Several years ago, my religious community gathered leaders from our 16 high schools to try to create a profile of a graduate from a Marianist school. It seemed a bit contrived because our schools reflect socio-economic, ethnic, religious and gender differences among and between the schools. Although there are certain tangibles that one can observe in all Marianist schools, each school also had a distinct culture based on the aforementioned variables. So, it was very difficult to create an all encompassing Marianist graduate profile. While this was not successful on the national level, I do believe that this is a great excercise to do with faculty/staff/parents and students on the local level. Ozar (2006) recommends graduation outcomes, and I do believe that is a great starting place to designing any curriculum.
Designing curriculum based upon an "output" model, rather than an "input" model was telling and challenging to me in my own practice of teaching. I had the experience 5 years ago to design and implement a senior honors course in theology. Designing this new course in Pastoral Ministry allowed for more "output" outcomes rather than "input" outcomes because I was not saddled with a textbook from which others teachers also needed to teach. Designing this new course allowed for a great deal of creativity and flexibility that I had not encountered before in my own teaching. I would say that the course really was student centered and focused. Fast forward five years from this initial implementation and I took on an additional course in Psychology because I had some time and we did not really have additional money to pay another teacher for the period. When I look at the course design for that class, I relied heavily upon the text and the learning environment reflected the "input" model to which Ozar referred. Even asking the question, "What shall I teach?" seems so burdensome and so dependent upon me that teaching beccomes a chore and solely my responsibility. Asking, "What shall students learn?" opens the doors of creativity, curiosity, wonder and possibilities-that's far more exciting to me!
So, what helps this old dog learn new tricks? Ozar states, "Any outcome designed around learning rather than teaching is a step in the right direction. Good outcomes can be tremendous catalysts for increasing learning and improving teaching" (Ozar, 2006, p. 20).
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Fr. John, Your post makes me think about leaving the comfort of a textbook to seek that creativity that you would need to tap to create the student centered course. I think about how my students continually don't read, yet they text, email, & blog. Maybe they would respond better without the conventional text, better yet- maybe I would. Asking the right question seems to be key- what shall I teach, or what shall they learn? As you said, the exercise alone is valuable. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteOzar's first four chapters made me also go back in time when the faculty at my school had to write graduation outcomes or SLE's. This was quite a lengthy process, and at the time, did not have the clearest of pictures as to why we were spending such an enormous amount of time on writing outcomes. As the years went by and more of outcome models were produced, it has become quite clear as to the why of doing it. Ozar's explanation of differentiating between goal and outcome was quite good. I can remember at the time of writing the SLE's, that was a major focus. As we prepare for another WASC visit aqt my school. We have spent time again looking over our SLE's to make sure the learning we want to take place is clearly written in these outcomes. Working from outcome to assessment and strategies creates the outcome centered curriculum. Time consuming - yes but worth it in creating more active learning with higher order thinking taking place. As you put it, it opens the door! to creativity,curiosity, wonder and possibilities which is exactly what learning should be.
ReplyDeleteExcellent points John. You were really able to design your courses around a student centered outcome model that works for students. Do you think this is more difficult for teachers to achieve when they have more than one course to teach at a time? Personally, I balance my job between administrative work and teaching one class. Although being an administrator is no walk in the park, I know that I do have more time to work on my lessons for my one class than our busy full time teachers. So I guess I'm asking is it too much to require full time teachers to make all lessons based around the student learning rather than what the teacher needs to teach? (BTW I think the answer is no, it's not too much to ask, but I'm just putting it out there.)
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