Curriculum Development and the Delivery of Instruction: A View from NIU

A Model of Curriculum Development (p. 39)•Tyler•Wiggins and McTigue•Gee•Smagorinsky

Inquiry, Discussion, and Construction

•Consider what is to be gained from students’ active participation in discussions about critical issues.

•Consider how teachers can connect a series of discussions.

•Consider how inquiry triggers and sustains discussion.

•Consider how shared inquiry can teach students important procedures and lead to expanded investigation and independent research.

A Sample Cycle of Inquiry and Discussion

Exploring Drafting Synthesizing Applying Extending

Demonstration discussions

•What is the balance between need for privacy and reasonable guarantees of security?

Exploration:Survey: Balance between security and privacy(p. 41)1. Government officials, including police, have no business

in checking on whom I have called by phone or emailed.3. In order to keep everyone safe, government officials

should be allowed to check secretly on the phone calls, emails, and purchases of people who seem suspicious.

8. Parents do not need to know where their teenage children are all the time.

10. Law enforcement officials should have access to as much personal information as they need to prevent crime and to protect people.

14. If you have done nothing wrong, you should have nothing to hide.

 

Drafting/ApplyingComplications of a Case:“The Parents Are Watching”(p. 42)

• Parents closely monitor the movements and behavior of their children.

• Spouses/partners monitor each other.• Government and law enforcement monitor the movements and

behavior of residents in U.S. and elsewhere: e.g., cameras at intersections, video surveillance in public spaces, GPS monitoring, library records, internet use, etc.

• Commercial entities (Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc.) collect data about searches and communication.

• Commercial entities share data with government/law enforcement.

• Teacher/professors monitor students’ behavior away from school.

Various Points of View

• Parents• Children• “Big Data” rep• Police

Synthesis and Evaluation

•What is your personal view about the balance between security and privacy?

•Stage 1: Establish Tentative “Rules”

•Stage 2: Apply Rules to Contemporary and Thematic Problem

•Stage 3: Synthesize and expand

•Stage 4: Expand independently

Stages in an inquiry cycle

Two Observations about Classroom Discussions:

1. All discussions are not the same. They do not all serve the same function.

2. The nature of the discussions depends on the structures and expectations that the teacher establishes as the orchestrator for learning. Among the observed teachers, the discussions were part of a larger strategic cycle intended to advance deep understandings and important proficiencies for problem-solving, social interaction, and written composition.

What do students gain from their discussions?

1. Learn content. 2. Evaluate examples. 3. Scan the variety of opinions.4. Recognize and respond to challenges.5. Practice basic elements of argument.6. Practice uptake.7. Recognize and evaluate competing views. 8. Organize a set of arguments.9. Refine the language of argument.10. Expand their vocabulary.11. And a whole lot more . . .

Stepping off toward other inquiries• Extending the current inquiry into new

phases and complications▫ Reading texts to inform inquiry and

discussion▫ Exploring related literature:

• Applying procedures to new lines of inquiry, especially for student-directed research

Explicit teaching of reading (p. 47)•Directed Reading and Thinking Activities

(DRTA)•Read aloud/think aloud•Deriving the “rules” for reading•Movement from simple to complex

(visuals to complex print text)•Strategic frontloading

Developing an Assessment Plan•See page 58.

NIU and your school:

•To what extent do you see an alignment?•To what extent do you see a mismatch?•How do you manage any contrasts?

Questions/Observations?

THANK YOU!