What Should Drive a Teacher's Curriculum Design

Getting assessments to the desirable level is therefore vital, both for teacher and students. From the Educational Assessment Landscape chart, I believe the measurements go hand-in-hand to offer students the opportunities to show what they have learned through differentiated assessments, all leading to the final result of success in summative

In this paper I will critically reflect on the teaching and learning cycle I engaged in to improve my assessment of student learning. I focussed on assessment due to its potential to improve instructional design and student performance (Brookhart, 2007, cited in Wiliam, 2011, p.8; William and Thompson, 2007, cited in Dixon & Worrell, 2016, p.155). The teaching and learning cycle led me to identify areas of

At the end of the course there should be some form of summative assessment; this enables the tutor to determine if the learning outcomes have been met by all or some of the learners.

Part: 1 Explanation and discussion of the curriculum design and development process currently used in Australian Secondary schools.

Today’s education system is challenged with creating and incorporating the most effective and meaningful methodological and conceptual curriculum designs to date. One of the key challenges is to design curriculums that facilitate understanding, retention, and generalization (Bulgren, Deshler, & Lenz, 2007, p. 121-122). However, there is no single way to overcome these challenges due to the variances and complexities within each content area. These, along with the demands of meeting high stakes testing, and the endless revolving door of performance standards, places teachers in a constant state of turmoil as they seek to create coexistence between student achievement and rigorous and challenging standards. One strategy being implemented

Assessment, both formative and summative, plays a significant part in the learning experience as it determines progression and enables learners to demonstrate that they have achieved their desired learning outcomes.

A summative assessment is given at pre-determined intervals. It could range from a state assessment to a benchmark test, or an end-of-unit test. It specifically is testing the knowledge that a student should have mastered by a particular point in time. A summative assessment is used for accountability.

Assessment is an imperative part of the learning process. According to Stiggins and Chappuis (2012), “Assessment is, in part, the process of gathering evidence of student learning to inform instructional decisions. This process can be done well or poorly.” To learn more about assessment I sat down for a one on one interview with Jim Libretti. Coach Libretti is the head coach of the freshman football team at Paradise Valley High School. Also, he is a math teacher.

Defining and creating the perfect curriculum has been a struggle for educators and administrators since the creation of universities. This struggle has continued throughout the evolution of the American higher education institutions. Starting with Harvard University in the 17th century and following all the way through to today where there are over 4,000 institutions of higher education in the United States. The goals of universities have stayed relatively the same in that they want to create prepared individuals who go out into the world ready to work and make it a better place. The challenge has been that what the world requires is constantly changing and therefore the knowledge that individuals enter the world with needs

Deliberate and focused instructional design requires us as teachers and curriculum writers to make an important shift in our thinking about the nature of our job. The shift involves thinking a great deal, first, about the specific learnings sought, and the evidence of such learnings, before thinking about what we, as the teacher, will do or provide in teaching and learning activities. Though considerations about what to teach and how to teach it may dominate our thinking as a matter of habit, the challenge is to focus first on the desired learnings from which appropriate teaching will logically follow.

Developing a curriculum is a difficult process, moreso when an educator has to keep in mind the number of students they are trying to reach. At the secondary level, it is not uncommon for a teacher to be responsible for 150 or more students. Each of these students presents a unique and trying task for educators who want to help students learn. Students have different modalities for which they gain knowledge, and it is the teacher’s job to engage those

Summative assessments usually occur at the end of a lesson and are used to evaluate student’s understanding of the skills and concepts that were taught. These assessments are seen as a “digital snapshot” because they provide insight of a student’s knowledge at a single period of time, (pg 78, Van de Walle, Karp, & Bay-Williams, 2013). Tests and quizzes are a popular type of summative assessments.

In his book Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction, Ralph Tyler outlines four critical components of curriculum that may serve as a guide to the creation of curriculum as well as a tool for the analysis and interpretation of curriculum. The four basic components consist of educational purposes (or objectives), educational experiences (or learning activities), organization, and evaluation (Tyler, 1949, p. 1). While Tyler does speak to each of these four components, nearly half of the book is devoted to the section on objectives. For Tyler, the objectives are the starting point in the development of the curriculum and the cornerstone upon which the rest of the curriculum is shaped. Given the shifts that have occurred in education

In order to teach successfully teachers must learn about first learn about their students. Teachers must assess the student’s capabilities and interests. Some students are visual learners, while others learn from hands on activities, or verbal communication. Not all students can learn through memorization, rather they learn through interest and relation to the topic. “To realize what an experience, or empirical situation, means, we have to call to mind the sort of situation that presents itself outside of school" (Democracy and Education). The curriculum should encompass material that is most useful for a student to learn. It seems that in the majority of schools, students are not given the flexibility to guide their own learning, but rather follow rigid instructions that destroy the student’s imagination.

Informal assessment allows students to demonstrate their learning in a variety of ways which can benefit all students. It can include group or individual projects, presentations, essays, experiments, or demonstrations. Each of these can allow for “knowledge that transfers from one situation to another [which] is based on students’ abilities to understand central principles, see connections and make distinctions, and be strategic in attacking problems and analyzing information” (Darling-Hammond, p. 285). A variety of assessment methods allow for this to happen and for students to use their personal strengths to demonstrate understanding of the information. “Research into students’ preferences for alternative assessments shows that the assessments that have been positively evaluated by students were more authentic and thus made learning more realistic and powerful” (as cited in Brown, Irving, Peterson, and Hirschfeld, 2009, p. 99). Students should be able to think creatively and take hold of their own education and learning because they must ideally be prepared for a rapidly changing society where they must be able to adapt and formulate their own solutions. Teachers are able to provide feedback to the children so they know what was done effectively and what needs to be modified. Rather than teachers pressuring students to show understanding through a single examination, they will have opportunities to confidently demonstrate knowledge with less