Designing the Classroom Curriculum
small school and in the day-to-day life of busy teachers . Moreover , it encourages the widespread view that teachers know how to teach from experience rather than drawing from a research evidence base . From the point of view of a novice teacher , the model relies on the teacher ’ s capacity to identify the inputs needed for successful instruction . Paradoxically , the application of this approach encourages teachers and teacher educators to attempt to solve teaching problems of the Knowledge Age by using tried and tested solutions from the past .
While each model has a logic that assists the teacher to conceptualise how they will tackle a classroom curriculum development and planning task , collectively they are generally silent on pedagogy , on the specific strategies for teaching , despite having headings that indicate the importance of teaching . Curriculum development and design is a difficult , complex task and having appropriate time to do it is a crucial part of any teacher ’ s work life . It is not surprising then that generally , the curricula that teachers develop contain generalised hints about their teaching strategies ( e . g . “ group work ” or “ teach fractions ” or “ teach sentence structure ”) rather than planned and explicit pedagogical strategies . These appear as if they are to be added later , or indicate the teacher makes them up on the run . This inattention to specifying the ‘ teaching strategies ’ engenders what we term pedagogic void .
Pedagogic Void
The term Pedagogic Void means an approach to teaching which has no evidence base to support it and is illustrated by a distinct lack of pedagogic detail in the teacher ’ s classroom curriculum plan ( Smith and Lynch , 2010 ). In other words , the teacher simply ‘ makes it all up ’. While lessons might well be interesting and engaging – meaning fun -- for students , a review of learning performance data --- if there is any ( this is the general profile that follows pedagogic void ) --- will show that learning is ‘ hit and miss ’.
Each curriculum development model sustains a pedagogical void simply by its lack of attention to the actual implementation- the detailing of specific teaching strategies . Pedagogic void is not simply remedied by more teaching information detailed in the classroom curriculum document . It requires an understanding of and a capacity to implement evidence-based teaching strategies , a systematic pedagogy . This is a state of affairs that has come about because of the belief that everyone can ‘ teach ’, how one teaches is a private , individual decision , and the paucity of research about ‘ teaching ’ in comparison to ‘ curriculum ’. In a ‘ teacher culture ’ that considers the best teachers are ‘ born ’ and that creativity is the fundamental ingredient of the craft , pedagogic void can be a difficult concept to grasp . Let us now explore the concept in greater detail . Teaching culture is embedded in theories of curriculum , yet , curriculum theory , attending to the what of education ( the content for example ) while eschewing the how questions ( how do I actually teach the content ?), has dominated Australian education for decades . In teacher education , the presupposition that how to teach can be left to the teachers in schools during ‘ prac ’ periods is sustained by the scholarly ethos that “ questions are what we , as educators , are about , more than we are about supplying answers ” ( Carlson , 2005 ). Whatever the reason , it appears to us that pedagogical practice is not a central concern of curriculum theory , development , design or planning , or indeed , of the profession despite protestations to the contrary and appearance of the term ‘ teaching ’ in a host of published papers ( Simon , Bain & Luriya , 2009 ; Hamilton , D . 1999 ; Simon , 1981 ).
As we suggested earlier , when talking about “ curriculum ”, there are ‘ slides of meaning ’ to “ teaching ” or even worse , “ learning ”, as if these analytic categories are of the same order . For example , there is constant use in curriculum policy and syllabus documents of the term ‘ learners ’ when ‘ students ’ is meant , and the use of ‘ learning ’ where it is ‘ teaching ’ that is meant . The common use of ‘ teaching and learning ’ together , as in
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