When I say the word “curriculum” you probably have some ideas pop up in your mind. The first thing you probably think about is a piece of paper with a list of topics on it, maybe some dates or timelines. You might imagine some sort of rubric, or a set of broad themes. Basically, many people (myself included) draw so many parallels between the idea of “curriculum” and a course syllabus that they are considered one in the same. In my experience, this is sometimes true, and unfortunately very often occurs in early post-secondary courses. This curriculum/syllabus overlap leads to a stale education in which information is disseminated by a teacher and (hopefully) taken in by a student, for chapters on end, until all the topics on the syllabus have been covered in the order they were laid out (ie. “here are the things you need to know and I’m going to tell you them now”).
I noticed a shift towards a more product-based curriculum during my schooling – especially in early high school – both in the classroom and from public attitudes. Many times I would hear things along the lines of “school should prepare kids for the REAL world! They should be teaching taxes and finance, not trigonometry!”. These sorts of ideas fuel the “when are we ever going to need this?” attitude that nearly every teacher has heard expressed to them by students in their lives. The idea of a product-based curriculum sounds good on the surface (why should we make kids learn all these things when we could just teach them the things they need to survive daily life?) however it misses out on some of the key features of education. We educate not just to teach students how to get through life as it is, but to give them a platform to discover and flourish in the world around them. My father teaches senior high school math, and when approached with the “when will we need this question?”, he not only points to some of the useful aspects of math, but also expresses that not everything in life has to be 100% applicable, that it’s good to challenge your brain sometimes. The importance of gym class is obvious, you need physical exercise, but how often will you use the skill of volleyball serving in your daily life? The same goes for subjects deemed unimportant by these “real-life” learning ideas. You may not use calculus daily, but the exercise for your brain is incredibly valuable.
Today, we are seeing a new shift towards an active curriculum. Instead of a set of content and delivery methods, and a sole aim of achievement for those, we are seeing a push towards curricula which are shaped by the classrooms themselves. The core competencies of the BC Curriculum are a good exampled of this. The goal is to allow the curriculum to shift to match the strengths and weaknesses of the students and teachers, rather than shoehorning everyone into one streamlined system. This way, creativity is built into the curriculum, and students and teachers can work together to find the strategies that work best for everyone. The competencies focus more on letting students engage with both content and society in the way that benefits them the best. In this form of curriculum, it doesn’t matter if a student learns how to do their taxes during class, because they have become proficient at the skills that allow them to learn how to do that independently. In essence, we attempt to give students the tools to learn the content, rather than just presenting the content and hoping for the best.
The usage of formative and summative assessments is key when it comes to this “active” curriculum. This does not necessarily mean grading everything, instead it lends to the idea that we should regularly gauge how our students are responding to the content and processes of learning. At this point it’s important to not get bogged down in the words either, while summative assessments are usually feared (tests and papers etc), we can just as easily use them as markers for learning. I had multiple teachers in high school who would eliminate quiz or test marks if you did better on a later summative assessment that assessed the same things. These sorts of strategies allowed both teachers and students to focus on what was learned – and most importantly missed – during the delivery of curriculum, which in turn allows for the active reshaping of the curriculum to suit the needs of the class. Assessments can be especially useful for our own learning as educators as well. Good assessments give students a look into what they know already, and what they need to work on. In the same way, we should look at trends in assessments to see what students usually struggle on most, and use that information to reshape curriculum to reflect that.
In short, curriculum and assessment may be considered as two separate categories, but it is clear that they are integral to each other, and the ways in which you use them will have a massive effect on your class. An active curriculum which uses information gained from both formative and summative assessments to grow and change can do wonders for student engagement, happiness, and overall learning.
