Designing the Classroom Curriculum Designing the Classroom Curriculum | Page 20

Designing the Classroom Curriculum
they should start teaching in the knowledge hierarchy and then plan how they will teach those knowledge
parts that are next in line. We examine the process of teaching design where these considerations are outlined
in Chapter Four.
Dealing with students as Individuals
To this point in the book discussions have firmly focused on the important role that teachers play in ensuring
all students make the required grade. The emphasis has been upon ‘every’ student. But, how does the teacher
design things in a school so all learn --- individualize the classroom curriculum?
One has to realize that the single teacher in a single classroom is too limiting for such an agenda. One teacher
working in isolation does not have the universal capacities to deal with the diversity of students that any
given class (age related) cohort will comprise (Lynch, et al., 2015; Lynch, 2012; Hattie, 2009). In appreciating
this you begin to realize why some students begin to fail.
To create an environment so all students can be accommodated the school has to evolve a staffing and
pedagogical plan to break the traditional notion of one teacher with one class organized as an homogenous
age grouping without a cohesive organization of abilities and readiness. New types of arrangement such as
teaching teams increase the teacher’s teaching capacities on the one hand, while also embedding them in
ongoing professional learning by virtue of their interactions with teaching peers on the other. Working in
teams is not without its challenges. Studies indicate that teachers need to be trained for such environments,
but in addition, school leadership is required to enact what really is a fundamental rethink on schooling
(Lynch, et al., 2015).
Team teaching environments where students are streamed into strategic achievement-based teaching groups
provides the teacher with a strategic opportunity to increase their teaching capacities. Such a movement is
contrary to the traditions of schooling and is a big hurdle facing school reform. We discuss how these
arrangements might be organized in the classroom curriculum in Chapters Four and Five.
In this chapter we have established that the business of the teacher is learning.
We define learning as the process of acquiring knowledge or skill through experience and from which the structure
of the brain has changed.
The teacher aims to achieve learning in each student by referencing their classroom curriculum to a defined
set of learning outcomes (which are set out in a subject syllabus according to a knowledge hierarchy).
Knowledge can be understood as being declarative or procedural in nature and thus the teaching strategies
that each requires are different.
Dimensions of Learning (Marzano and Pickering, 2006) is a set of teaching strategies that meshes with what
we understand learning to be and what is required for long term memory acquisition.
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