Sunday, July 31, 2011

Curriculum - Part V

THE HOW - This part of a curriculum is concerned with how the faculty will get 'The Who' to achieve 'The What'. Part of this involves an agreement on the teaching strategies that will be employed and part of it involves the leadership that should happen for this to take place. By-products of leadership (culture, management and creation) will be discussed in the next post.

CORE INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES:
These are the teaching methodologies or strategies that are essential for successful learning in the implementation of a particular curriculum. These can be organised around a 'premise'.
A premise should be research-based in order to facilitate best practice,
for example:

Premise - Students learn about excellence through exposure to models of excellence in both product and process

Instructional Strategy - Teachers will model the process of construction of text and/or jointly construct an example of text every time a new genre is introduced.

By having a core selection of instructional strategies, a school can be more aware of how they are implementing their curriculum. It is, however, important for school leaders to decide how closely they will require their teachers follow these strategies. Some schools might mandate the practice and others might leave it more flexible.

LEADERSHIP:
The framework for leadership below is authored by Michael Fullan and summarises the competencies that leaders should use in order to create a culture that supports authentic achievement. In doing so, leaders need to consider the context, which includes: past history; present beliefs; values and assumptions; and present practices.
Moral Purpose - In simplest terms, means 'acting with the intention of making a positive difference'. In education this positive difference can be referred to as 'causing learning.

Understanding Change - While it is essential for leaders to understand the change process, it is also important for them to understand the context they are dealing with for each group or person.

Relationship Building - If relationships improve, things get better. If they stay the same or become worse, ground it lost. Effective leaders encourage purposeful interaction and problem solving.

Knowledge Creation and Sharing
- Good leaders create environments that favour the exchange of ideas, provide opportunities to share and foster a moral commitment to share knowledge. Turning information into knowledge is a social process, and good relationships are required if we are to share and create knowledge.

Coherence Making - Involves making sure that the culture a leader wants is supported by the management structures. This is an on-going activity that leaders address. They need to ensure that valuable patterns and practices are recognised and retained.

No comments:

Post a Comment