idea. An administrator with curriculum-management obligations ensures that the curriculum gets revised or at least examined in cycles, e.g. every 5 years, on a staggered calendar. Then, the manager ensures that time and money is set aside in July for the work, and requests/invitations for teacher-writers are sent out. At the writing meetings the writers make decisions on how to tweak lessons or activities and suggest resources. The work is done when time and budget run out.
Such work requires no leadership per se. And such work predictably leads to documents that educators in the schools who were not part of the writing rarely consult. Why do we keep permitting such a vital task to continue with such obviously poor results?
Leadership. Curricular leadership thus requires questioning the whole enterprise of curriculum writing as just outlined. A leader would be eager to forge something quite new and different to overcome the longstanding weaknesses of the current system. At the very least, a leader would establish clear and explicit product goals and criteria by which all curriculum writing/editing is to be done moving forward. What is the purpose? Who is the audience? What follows for structure and content? These are the three basic ‘backward design’ questions that curricular leaders would insist on asking repeatedly and would hold curriculum writers accountable for addressing.
Here is a set of questions that map out with greater specificity what any curricular leader would expect writers to have answered and justified:
- What is the purpose of the curriculum? What follows for form, content, process, and who the writers should be?
- For whom is the curriculum written? What follows for form, content, process, and who the writers should be?
- To what extent is the written curriculum obligatory? (The answer might vary, depending upon the years of experience of teachers; and for different parts of the curriculum, e.g. Goals might be obligatory but teaching a matter of freedom as long as methods align with goals.)
- What are the key deficits of current teaching, assessing, student engagement, and student performance that need to be better addressed? How will student engagement and understanding-focused learning be designed in? How will increased student autonomy (and thus gradual release of teacher responsibility) over time be designed in? How will writers obtain answers to these questions before writing?
- How will the writers get the feedback they need to ensure that the document is audience-friendly and likely to be constantly used by the intended audience(s)?
- What level of detail is demanded of curriculum, given the purpose and audience?
- What role should textbooks/programs play and NOT play in the local curriculum?
- How will “best practices” and research-based approaches to learning be designed into and highlighted in the curriculum?
- What assessments are demanded by understanding-based goals? What advice should therefore be given about what typical assessments NOT to use (as well as which to use), given goals?
- Given the heterogeneity of all classrooms, how should curriculum be written to help teachers know how to differentiate learning while meeting goals?
- What troubleshooting advice should be built into the curriculum in order to address likely rough spots in implementation and student misconceptions?
- By what criteria will the designing and revising of the curriculum therefore be assessed (and self-assessed) before determining that the writing has met the purpose/audience goals?
Clearly this set of questions demands lots of hard thinking, experimentation, sophisticated judgment, intense collaboration, and very high standards for the finished product.
Of course! That’s what leaders do, demand, and uphold. Who’s up for it?
34 Responses
I practically jumped out of my chair and applauded when I read this. Thank you!
Sign me up! These are the questions that make most uncomfortable. If only I could could find a place where this was the norm! #8 seems to the one most people in my district ignore most frequently.
Regarding getting out of our comfort level:
A ship is always safest at shore but that is not what it was built for!
A quote attributed to Albert Einstein that I heard in church this morning.
Reblogged this on The Education Conversation and commented:
I’m up for it.
Thank you for creating the path to begin taking this important work to another level. It doesn’t even occur to most curriculum directors to question the basic tasks of what we are doing and why. As usual, your insights create a new conversation.
Should we even be ‘writing’ curriculum in all cases?
Great question – implied in the ‘how obligatory’ question but worth asking baldly as you have done.
Exactly what I needed to read today! Believe it or not, curriculum leaders are not always appreciated. There seems to be a lot of comfort in the status quo.
Management equals compliance (sometimes) but true leadership fosters “buy in”
Fantastic article! We are taking a hard look at our curriculum this year and looking at developing a curriculum handbook/philosophy of curriculum. This article will be a good discussion point for us. Thank you!
I might add something like: How will the curriculum be revised and adjusted over time to meet student’s need to address real world skills?
You should attach the 10 curriculum components from Schooling by Design…as a way to think about what can be done…a vision…
I’d like to add one that I think starts everything off: “Why do our kids need to learn this?”
The list is great, thanks Grant. I’m curious about #12 and assessing the work for various audiences. My experience is that designs are rarely exposed to feedback and “audience testing.” I wonder about the pressure to get things out–as in managerial processes as opposed to getting things right as in the learning process. What criteria do people use to test for well-crafted material?
Great question, Scott. And one I think about a lot, given our design standards in UbD and as a result of my work with IDEO in Design Thinking.
The key criterion is: did it achieve its purpose?, for the intended audience? (That would take lots of discussion about purpose and audience first, of course).
The follow-up things that occur to me are basic: 1) here are 3 approaches to framing and writing the curriculum; which one do you like best? I’d start there, early in the process. 2) Then, once a draft of the curriculum were done, it would have to go to ‘beta’ testing – try it out in the fall and get feedback from users. The draft would be finalized in the late fall. 3) Make the whole thing digital and permit teachers to vote on whether the curriculum is user-friendly and helpful, as well as propose immediate edits/additions/resources/variants, based on what worked and what didn’t – and make that discussion happen across a few staff meetings.
1, 2, and 3 are ones that I constantly see/hear that is misunderstood. The curriculum is the standards, it has to be be completely covered, and cannot be changed. I hear this constantly. I was even told by a teacher that blogging and collaborating with other schools was not in the curriculum so it could not be done. How do you respond to someone who thinks like this?
This is actually a revealing insight into the problem. In the absence of a clear purpose/audience for the curriculum, people are understandably not clear on what it means for something to be in it or not in it. I don’t think more that 20% of educators – never mind the general public – understand the distinction between standards and curriculum, therefore. Because if you believe that the standards reflect your job obligation, then it makes sense that people think the standards are the curriculum even if one is ends and the other means. It shows that far more has to be done to signal the following:
1. Which outcomes are obligatory?
2. Which means are obligatory?
3. What outcomes are obligatory or essential – but not currently covered by curriculum (e.g. habits of mind, Mission-related 21st c skills, etc.)
4. What means beyond those in the curriculum are appropriate vs. inappropriate? i.e. what oversight is there on teacher choices within the curriculum where such choice is encouraged (e.g. choice of instructional method)?
Grant – as always insightful. I have just become the asst superintendent for C & I at my current district and have been struggling to put my finger on what is wrong with the system. You just made it click – I am trying to lead in a system that is based on management. Advice on how to begin to make the change??
Thanks for daring me to push my post to the next level! The outpouring of interest and positive support for this post has led me to start drafting a follow-up with some suggestions.
meanwhile, i would start with trying to develop a mission statement for the curriculum – its formal and official purpose/audience – and have the Board and other key people sign off on it. Then, assemble a team of people willing to start fresh with what follows from the Mission Statement.
More in future posts…
Meanwhile, readers of my blog: can you cite a few local changes for the better to curriculum-writing (in either process or product) that addressed the typical weaknesses and/or my questions?
Grant’s insights echo his delivery: questions over assertions, intentionality over arbitrariness. Curriculum must recall the journey (root word) of schools to grow together always with the child in front of our decisions.
My current district selected curriculum for algebra I that is ludicrously difficult for the population, but promises to take the kids through the common core requirements. It’s the Springboard curriculum, owned by College Board, which is where Coleman went, which is of course entirely a coincidence.
I had nothing to do with this selection; the teacher who did believes the material is way too tough, that it will help a few kids on the margin, that we will not fail all the kids who can’t do the work (lots of Cs, he says), but knowing all this he is still leading an effort at our school to take all the kids in algebra I (remember, algebra I kids in high school are usually the bottom half of the ability scale) through this material. The “planning” per se is pacing. He allows we probably won’t do the stats stuff. I don’t teach algebra I, so this won’t affect me this year.
The books are consumables, which means we have to deal with the kids who will sell their version of the book to subsequent kids. The guy at our school working this points out that in many cases, key information is not printed in the book,but the kids are expected to fill in blanks for that info, and talked about the risk that they get it wrong. I suggested graphic organizers with key info, and he said “but then we won’t be sticking to the curriculum.” I locked my jaw shut.
The last school I was at started this process the year after I left. The district insists that all algebra teachers use the pacing guide and the tests. One teacher, a senior algebra specialist who had been district teacher of the year (a very big district), refused. The district specialists came and visited her. She turned in fraudulent data the rest of the year and her resignation papers that week. That school had to hire four math teachers that year due to similar reasons.
Supposedly, we are getting the algebra II and geometry books next year. If so, I have absolutely no intention of using them. I will make the kids give me the consumables, use pages from it as I see fit, supplementing with my own material. That’s if I’m at the school; I will either get tenure this year (expected) or I won’t be at the school anymore, and it’s not an issue. I expect the results from the algebra I experiment to be dismal and thus I won’t get any crap. If I’m wrong, and scores skyrocket, I’ll rethink, obviously.
What’s my point? The curriculum process at a district is just like standards at the state level. They are either pro forma, or they are enforced. Enforcement leads to a HUGE expenditure of force, which leads to a lot of resignations. My last district is dealing with the price of enforcement; it remains to be seen how seriously my current district will take it. We are a high performing district; my sense is that the kids who can’t do this work (the ones I work with) will be quietly left alone. I hope so, anyway.
What you describe is the pro forma effort. Districts go through the motions because it’s required, they know they have to waste money on the effort. They minimize the effort and use it as a nice way to give some teachers some money. Acknowledging it’s a waste of time creates too many difficulties.
What you want, apparently, is total buy-in from the teachers in the district, so that the curriculum is meaningful and enforcement is unnecessary. I want a muscle car and a Greek island. We both are doomed to disappointment.
I want to be clear that I *do not* want total buy-in. Unless everyone wants to do it my way.
I am aware how pro forma it all is – partly why I continue on with my quixotic quest. I do so because I think that if people were inspired by a creative set of curricular goals and invitations to achieve such goals (and help where needed and wanted) then, indeed, results would improve, the experience would be more helpfully consistent and collaborative, and a culture of innovation rather than compliance would be established. I don’t think it is impossible. I am, however, prepared for more years of disappointment. However, I think the total waste of money on expensive books and curriculum staff and processes at some point has to cause someone to say: there must be a better way.
I agree with you about the waste of money. It’s pretty stunning.
But what of the possibility that we shouldn’t seek buy-in and shouldn’t do a pro-forma curriculum? Is it wrong to accept that what actually happens–teachers implementing the standards as they see fit–is probably the best outcome?
I don’t think it is wise to leave it up to isolated individuals who may or may not have read the standards carefully or considered what does and doesn’t align with them. There has to be some oversight, in my view. I have sen far too many wacky interpretations of the standards and/or deliberate ignoring of them. I think the ideal situation is to agree to agree on what the standards demand via conversations in which they are analyzed and then make clear the parameters for everyone. There is way too much incentive – especially for secondary people – to just do what they have always done, regardless of what the standards say, in the absence of oversight.
I agree with this in theory. But in practice, the reality is that teachers are pretty much allowed to do whatever they like.
So my question is this: rather than create this whole huge process that we agree is preforma, how do we simply acknowledge reality and give constraints? How do we say “within certain parameters, teachers make their own curriculum decisions” and then enforce the parameters?
I agree that this is most excellent. Maybe a bit cumbersome, but don’t ask me how I would adjust it right now. The whole “audience” matter puzzles me. Are some curriculums written for parents and/or administrators? Well, maybe.
OK, some comments from personal experience:
1. Clear ideas for what one wants to happen in each grade or sequence helps immensely; there is no substitute This is one place where research and theory enter critically. Everyone needs to know “why” before they can know “what.” or “how.”
Teachers tend to kick and scream a/b the research component. The leader needs an uncommon grasp of this in order to coax, prescribe and insist.
2. This is the case, I suspect, no matter how the writers group is selected. I worked for a chair who told me late in his career that “you learn what people can and will and you likely ask them frequently. You reward them in whatever ways you have, even something so small as room assignment.”
This, however, leads to issues of morale and compliance – resistance overt and silent.
3. In my work, we usually provided some fairly specific plans/approaches; most teachers new to a course could mostly manage a first time through. My tendency was always to offer and mention options, but that was considered “too loose” for some users. Not by the users, but the leader. Especially in early years, professional development w/in the department went on. Teachers were advised, even strongly encouraged, to take courses.
4. Assessment. Here, I refer to composition strands. The chair collected several student writing portfolios from each teacher. I don’t know about feedback. If you didn’t get any, you were happy. One could always ask questions – I’m not being sarcastic.
Reblogged this on And There Came a Day… and commented:
Very salient points by Grant Wiggins. In my former role as an Assistant Principal, I fear I was more manager than leader in this area. I love his question: “why do we keep permitting such a vital task to continue with such obviously poor results?” Why, indeed.
Reblogged this on Tommy found a real book. and commented:
Definitely fuel for thought as we head into curriculum planning time again. Thank you Grant Wiggins.
I really enjoyed reading this post. I struggle with effectively integrating a lot of these leadership practices, due to what is the “status quo” culture of instructors and subject matter experts I work with (and time constraints that sometimes even rush the routine management of curriculum, so it can be hard to picture where I would make time for additional challenges). I also thought maybe I was trying to reach too high or work with curriculum and instructors in a way that was unrealistic, but this posting reaffirms my mission to achieve some change, however small I may have to start and however slowly the process may be. These are all important questions and may have different answers and approaches based on the learning environment, but are necessary for a true leader to ask and answer.
So would you say that a school defines the curriculum, or does the curriculum define the school? I kinda think it’s both, as I think the school defines the curriculum, but the school is also a reflection of the curriculum. What do you think?
To me, the curriculum reflects the mission, in the ideal. Alas, few schools are mission-driven and work hard to ensure that curriculum reflects the purposes of the school. So, for example, many so-called progressive schools have constraining curricula and many so-called rigorous and demanding schools use low-level activities and assessments.When the written and implemented curricula fail to reflect mission, then we can say that the school has become its curriculum, regardless of what it claims.
This is no minor issue of theory. Arguably the worst thing happening in American education now is the limiting of imaginative teaching and rich curriculum writing because of the false belief that standards require a cramped and constrained curriculum – regardless of school mission and teacher values. We are paying the price for this misunderstanding daily now.
I would suggest that the essential question is how we answer question 1 in your list of steps. What you call, “the limiting of imaginative teaching and rich curriculum writing because of the false belief that standards require a cramped and constrained curriculum” is spot on. I would posit that this limitation is by a limited view, if not in words, then without question in action, to recognize that the purpose of a curriculum is far more than teaching math, science, reading, writing, etc. Until we place at least equal value on the so called “soft” skills I believe we will continue to limit the power of our teachers and students. We see examples in pockets throughout education of how this can be done in models of instruction such as PBL, Gamification, Passion Projects/Genius Hour, Experiential learning at the higher ed level … These provide a venue to develop creativity, ingenuity, problem-solving, collaboration and independence. If we were to include these skills in every part of our standards, create assessments and a ladder of skills that went from K to 12th grade we would see an explosion of creative teaching and the development of skills that many view as most important. Bottom line, we end up where we aim. If we do not set the purpose of our curriculum wide enough to include the “soft” skills and provide substantive tools to provide instruction on those skills we will continue to suffer from limited imagination in our teaching and learning.
“There is way too much incentive – especially for secondary people – to just do what they have always done, regardless of what the standards say, in the absence of oversight.” …This makes me ask the question: Are we transforming our instruction in order to be measureable by standards or are we conforming the standards to fit our current instruction???
Your question is spot on. I think the standards, at their best (e.g. ELA Anchor Standards) require that we change bad habits, to focus on complex work done with increasing rigor and independence – but many faculties pervert their meaning to justify current low-level practices. That’s why, in my view, the Standards are woefully deficient in their current form because they do not clearly describe which practices do and do not fit with the Standards.