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Like most educators in Alberta’s K–12 system, we have always been fascinated with curriculum. As the fundamental basis for learning and teaching, curriculum is a composite of many things. It is an expression of expectations: the attitudes, skills, knowledge or competencies that society values and wishes children and youth to achieve and demonstrate. Curriculum casts forward as a blueprint for our society, our hope for the future. Yet it’s also a collection of lived experiences, and helps to shape and support children’s learning and development in reaching their potential. Curriculum becomes the foundation for the future, on both a collective and an individual level.
For each of us, curriculum is characterized by time and place. During our childhood years, we experienced the curriculum we were taught in school. During our pre-service studies at university, we explored, analyzed and learned how to use the programs of study with our future students. As teachers, we experienced curriculum as lived with our students in Alberta’s rural, suburban and urban communities and beyond.
We know that curriculum can differ by country or province, but it can also differ within Alberta, in the way it is lived out and made meaningful within schools and communities, from Medicine Hat to La Crete, Rocky Mountain House to Fort McMurray. Each day, teachers and students try to make collective sense of a world that is changing more rapidly than ever before. This meaning-making, which is both collective and personal, happens between what is taught and what is learned, between what is discovered and what is shared.
Two decades ago, Ted Aoki (1993) used the term lived curriculum to describe the elusive and yet influential interplay between students and teachers, lessons, classroom activities, assessment and the culture of the school community. In the early decades of the 20th century, John Dewey argued that learning is a social experience, and students thrive in an environment where they’re allowed to experience and interact within the curriculum. Both Aoki and Dewey advocated for a learning experience that focused simultaneously on current and future developmental needs of students. These foundational understandings of curriculum are as true today as they were yesteryear. Yet, what has changed is how we imagine meeting these aspirations.
It is because of the powerful influence of curriculum on society and the individual that Alberta Education’s Curriculum Redesign initiative is so compelling. The initiative emerged out of Inspiring Education, a large-scale 2008/09 public consultation through which Albertans articulated their 2030 vision for education and for what an “educated Albertan” of the future would look like: he or she would be an engaged thinker and ethical citizen with an entrepreneurial spirit. As a result, Curriculum Redesign has far-reaching implications for the design, development and nature of Alberta’s curriculum, including assessment.
Emergence is a term used recently by scholars like Margaret Wheatley (2012), who suggests that emergent design occurs when people who are undertaking change work start with a clear intent, take first actions and then see what is needed next. She notes: “Working this way requires a great deal of awareness, [being] constantly curious to see how the larger system is interacting with our project, what other dynamics are at play … we take in as much feedback as possible and use it to figure out what to do next” (p. 31).
Emergence is a concept that reflects the new processes used by the team at the Education Program Standards and Assessment Division of Alberta Education. Previously, programs of study, assessments and resources were developed by ministry curriculum developers to a next-to-final draft stage; the profession was involved in the final stages of validating, piloting and revising. Using this linear model of development, each program of studies was given thorough consideration and consultation, with a staged implementation schedule. However, a serious drawback of this linear model of development was that each subject area could take up to a decade from initial conception to full implementation.
It should be acknowledged that these processes contributed to an education system that is highly regarded internationally. However, the lengthy processes described in the model above have also resulted in programs of study that could become dated before they could be refreshed, limited flexibility in provincial assessment practices, and quickly outdated resources and resource lists, especially textbooks. More significantly, the curriculum development model used resulted in stand-alone programs and philosophical approaches that were unique to a subject area without consistency in aims, goals, design and approach across programs. Some programs were linear in nature, others more spiral and recursive. Some programs were based on units of study or favoured the development of skills and attitudes, while others remained primarily focused on content.
To address these concerns and to help bring the vision of Inspiring Education to life, Alberta Education’s Curriculum Redesign is a multifaceted initiative with new development processes and overarching philosophy. Curriculum Redesign is more than curriculum reform—it’s about purposefully and strategically setting a frame for Alberta’s programs of study, assessments, and learning and teaching resources to achieve the vision of Inspiring Education. The ultimate goal of Curriculum Redesign is to re-conceptualize and refresh curricula shaped around a common framework of student competencies across subjects/disciplines, built on a foundation of literacy and numeracy, and assessed through both classroom and provincial assessments that have improved student learning as their primary purpose. Further, provincial assessment practices and reporting will better support teachers in understanding and communicating student performance, strengths and areas for growth. The overall result will be increased professional autonomy, less prescriptive curricula, greater ease and the flexibility to engage in creative interdisciplinary planning for teachers. There will also be more opportunity to place an emphasis on student inquiry, discovery and the application of knowledge, and more choice and relevance for teachers and students in local communities. Ideally, this will also result in a more nimble school system that can be responsive to a rapidly changing student demographic now and into the (un)foreseeable future.
As Alberta Education’s curriculum designers respond to the desires of society (as expressed in Inspiring Education), they will strive to create a consistent curricular foundation for programs of study for all subjects and grades, develop provincial assessments that can be more adaptive and responsive, and harness the richness of digital resources as they are created or discovered by teachers in their search for engaging materials. The following table shows key strategic shifts arising from Curriculum Redesign.
One of the new and emerging processes used in Curriculum Redesign that will help shape new curriculum is prototyping. Unlike piloting, prototyping is not about reviewing or validating what has already been developed. Prototyping is about co-creating, collaborating and learning from each other in the development of the new, competency-focused curriculum built on a solid foundation of literacy and numeracy. We will be taking from the past and the present that which we know works well in our curriculum, and that which will serve the needs of our students as they prepare for a future we can’t predict. And we’ll also let go of what we know doesn’t work well and that which lacks relevance in a 21st-century society and economy.
A call for proposals will be issued by Alberta Education to invite participation in prototyping to begin in the 2013/14 school year. Interested school jurisdictions, will be invited to take the lead in preparing and submitting their proposals to develop curriculum in collaboration with Alberta Education and other partners who can provide specific skills or expertise. Co-creative work will be undertaken in grade level groupings and also within and across six subject areas: arts education, language arts, mathematics, science(s), social studies and wellness. The goal of prototyping is to develop a scope and sequence, articulate subject-specific high-level learning outcomes, and identify and/or develop resources and assessments. A key advantage of this approach is that new provincial curriculum will be developed with teacher expertise in the context of today’s learning environments. It also provides the opportunity to try and trial these strategic shifts in curriculum directly with students and have the shifts considered through the perspectives of teachers, parents and local community at the earliest stages.
Competencies consistent with those described in Inspiring Education, as well as an explicit focus on literacy and numeracy—foundational to all learning—will form part of the common construct around which new provincial programs of study will be developed. Many of these competencies are already embedded in current programs of study; having them explicit across all subject- and grade-specific programs of study will ensure continuity of competency development throughout the schooling years and will reduce redundancy or gaps across subjects. We also know that a solid foundation in literacy and numeracy will help ensure students have the opportunity to reach their full potential. For this reason, in the future, literacy and numeracy must be integral to all subjects and all grades levels.
Through the prototyping process, prototyping sites around the province will be able to partner with co-creators that can enhance the project. This may lead to considerable community and expertise capital for the school at the local level.
Of course, prototyping is only an initial step to the development of provincial curricula. Care must be taken in each subsequent step to ensure that the products of prototyping can be practically adapted to fit the diversity of perspectives, identities and situations that exist in today’s and tomorrow’s education system. On the macro-level, Alberta Education is also considering the effect of these important and necessary strategic shifts in curriculum development on all other aspects of K–12 education, from high school credentialing and inclusion to strategies that will support students’ transition into postsecondary and into the workforce. Many of these projects are consistent with the “emergence process” of Curriculum Redesign, described earlier. Careful thought will be given to the next steps of Curriculum Redesign, and in later stages, to supporting change through communication, professional learning, and development and implementation strategies.
For now, administrators, teachers, students, curriculum designers, and the broader community have an unprecedented opportunity to contribute to a significant and potentially profound change. On an individual level, each of us can contribute by challenging how we consider and engage in the use and development of curricular constructs, such as programs of study, and carefully reflecting on how we engage in the lived experience of teaching and learning together. Everything depends on it—the future of today’s children and tomorrow’s society.
Information
For more information about Curriculum Redesign, visit http://education.alberta.ca/department/ipr/curriculum.aspx. The Inspiring Education report can be accessed at http://ideas.education.alberta.ca/media/14847/inspiring%20education%20steering%20committee%20report.pdf.
For additional research on educational transformation, visit www.teachers.ab.ca and look under Publications for the document A Great School for All—Transforming Education in Alberta.
References
Alberta Education. 2010. Inspiring Education: A Dialogue with Albertans. Edmonton, Alta.: Alberta Education.
Aoki, T. 1993. “Legitimating Lived Curriculum: Towards a Curricular Landscape of Multiplicity.” Journal of Curriculum and Supervision 8, no. 3: 255–68.
Dewey, J. 1915, 1902. The School and Society and The Child and Curriculum. Reprinted as one volume in 2001. New York: Dover Publications.
Wheatley, M. 2012. So Far from Home: Lost and Found in Our Brave New World. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.
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Ellen Hambrook is the assistant deputy minister of the Education Program Standards and Assessment Division of Alberta Education.
Gaylene Schreiber is an ATA executive staff officer in the Professional Development program area and represents the ATA as a member of Alberta Education’s Curriculum Policy Advisory Committee.
