I am glad that when we teachers first came together to speak about curriculum – on wanting to improve the quality of curriculum, we did not begin with a focus on teaching –specifically on teaching strategies. So, there was no talk about whether direct instruction or cooperative learning was better. Or what the most important technology features was needed for learning to succeed.
Instead, the starting point was focused on teacher’s beliefs about learning. Questions about teaching – specifically teaching methods are important, but they need to be asked in the context of whom we are teaching and what we want out students to learn. Why is this so? The reason is that the particular types of teaching and learning can be strong or weak depending on the teacher’s goals for learning and the prior knowledge and skills that the students bring to the learning.
I already see a great deal of information obtained through the discussion on how students learn, during the first curriculum session. I believe that subsequent sessions will be as fruitful. Such information obtained will provide important guidelines for deepening our thinking about teaching and my goal is to attempt in organizing everyone’s beliefs about students’ learning using known structure which may help in analyzing of learning situations. For example, by looking at what do teachers consider as important for our students to learn and who can learn well and why, the teachers’ definition of an expert learner and about effective ways to help our students develop their learning, common overlapping information can be grouped.
Through classification, useful information can then be obtained for analyzing the quality of learning that we seek. A worthwhile challenge!
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