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If education were like a restaurant, interesting ideas come to mind. A vending machine?
Fast-food? Exclusive? If somewhere in between, what are your reasons? Is your vision ideal?
Realistic? How so? Who manages the restaurant? How should the restaurant be managed...by
the owner/director or the employees? How should it be regulated...locally or centrally?
Mass-produced or farm-to-table? How many restaurants, or is it up to the community to decide?
Should there be any costs for the customer? Should students be perceived as customers? How
should the restaurant(s) handle special dietary needs (ex. In this case: learning disabilities,
physical challenges, etc.). Do the workers have a say? Do customers have a say?
The answers to these questions are influenced by history, culture, economics, global pressures,
technology, policy-making, power...a long list. There is a lot behind teaching and learning.
Lesson plans themselves usually follow a predictable pattern, but have an elegant structure of
three components: a way in, a way through, and a way forward. While it is a stretch to keep
the restaurant metaphor going, analogies can still be made. In this course on Curriculum Design
and Assessment, we have structured it along three themes: Theme 1: Curriculum and
Competencies; Theme 2: Design for Instruction; and Theme 3: Assessment.
Of course, all lesson plans consider all three components as a whole, rather than as a
step-by-step process. So, too, does the course see the vital connections between curriculum,
design, and assessment. In both cases, you need to know where you are going, how to get
there, and if you have arrived. We will study the three themes as distinct, but intersecting,
entities.
THEME 1: CURRICULUM and COMPETENCIES
Settings ● on-formal
Formal and/or N
What kind of setting ● Central and/or Distributed
A philosophy of curriculum orients how it is developed and what success means. Then it must
dovetail with a set of competencies and a structure that can sustain it.
THEME 2: PLANNING and INSTRUCTION
Let’s say you have developed a set of competencies, built curriculum around it, and supported
teachers to learning outcomes through effective and efficient teaching. Is it working? Are
traditional ways of determining success working? And if they are not, why?
THEME 3: ASSESSMENT
Would you eat here again? ● Has philosophy connected to curriculum and curriculum
Value to competencies?
● Summative Assessment
● Formative Assessment
● Innovations
● Teacher preparation/ongoing professional development
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○ Discussion
○ Readings
○ Activities
Realistically, of course, the three themes work together. A curriculum is hollow without
competencies and learning outcomes. Pedagogy influences how curriculum can be developed
and understood. The only way pedagogy can improve is through feedback loops and
assessments that enable teachers to evaluate curriculum, teaching practices, and student
performance throughout the process, rather than at the very end.