6 minute read
NZC PRINCIPLES FOR PRINCIPALS
how to strengthen your local curriculum design
Rob Clarke
CEO of Learning Architects
When was the last time your staff opened the New Zealand Curriculum and talked about how various aspects work in your school?
This is one of the first questions I ask teachers who wish to review their local curriculum. Invariably I receive a range of answers, with some teachers admitting that they’ve not opened it for a number of years! Perhaps this is just an indication that we are in a phase in education in NZ where we are addressing the consequences of a previous policy that in an endeavour to raise achievement in reading, writing and maths, unnecessarily narrowed the curriculum. One of the unintended consequences of this narrowing has meant that in many instances, teacher efficacy as designers of curriculum has diminished. So, if we look at how you can help get things back on track, I think the challenge is: how might you help your teachers design a curriculum that responds to the needs of our communities and is personalised, relevant, and engaging for your students? But this phase is not all doom and gloom. It means that school leaders and communities have an opportunity to take back the NZC, and make it their own. So if you’ve yet to do so, how might you approach this exciting challenge, helping teachers (and students) to become designers of your curriculum? I’ve gathered some ideas, divided into four stages depending on where you’re at in the process and with your thinking. 1.Go back to the principles. 2.Use them as a filter. 3.Use them at different levels.
4.Put the theory into practice.
Get back to the principles
Looking at page nine of the NZC I think there’s one single sentence that is really important: “They [the principles of the NZC] should underpin all school decision making”. In my experience, this is an oftenmissed statement with people going straight to an immediate learning outcome; but without considering which principle can ramp up the learning in a relevant way for their students.
It goes on to say that the principles are particularly useful in helping you plan, prioritise, and review so you can create a localised curriculum to include, engage and challenge all of your students. And when they are used in an ongoing way to plan, prioritise and review your curriculum, your teachers will become better curriculum designers as well, and have a clear rationale for choices in your localised curriculum. If it’s been a while since you addressed the principles in your school consider some of these questions to whet your appetite: • Can you and your staff name the principles? • Which principles are strong in your school, and which need strengthening? • When was the last time you asked your teaching teams to demonstrate how they use the principles, or one of them, to inform their planning? • Are your trustees aware of the principles and using them to inform policy decisions? • Might your students be able to give you feedback about the principles to inform school improvement activities? For example, via a Google
Form, or via your student council/etc.
Think of the principles as a filter
If you are planning to start the process of school curriculum review and design, use one or more of the principles right at the beginning of the process as a filter to view your school decision making - for example: • When making decisions, simply ask a question like: ‘which principles are guiding us here?’ Simple questions like this can be helpful for staff, students, parents or trustees because they prompt them to know about, and understand, the principles • Use the principles to make connections to other professional learning you are doing, for example, leadership development or digital fluency. This helps teachers to see that the principles transcend any particular learning area, topic or focus - they inform and deepen our views of what our localised school curriculum could be
• Because some principles have layers, you could use them to create a rubric (eg Future Focus includes: sustainability, citizenship, enterprise and globalisation). Then use this rubric with staff and students.
Use the principles at different levels
Given that the NZC states that the principles should underpin ALL school decision making, it is worth considering the levels of the school in which they are used. If you reflect on how this might work in your school, it will create opportunities for innovation that you might not otherwise have thought of. Leaders and teachers are likely to see the issue of curriculum design through a different lens from each other. Given this, it is helpful to view the principles from multiple perspectives: • As a teacher
• A support staff member • Your leadership team • The board of trustees
• The students.
Put the principles into practice
One of the best things you can do with any professional learning is to turn theory into practice so that it is useful for teachers and students.
It’s important to help staff review and develop your school’s curriculum, while supporting them toward a shared understanding of how the principles support your school’s vision and values, and key competencies.
Here are some ideas to try:
• Create a three-column table with the principles down the left, with two other columns: one is ‘what we do well’ and the other is ‘next steps’. You could workshop this with staff and also with students, board and parents to get different perspectives • See if your staff can prioritise which principles are strongest in the school, and which are in need of strengthening. One way I might approach this is to do it as an individual exercise, then combine and compare results as a collective • Encourage your teachers to go beyond merely saying ‘we do that’ and ask questions like: how do we show this aspect of this principle? Or in what ways could we improve this aspect of this principle? • Create an online form to survey your community. Using a Google form with sections means you can match information from staff, parents and students • If you ask teachers to incorporate the principles into their planning, ask them to also state how this principle might improve the learning of their students
• The principles are multi-faceted, so when looking at any particular one, go deeper into what it means and see if you can identify the components of that principle in your context. For example, if reviewing the Coherence principle, see if you can identify the links between learning areas, or how pathways are created for students, or even the degree to which the curriculum is connected for students.
• These are just starting points in what is an exciting process. No two schools will look the same, and so the way you design your localised curriculum review process will be unique to your school and its needs.
But if you’ve yet to dip your toe in the water… go on, do some quick reflection then just dive in and get back to the principles – and along the way, as well as strengthening your local curriculum design, you might just remind yourself what you signed up for in the first place!
