session 5--Exploring roles of curriculum innovative practices using IPPUT

After analysis the case from M2, we found an article about the “Leading curriculum innovation in primary schools ”, it is quite long.

Download: Leading curriculuminnovation in primary schools.pdf

Source: Management in Education, v25 n3 p119-124 Jul 2011



This report seeks to examine the leadership challenges posed by the implementation of curriculum innovation in primary schools. 
Aim of the project
−  the skills, processes and practices that are required in leadership for successful curriculum 
innovation in primary schools; and 
−  the extent to which schools are currently prepared for curriculum innovation 
Project methodology 

The project employed a blended methodology based on interviews, observations, and documentary analysis, in order to produce rich data. The five main aims of the project are posited in the following research questions: 

1.  What key skills are required in leading curriculum innovation? 
2.  How can innovation be encouraged and developed in challenging circumstances? 
3.  What are the main characteristics of best practice in the leadership of curriculum innovation in primary schools? 
4.  To what extent is there a link between curriculum innovation and school effectiveness and improvement? 
5.  To what extent are schools ready to implement the recommendations of the Rose Review? 
6.  To what extent are primary schools ready to implement the curriculum innovation that will be necessary at a time of strategic review of priorities in education? 



4 stage model for curriculum innovation 

Process diagram of curriculum innovation 

List of main findings of the study 
−  There was a strong sense that curriculum change is welcomed, especially if it allows and encourages innovation by the schools themselves. 
−  Leading curriculum innovation is challenging and complex but it is welcomed by headteachers, all of whom view the leadership of learning as central to their role. 
−  All of the schools reported the necessity of allowing time and space for reflection, evaluation and a carefully staged process of change with the whole school working in a unified direction. 
−  An ethos for change needs to be created which allows freedom for experimentation, supported risk taking and the trialling and piloting of cross-curricular approaches to teaching. 
−  Curriculum change needs to take full account and have a good fit with the school’s particular contextual needs and circumstances. 
−  A clear steer by both central agencies and individual school leaders is required if the important work schools have carried out with respect to planning, tracking and monitoring progress, is not to be lost. 
−  Teachers value explicit guidance in constructing new formats which capture cross-curricular approaches to learning as well as the skills and knowledge to be covered in specific subject areas. 
−  Regular meetings to discuss and evaluate children’s work as well as check on progress and quality need to involve teachers and all levels of leadership in order to ensure the widest constituency of knowledge on standards, assessment and monitoring. 
......
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By Andy

session 5--Curriculum innovative practices - New UC Davis MBA

session 5--Curriculum innovative practices

Information and communication technologies (ICT) have affected our lives for over half a century. Yet, the school’s curriculum especially in mainland China is still perceived as traditional in its structure and implementation. Attempts to assimilate ICT into schools’ curricula are frequently supported by policymakers. However, significant change in content, teaching and learning processes and assessment methods can actually be detected mainly in focal innovative initiatives within schools. Data SITES-M2 analyzes case studies of innovative IT-supported pedagogical practices from several schools in HongKong. The analysis refers to conditions required for fostering ICT implementation in the curriculum, with regards to new demands for teaching and learning. This suggests analysis of ICT-related curricular issues in separate subject areas, as well as in integrated subject domains. Further, our group discuss desired changes in existing curricula, which may lead to innovative ICT implementation within schools.

A school curriculum is intended to provide students with the knowledge and skills required to lead successful lives. To keep the pace with the social improvement, I think the taught curriculum needs to be reconsidered and redesigned. After search for some information, I found that the use of the word "innovation" in discussions about the school curriculum and classroom teaching practice has become widespread. What is a curriculum for at this time? It is comprises a challenging selection of subjects that help our students understand the world. It highlights skills necessary for learning throughout life, as well as for work, and for our development and well-being.

Besides the examples in SITES-M2, we also found there are already some shifts underway in current educational thinking and policymaking which will contribute to innovations in the curriculum and teaching practice. Here is an example about the introduction of the new National Curriculum for secondary schools, it has brought school leaders and classroom teachers more opportunities to design a curriculum that is televant and appropriate to the needs of the students in their care.In addition, the Innovational Curriculum has indicated a heightened need for cross-curricular connections in order for students to make links across subjects and apply knowledge and skills learnt from one area in another. It has also put more emphasis on finding constructive ways of accommodating all of the subject areas in the limited time available. In other words, the Innovational Curriculum today is seeking innovative solutions to persisting curricularand classroom challenges.

Here is the web site that I found some examples and policy.http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Pedagogy-and-assessment/Pedagogical-leadership/Leading-Curriculum-Innovation

By:Makino

Session 5--Case from M2 (CN010)

Background：

This case describes a series of lessons that aimed at helping a class of P.6 students to learn about punctuation marks in Chinese Language. In this practice, the teachers made use of self-developed software and a series of software developed by The University of Hong Kong to help students to learn Chinese punctuation. While the students played the role of active learners in the learning process, the ICT acted as tools for demonstration, drill and practice.

Goals：

1.Help students to understand the usage of punctuation at the sentence level.
2.Help students to understand the usage of punctuation to increase the cohesion of the passage.
3.Help students to apply their understanding of punctuation into their spoken Chinese.
4.Help students to understand the notion that with the use of ICT, they can undergo self-learning and make good uses of resources.

Curriculum：

The innovation involved about 4 lessons; the following were the activity flow of these less

Lesson	The teaching activity	Use of ICT
1.	l  Pretest l  Teacher presented information about Chinese punctuation with the self-developed PowerPoint presentation.	Teacher’s Presentation Tool
2	l  Teacher presented information about Chinese punctuation with the self-developed PowerPoint presentation	Teacher’s Presentation Tool
3	l  Teacher presented information about Chinese punctuation with the self-developed PowerPoint	Teacher’s Presentation Tool
4	l  Students work with the software developed by the University of Hong Kong on their own l  Post-test	Student’s Drill and Practice Tool

Other Innovation in Curriculum：

1.School-based Curriculum:
The school started to develop its school-based curriculum in 1985-86. The first subject which had its school-based curriculum was Computer, with its first developed teaching package “How to apply geometry”.

2.Project-based Learning:
Project-based Learning has been conducted in CN010 before the implementation of ICT education in Hong Kong (1997). However, with the implementation of ICT, the nature of the project work in CN010 has changed. The students are now working on some more ill-structured, open-ended and cross curricular questions. They make use of ICT tool in searching information and compiling of their reports.

3.On-line Discussion Forum:
In the on-line discussion forum, the teachers would put some newspaper articles on the intranet of the school and invite students to comment on it. The students can either put their reflections online or e-mail them to their teachers.
Issues：
This practice can transfer to another school in two sense. Firstly, the other schools can adopt the ways of ICT being used in the practice: teachers’ presentation tool and students’ drill and practice tool. The kind of transfer can be easily done in Hong Kong, as most of the schools has its computer laboratory. Besides, there is a “Hong Kong Education City” website offered by the Hong Kong government, in which the teachers can download and share their ICT teaching materials here. However, if the other school would like to fully adopt the innovation, that is, they would like to develop their own teaching materials. Apart from the time and effort they have to pay, they should at least possess what teacher A mentioned: (1)teachers who were capable in using ICT, (2)teachers who were competent in pedagogy & (3)enough ICT resources in schools.
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By Group

Session 4--Student Behaviour & Wellbeing Role Play

Session 4--The Role of Student Responsibility in the college

Recent scholarship has emphasized the importance of student effort and involvement in their academic and co-curricular activities as the decisive elements in promoting positive college outcomes. As colleges have struggled to extend opportunities, an accompanying expectation for students to assume responsibility for their own education often has been lacking. Institutions must work to create a climate in which all students feel welcome and able to fully participate. It is equally important to nurture an ethic that demands student commitment and promotes student responsibility. Students can contribute to their own learning and to the development of a campus climate in which all can grow and learn.

WHAT IS STUDENT RESPONSIBILITY?

Colleges are learning communities, and individuals accepted into these communities have the privileges and responsibilities of membership. If we are to communicate our expectations, we must offer a set of standards and examples that moves our discussion from generality to practice.

Such as the proposition that all learning and development requires an investment of time and effort by the student. At the heart of the practice is a set of scales which defines the dimensions of student responsibility. These scales are quality of effort scales in that they assess the degree to which students are extending themselves in their college activities. The domains include the use of classrooms, libraries, residence halls, student unions, athletic facilities, laboratories, and studios and galleries. The social dimension is reflected in scales that tap contacts with faculty, informal student friendships, clubs and organizations, and student conversations. This gives us a map of the terrain of student responsibility and suggests concrete activities that contribute directly to student growth and learning.

WHY IS STUDENT RESPONSIBILITY IMPORTANT?

First, student responsibility is the key to all development and learning. Research has demonstrated that college outcomes are tied to the effort that students put into their work and the degree to which they are involved with their studies and campus life. Second, irresponsible students diminish our collective academic life. Within an individual classroom, the behavior of even a few highly irresponsible students or, worse, a large number of passive, disaffected students can drag a class down to its lowest common denominator. For an institution, the erosion of an academic ethos can lead to a culture that is stagnant, divisive, and anti-intellectual.

Third, the habits of responsible civic and personal life are sharpened and refined in college. Will employers, international economic competitors, or future history itself be tolerant of students who fail to develop sufficient self-control and initiative to study for tests or participate in academic life? Finally, if colleges are to reclaim the public trust, they must learn not to make promises that cannot be kept. Colleges have responsibilities to students and society. Yet, colleges are not solely responsible for the outcomes of their students. A clear acknowledgment of the mutual obligations of all members of the academic community is a prerequisite to restoring the academy's balance and clarity of purpose.

WHAT ARE THE FOUNDATIONS OF STUDENT RESPONSIBILITY?

Some professors have offered explicit theories about how colleges can promote student learning and growth. Despite different uses of terms, these approaches have much in common. First, each theorist recognizes that the student's background plays a role in shaping college outcomes. This role is largely indirect and is moderated by the college environment and a student's interactions with faculty and peers. Second, each theorist sees the campus environment exerting an enabling effect on college outcomes. Last, all emphasize the importance of a partnership between the college and the student. Colleges alone cannot "produce" student learning. Colleges provide opportunities for interaction and involvement and establish a climate conducive to responsible participation. Each approach reflects the centrality of what we call student responsibility.

Structural features that tend to isolate students and promote an ethos of anonymity produce poor college outcomes. College climates characterized by a strong sense of direction and which build student involvement tend to promote favorable outcomes by promoting student-faculty and student-peer relations, as well as establishing an expectation that students will behave responsibly. Finally, the decisive single factor in affecting college outcomes is the degree to which students are integrated into the life of the campus, interact with faculty and peers, and are involved in their studies.

HOW CAN WE ENCOURAGE RESPONSIBLE STUDENT BEHAVIOR?

Institutional policies and practices must be oriented toward developing a climate in which students' responsibility and active participation in their own colleges are promoted. Policies that stress the importance of student achievement and in-class and co-curricular challenge and support are essential for student growth. The institutional culture clearly must convey the institution's purpose in an unambiguous manner, and the ethos of the campus must be one in which students believe they are members of a larger community. As student culture serves as a filter for students entering college, care must be taken to ensure that students who are prepared inadequately understand the nature of college life and what is expected to attain satisfactory academic and developmental gains.

Small-scale, human environments must be built in which students and faculty collectively can engage in the process of teaching and learning. As learning is the process through which development occurs, it is crucial for students to be actively engaged in the classroom. Course activities are the vehicle through which students may become more fully engaged with academic material. The literature clearly indicates that the quality of effort that a student expends in interactions with peers and faculty is the single most important determinate in college outcomes.

Here I think is a good web which is about Student Role: www.gwu.edu/~eriche.

Makino

Session 4--role of the students

Hi guys，
If you are hardly to find the case，you can access http://www.eric.ed.gov/，the website just like M2，a database all about the education，and the Search function is easy to use.
Link to case

ED253717 - The Role of Student Organizations in Vocational Education. Occasional Paper No. 94.

http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED253717.pdf

Now, with the development of information technology, teaching form changes a lot. Traditional text is no longer the only form, and the graphics, images, audio, video, animation and other teaching methods gradual to join in. At the same time, there has been more electronic materials, electronic libraries builded to use in daily education. These flexible and efficient information dissemination greatly enriched teaching resources, mobilize the enthusiasm of students, enhance student learning flexibility and initiative. With the rapid development of information technology,to improve teaching efficiency, teachers should pay attention to student's role changes.


Firstly, students should change from listeners to thinkers.
Secondly, students change from passive recipients of information information intoinitiatives .
Finally, students change from a educational information user into a information  discoverer and designers.
This is the main three changes of the students' role. Though the change of the students' role, they can enhance their ability of discovery problems, think and solve problems.
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By Andy

The Change of Students' Role

http://muse.tau.ac.il/publications/84.pdf

The paper analyse the data collected in ten schools in Israel which have ICT in unique ways and have succeeded in devising innovative classroom pedagogies and changes in teachers and students role and out comes. Table 1 presents a summary of the innovation domains and levels in the innovation analysis schema.

As we can see, most of the innovative practices cause a significant change in student role, who became Website constructors, teachers' assistants in ICT-related matters, or ICT projects managers. The students worked in teams to solve real problems and to accomplish projects.

Powerful new capabilities of computers make it possible to access, represent, process, and communicate information in new ways (Kozma, 1991, 1994). These capabilities make it possible to search and organize information, analyze data, represent ideas, simulate complex systems, and communicate with others in ways that were not practical or even possible previously. They also enable new ways of teaching and learning—new activities, new products, and new types of learning (Kozma & Schank, 1998).

Self- learner, team member, and knowledge manager are the three new roles for students and were often associated with project-based or inquiry learning. Students are capable to use the resources and on-line learning to learn by themselves without the teachers. They can learn whenever and wherever. It make the study to be active and initiative. With the help of ICT, students are divided into several groups ti communicate both in the classroom and after classes. Students just have to work collaboratively to move the work forward.The members have also to be active to finish the group work. The action they did just interact each others in the group. What's more, with the help of ICT, students are exposed to the knowledge by the global internet. They no longer waiting for the teachers to teach them the knowledge in class time, but manage and pick up the one they need whenever they want by reading reports, research studies, newspapers, or multimedia presentations that solve a real world problem, address a scientific question, or express personal feelings.

All in all, students are changed into a more active and initiative role comparing to the traditional education. They are possible to get access to the knowledge in various approaches and manage it under their own willings. Learning is now becoming a innovative work that full of creativities and no more a simple accpetence of knowledge.

References:

Kozma, R. (1991). Learning with media. Review of Educational Research, 61(2), 179-212.

Kozma, R., & Schank, P. (1998). Connecting with the twenty- first century: Technology in support of educational reform. In C. Dede (Ed.), Technology and learning. Washington, DC: American Society for Curriculum Development.
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By Group

session 4 activity ---- the role of students in e-learning

In e-learning, students are encouraged to become independent learners. This only means that the learning experience does not solely depend on the instructor’s efforts. Certain amounts of preparation must be done, and certain amounts of effort must be exerted by the student in order to productively contribute to online learning. Primary to this is self-awareness. Students must become aware of themselves, their personal expectations, as well as the expectations of the instructor.

The roles of students are:

● Co-learner

● Content creators

– forum posts

– links and quotes from resources

– glossaries

– multimedia (video, audio)

● Peer mentors

● Co-teachers

● But most of all – Knowledge Creators (Learners)

Here is a video I recommend to see http://vimeo.com/7981069

In this video, school students from the Humboldt Gymnasium and the Nelson Mandela International School will be presenting and discussing the use of social media in the classroom.

In this clip, students talk about their role as co-creators of their own learning and helping education with using technology.

-Olivia

session 3 activity----How the teachers' role in change

Hello Groupmates，
I have read some articles about the role of the teachers. The articles may be helpful for you to understand the role of the teachers.


http://members.shaw.ca/priscillatheroux/teacherrole.html The website show some opinion of the teachers role from different people.
http://www.csun.edu/~meq75037/paper1.html This paper talks about the role of the teachers.


After read these articles I think teachers need to constantly update their professional knowledge and ability of structure students to learn knowledge, in that way teachers in the classroom should change from "teaching" to "study", concerning and respecting for each students, to achieve the goal of really "teaching" and "learning", not only for teachers themselves but also for students all. Actively participate in education training to improve themselves.
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By Andy

session 3 activity ----What is the role of a Teacher?.

In many teaching situations, the role of the teacher is that of facilitator of learning: leading discussions, asking open-ended questions, guiding process and task, and enabling active participation of learners and engagement with ideas. I choose a case from M2 database, http://sitesdatabase.cite.hku.hk/M2/case2/FR002/Index.asp?case_ID=FR002. In this case, the teacher appears as an adviser and a facilitator arranging the conditions of learning and encouraging pupils'self learning and exploration somewhere else that by way of his own mediation. However, the innovation of pedagogy requires the teacher to be able to adopt a range of roles and skills to suit specific situations.

There is an ongoing debate as to whether teachers are becoming redundant as a consequence of the use of ICT in education or whether a teacherless classroom is just a myth. In fact, new educational technologies do not curb the need for teachers but they call for a redefinition of their profession. The role of teachers has changed and continues to change from being an instructor to becoming a constructor, facilitator, coach, and creator of learning environments.

Many documents and articles identify reasons why the role of the teacher must change, such as:

● ICT will cause certain teaching resources to become obsolete. Localised resources such as overheads and chalkboards may no longer be necessary if all learners have access to the same networked resource on which the teacher is presenting information, especially if students are not physically at the same place.

● ICT may make some assessment methods redundant. Online tests, for example, provide the teacher with considerably more information than traditional multiple choice tests.

It is no longer sufficient for teachers to impart content knowledge, but they have to encourage higher levels of cognitive skills, promote information literacy, and nurture collaborative working practices. All these are greatly facilitated by the use of ICTs in teaching, however, a genuine and sophisticated integration is necessary and thus teacher training in this regard becomes crucial.

.

From Harden and Crosby: The Twelve Roles of the Teacher , 2000

By Olivia