“Freddie and Frankie with Dad on Fourth Birthday 1964” by Fritz Liess is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Our class on Learning Design are in the midst of developing an online resource for teachers to assist remote learning during the 2020/2021 school year. Covid-19 has forced teachers from the comfort of their classrooms to an online environment, and due to the rapid development of the virus, remote teaching was minimally (many may argue insufficiently) supported by learning design and professional development. Our cohort is contemplating “what went wrong?” and “what went well?” in an effort to predict the needs and provide a resource that will support remote learning in conjunction with F2F instruction in the fall.
The perfect pairing for our Learning Design class is our Curriculum Studies class. While diving into the purpose, procedure and intention of creating curriculum in Curriculum Studies we are being asked to create the content for learning on our online resource for remote teaching. Perhaps in an attempt to simplify the subject and move on to the practice and art of teaching, I continue to equate curriculum to content. And yet the content we are creating for our online resource does not feel like curriculum. It truly feels like learning design. So what is the difference?
I still have much more reflection to do on the subject, but I would like to propose my thoughts and I would sincerely appreciate your feedback as I continue to wrestle with these definitions and concepts. I consider the relationship between curriculum and learning design to be similar to that of the Nature vs Nurture debate. Using the example of two identical twins, the DNA (near-identical building blocks of these two individuals) would be the curriculum. The curriculum is the same for all teachers in British Columbia: it is what we have to work with to direct or guide our teaching in the classroom. On the other hand, how those identical twins are raised (the nurture) is like the learning design, which is how the content is brought to life in the classroom and what skills are developed. I consider curriculum to be the creation of content and learning design to be the development of content in response to the learner.
It would be a challenge to raise a well adjusted, happy, productive member of society without the ‘nature’ and the ‘nurture’. If the content or curriculum is weak, the development or learning design can significantly compensate. The reverse is also true, however ones’ true potential can only be reached when the nurturing is optimal.
In the classroom, that means the teacher approaches their learning design with the student’s best interests at the forefront. While teaching the content, they are nurturing a love for learning, determining what an individuals’ needs are in the area of social, academic and emotional development. In British Columbia, our new curriculum attempts to bring content and learning design together by introducing the core competencies: Communication, Thinking, Personal and Social. Reflecting on the old BC curriculum, the new BC curriculum has scaled back its focus on curriculum and increased the importance of individual competencies. In an attempt to increase personalized instruction, the focus has shifted from nature to nurture.
It continues to boggle my mind that the debate continues when the answer has always been clearly in the middle for me. The athlete with less natural abilities can surpass his competitors with hard work and determination (A weak curriculum, exceptional teaching), but the sky is the limit for an individual with impressive nature abilities and hard work and determination (strong curriculum and exceptional teaching). If we are going to meet the needs of EVERY learner, we have to be strong in curriculum, learning design and curriculum development. We should always be striving for excellence in all areas.
I wish the pendulum would stop swinging so violently.
Bibliography
Dawson, T. & Parsons, J. (2013) Developing Learning Outcomes for Your Course: a quick start guide.
Iowa State University Interactive Bloom’s Taxonomy
