Backward design Drake 2014-4

Chapter 4 Designing across the Curriculum for “Sustainable Well-Being”: A 21 st Century Approach S USAN M. D RAKE What role can educators play to address the urgent and “wicked problems” in the world today, with the ongoing destruction of the planet being the central issue? This chapter explores how to create an accountable and relevant curriculum. Using a backward design process, the question of what is most important for students to know, do and be is explored. It is suggested that for many disciplinary and interdisciplinary curricula “Sustainable Well-Being” can act as an umbrella big idea for the Know. The Do includes 21st Century Skills such as communication, collaborative problem solving, systems thinking, design thinking and creativity. The Be is acting as stewards for sustainable well-being on our planet and in our communities. Although this process is generic and can be used at all levels of education, this chapter offers a Grade 7 example. It is hoped that readers can connect these ideas to their own contexts. Today’s students are inheriting a world that is full of what design thinkers identify as “wicked problems” (Rittell & Webber, 1973). Wicked problems are so complex, ill-structured, ambiguous and interconnected that they are probably not solvable. Education, poverty, nutrition and the environment are such problems. Humans are an intricate part of the wicked problem of the survival of the biosphere and/or humans as a species. We are creating our own demise, what Kolbert (2014) calls the sixth extinction, without fully understanding how we are doing it given the complex interconnections between humans and nature that include human actions. For example, in a wicked problem one can successfully address one aspect of the problem, yet, while doing so, ten more interconnected aspects emerge that also require solutions. In spite of this, Kolko (2012) suggests that addressing an issue at the local level can have a positive and far-reaching impact. But how are educators preparing students to explore such local issues and problems? Are we so focused on literacy and numeracy, admittedly extremely important life skills, that we are ignoring the looming sixth extinction? What if we taught students to be system thinkers – to think as design thinkers might think when confronting wicked problems? Heidi Siwak, a grade 6 and 7 teacher in Ontario, is explicitly teaching students to address wicked problems through a causal modeling approach ( http://www.heidisiwak.com/ ). Siwak has been participating with other teachers in workshops that focus on wicked problems through the I- think initiative at University of Toronto Rotman School of Management ( http://www.rotman. © Susan M. Drake, 2014. F. Deer, T. Falkenberg, B. McMillan, & L. Sims (Eds.). (2014). Sustainable well-being: Concepts, issues, and educational practices (pp. 57-76). Winnipeg, MB: ESWB Press. ISBN 978-0-9939534-0-8. Retrievable from www.ESWB-Press.org

58 Chapter 4 utoronto.ca/FacultyAndResearch/ResearchCentres/DesautelsCentre/Programs/I-Think.aspx ). In the workshop’s training sessions, teachers tackled the problem of gun violence. They began with a casual map and then focused in on mental health as one way to begin to solve part of the problem, rather than trying to simultaneously tackle all aspects of gun violence. Siwak (2013) believes that wicked problems are what students should be working with: “They are meaningful because they have application outside the classroom. They are challenging; they have infinite possibilities for creative solutions and are fun to play with and think about”. Students who take a causal modeling approach learn the difference between simple, complex and wicked problems. An example of a simple problem is, “How much will it cost to fill the tank if gas costs 1.33/litre and the tank in 2/3 empty?” There is only one correct answer. An example of a structurally complex problem is, “How do I get from my school to the Hamilton airport?” There are many possible solutions, but the problem is solvable. An example of a wicked problem is, “How do we solve traffic problems in the Greater Toronto Area?” This is a problem with many interconnected threads that is seemingly unsolvable. Siwak (2013) points out that when teaching students, they “tend to begin at the point that conclusions are already drawn”. To begin to address a wicked problem, Swank asks students to create a causal map where they consider many aspects of the problem. She then helps the students to focus on a particular aspect and to find a solution to that part of the problem. In her middle years classes, students have created causal maps on questions such as, “How does someone get to be a celebrity?”, “How does a book become a best seller?”, and “Why does homework not get done?” An example of the “Homework” causal map is presented in Figure 1. Figure 1 . A casual map created by grade 7 students in Heidi Siwak’s class.

Susan M. Drake 59 How can teachers and teacher educators approach the flourishing of the planet’s biosystem as design thinkers? The survival of the biosphere as we know it is a wicked problem. Carving out chunks of that problem and exploring the interconnected parts is one way to begin. Exploring these aspects under the umbrella of “sustainable well-being” allows for a positive focus. Imagine, for example, students exploring the question, “What’s good for us and our oceans?” under the umbrella of Sustainable Well- Being. Students would create a causal map and then conduct research on questions such as those that follow. What does it mean when scientists say an ocean is healthy? How healthy are the oceans? How can we insure healthy oceans in the future? What is the connection between human health and the ocean’s health? How can we save ocean organisms? How can we sustain the populations of aquatic animals that we use as seafood? What kind of fish should we be eating and when? Are these fish high or low on the food chain? Are these fish purchased fresh or are they frozen? Are these fish harvested in the wild or farmed? How do we responsibly take from the ocean’s global wild capture leaving little waste? How do we change human preferences to go beyond ten species of fish? How do we honour cultural traditions around fish? How do we support fishermen and local waterfront communities? Each question is interconnected to a whole set of other questions. A conceptual focus of Sustainable Well-Being offers a lens by which the connections in this example can be made explicit (This scenario was inspired by an interview with Barton Seavor [Leiberman, 2013] in Nutrition Action ). Moreover, Sustainable Well-Being reminds us of the larger wicked problem associated with sustaining the ecosystem services of the entire planet. In this chapter, a backward design process is explored for curricula with a conceptual focus on sustainable well-being. This approach begins to address the questions of how best to prepare students to think in ways that examine and confront the biggest issues of our time – the “wicked problems.” As will be shown, this particular design process also insures that the curriculum is both relevant to students and accountable to local curriculum mandates. Sustainable Well-Being as a Conceptual Focus Sustainable well-being may be an excellent conceptual lens to use in the design of curriculum for the 21 st Century, but what does sustainable well-being mean? This has become a universal concept or big idea that in defining requires unpacking what constitutes the good society as well as what constitutes environmental conservation or “protecting” the environment. The answers will differ according to the cultural context in which sustainability and sustainable well-being are explored. Moreover, the issues associated with sustainable well-being are replete with what many consider to be polarities or binary opposites. These include poor/rich, peace/war, rights/responsibilities, capitalism/distributed wealth, democracy/socialism, happiness/unhappiness, violence/non-violence and health/disease, cultural diversity. What’s more, any issue with a focus on sustainable well-being needs to be viewed through several interconnected theoretical lenses that have an impact on the problem and cannot be ignored in its solution. Creating Causal Maps and/or Real World Webs To deconstruct the meaning of sustainable well-being in the classroom and in the context of a specific dilemma, students can begin by creating a causal map such as those described above. Another more focused way to see the interconnections on the causal map is to create a Real World

60 Chapter 4 Web (Figure 2). This graphic illustration helps students to understand the complexity of sustainable well-being and how all aspects, or human constructed and natural systems, are interconnected. Figure 2 . Real World Web (adapted from Drake, Bebbington, Laksman, Mackie, Maynes, & Wayne, 1992). In my experience, students at any grade level can create this Real World Web (see Drake, Bebbington, Laksman, Mackie, Maynes, & Wayne, 1992). The issue under study is placed in the center of a web with sustainable well-being as the conceptual focus. Students can select from a wide variety of real world issues such as global warming, Aboriginal inequities, bullying, or identity theft and brainstorm what they know about the issue using each of the categories on the concept map. This type of discussion has been done as early as Kindergarten, where students five and six years in age were able to put information into each category (for younger students the name of the category may need to be changed to reflect their level of understanding, for example, economics becomes money). Having identified the relevant information for the categories, the final step is to have students draw lines between these categorized entries that they recognize as being connected. Inevitably the real world web is covered with linking lines, and students are able to see a visual representation of interconnection and interdependence. Throughout this brainstorming process, the focus continues to be well-being and how to both achieve and sustain it.

Susan M. Drake 61 The Wicked Problem in Education Educators are caught in a tension between accountability to stakeholders and personal relevance to each student. The traditional model of formal education is no longer working. Students across North America report being bored in school (Fullan, 2013; Willms & Friesen, 2012). There is a widespread call for educational reform to fit the 21 st Century context (Action Canada, 2013; Barbar, Donnelly, & Rizva, 2013; C21Canada, 2012; Canadian Education Association, 2012; Robinson, 2010; Delors, 1999). The traditional model of education is discipline-based. “Back to the basics” is fundamental, and the 3Rs of literacy and numeracy are considered the building blocks of success. The teacher as the expert transmits knowledge to students primarily through lecture. The students are considered to be blank slates with no prior knowledge, and they passively absorb the knowledge that the teacher transmits. There is little interaction between students and teacher in the learning process. Assessment is summative, takes place at the end of the learning period, and is largely pencil and paper tests that often are standardized in nature. Success is normative and measured against a bell curve. This ensures that most students receive average grades and only a small percentage do very well or very poorly. The purpose of the traditional approach has been to maintain the status quo, to reproduce society. Today education is a global enterprise where technology offers new ways to connect with each other and, indeed, a new culture of learning (Thomas & Seeley-Brown, 2011). Fullan (2013) argues that educational transformation requires three interconnected components to capture student engagement: technology, pedagogy grounded in constructivist learning theory, and teachers as agents of change. Technology has brought in an era of potentially powerful new approaches to teach, learn and assess. Social networks have fundamentally changed how people interact with one another. The 21 st Century requires a “deep pedagogy” grounded in constructivist learning principles. Students learn through interaction with the teacher and others and by connecting new learning to previous learning. They learn by doing and engaging in real world problem solving, project-based learning, and units focused on a “big” ideas or essential questions. As a result, assessment is competency-based and focused on performance demonstration. Assessment for learning (diagnostic and formative) and assessment as learning (goal-setting and metacognition) are features of every constructivist classroom (Earl & Katz, 2006). The teacher needs to be a change agent. No longer only a transmitter or a facilitator, the teacher needs also to be an activist (Hattie, 2012) who takes a catalytic role in helping the learner to be self-directed. It is in this transformational vision of education that the urgent issues of human survival and sustaining Earth’s ecosystem services can be confronted. To do so, I urge that the conceptual focus of sustainable well-being become the overarching theoretical construct for all curriculum design. Curriculum Backward Design Curriculum planning is a part of educational accountability. Typically for Kindergarten through Grade 12 education there are curriculum guidelines that mandate what teachers must teach subject- by-subject and grade-by-grade. In university and colleges, the accountability movement is just beginning to make waves with requirements for defined outcomes/standards/competencies and aligned assessments (see, for example, Savage & Drake, 2013). Across North America and the world,