NZ
science teacher
scienceeducation
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implementing the new curriculum Implementing the new curriculum poses many challenges for HODs, and in this article Graham Foster, Director of Science, Epsom Girls’ Grammar School, writes about his experiences. This article outlines the journey I have undertaken to try and grasp the ‘true’ intention of the revised NZ Curriculum (NZC), and to prepare resources that re-align teaching, learning and assessment in Science to the revised curriculum. It has been written to support other HODs (Heads of Departments) by providing a possible pathway towards implementing the new curriculum. The revised NZ curriculum identifies national priorities and considers curricular elements such as content, pedagogy and key competencies. There is also the need to consider the issues of: more explicit instructional strategies; use of inquiry and investigation; integration of the principles; values, key competencies. Finally, there is the issue of assessment/evaluation. The TKI website is a very good starting point for both HODs and staff who must be encouraged to engage with the spirit of the curriculum that goes beyond ‘tweaking and auditing’ current programme statements. Staff must also be supported to develop a cross-curriculum culture of sharing and the collaborative building of a coherent programme of learning. For me, this has been a challenge, and I have enjoyed being a part of our school’s strategic management team as we have explored this and other issues.
Looking at the new curriculum
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The 2008 new NZC aims to support today’s students to learn in a way that will prepare them for the world of tomorrow such that it: • includes a set of common values • places more emphasis on themes relevant to today’s society • contains five key competencies for students • raises the profile and status of learning a second language • raises the profile and status of statistics within mathematics • makes the Treaty of Waitangi explicit in the overview, purpose, principles and values • recognises the need for schools to work closely with communities to design relevant learning programmes. The curriculum also provides greater clarity for teachers, students and trustees by providing clear and simple statements about priorities, expectations and outcomes for each learning area. It also details the type of teaching that should bring out the best in students. And it gives back to teachers greater freedom to choose what students learn (you may recall the ‘hearts and hands’ of the ‘80s). Impacting on the new curriculum is the Ministry of Education ‘Personalised Learning’ document that was published in 2006. It emphasized that teachers should shift from developing better learning experiences to enabling students to become better learners. Therefore, we need to design learning experiences that enable individual student development – changing the focus to providing programmes of learning that better meet
the needs of individual students to develop critical competencies. How do we develop better learning experiences? I have found Graham Nuthall’s book entitled The Hidden Lives of Learners (published by NZCER) helpful. Graham’s research discusses the three worlds that learners bring to our classroom: the personal; social; and teacher intended world. I strongly recommend this as a must read.
What is my school’s approach?
As a whole school staff we explored the possible needs of students in 2016 and what society might look like in the future using Secondary Futures themes of ‘Inspiring Teachers’ and ‘Students First’ as starting points for the discussion, allowing us to gain a better understanding of the ever-changing world of our students. From this, our staff explored key competencies by using the resource entitled Iceberg (by Rosemary Hipkins, NZCER) as the starter exercise in our learning area groups, and Kick Starts (NZCER). Then at a regional HOD professional development day we looked at Kick Starts 2 exercise: The Water Cycle. This enabled us to see how to move to a more student-centred approach. Meanwhile in our school we continued to discuss the Key Competencies, providing a wonderful opportunity for the various learning areas to share what they are currently doing. This helped us to better understand our own situation, what we needed to continue and identify the opportunities available to us. For example, opportunities were explored at a specific cross-curriculum meeting between the Science-Mathematics departments to ensure coherent and supportive teaching in both our programmes. We also developed a small one-off project between the GaTE-Philosophy and Science programmes for the Rutherford essay. We explored effective pedagogies as outlined in the curriculum document by posing the question: How do we in our learning area…establish positive relationships with our students; provide opportunities for students to adapt their learning for their own purposes; encourage students to take their learning in our subject and apply it elsewhere; show we value the knowledge of others? etc. We then looked at the school-wide issue of “why do we need a Managed Learning Environment?” This allowed us to look at the amazing potential of ICT: student management systems including MUSAC programs or their equivalents; learning management systems such as Google, KnowledgeNet and Ultranet; eaSTTle, KAREN (Kiwi Advanced Research and Electronic Network) and TKI, all of which add to the collaborative and individual student learning. We realised that teaching and learning will not always be teacher centred, or based around specialised subjects, but instead students might be working with different combinations of teachers, at different times, all depending on when they might need to utilise their expert knowledge. So in the 21st Century the curriculum needs to give more equal emphasis to the key competencies: Participating and Contributing; Managing self; Relating to others; Thinking; and Using language, symbols and texts.