Choosing a Set of Outcomes - Chapter 5
As stated in Chapter 5, “Learning means responding effectively to the situation. It implies growth and leads to more learning.” About five years ago, at the school where I am employed, as a faculty, we came up with a principle for all grades, “What Can I Do With What I Know.” These words were made into large banners to be placed in all grades. After reading Ozar’s, Chapter 5, it made me go back to the time when we worked on curriculum outcomes for the school. We wanted this phrase to encompass all outcomes. If one is truly learning, then one should be able to apply this learned knowledge to many areas in life, to the real world. To create an outcomes-centered curriculum must include outcomes that connect to both the value-integration plane and the discipline-specific plane. These disciplines will continue to be useful and needed well past formal schooling years, for the rest of one’s life. This is what has helped to make Catholic education so unique. Not only is the academic curriculum of high standards but also that part of the curriculum that works on developing the whole child.
John Dewey, in which much of the idea behind the reading in Chapter 5 was compared to, was a very important contributor to the concept of the student centered approach to education. He was a believer in teaching students how to be problem solvers by teaching them how to think and to allow students to participate in decisions that affect their learning. He believed in having students learn by doing. It is interesting to note that he published many of his ideas on education about one hundred years ago, but they are still very valuable today. When working with choosing a set of outcomes, I felt that the Jesuit’s five characteristics for a graduate in acquiring “life-performance roles” were accurate: “a graduate that is a open to growth, is intellectually competent, religious, loving, and committed to being just.” To begin with a set of outcomes that provide a statement of what is to be learned with assessment methods and curriculum context to follow provides the foundation for a strong curriculum where real learning will be the end result.
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What an empowering activity! I can see how getting the students to think about how they could apply and take their own knowledge further would be totally worthwhile. I guess it would be in the realm of the "new-and-improved" Bloom's "Evaluation". It makes me think of the purpose of education, and getting the individual student to realize Bacon's "Knowledge is Power". How are they now powerful in a new way that they were not before? It ties into a phrase which has become a banner-statement within Lasallian schools, "Enter to learn. Leave to Serve." Learning is truly for the purpose of serving others, not only for being able to go to college or get a job. Thanks for making me think (and letting me ramble a bit).
ReplyDeleteFrom other posts from our colleagues, it seems that when we are engaged as a faculty in meaningful activites that have a direct impact on the students'learning, not only does our community benefit and change from the experience, we in fact become better teachers. The difficult part of bringing a faculty together to do these types of exercises comes in the frequency in which we engage the faculty in these projects. Rather than a new project for every monthly faculty meeting, taking something like developing learning outcomes throughout the year can be an exciting and an engaging project for everyone, and it does not leave it on the shoulders and the discretion of the academic AP.
ReplyDeleteHow have John Dewey's ideas impacted in the American public education? How is that impact sensed by a teacher? In Hungary Dewey is considered a prominent educational visionary and philosopher. As a Catholic school, we have the freedom to learn and be creative. I think that at least in our co-curriculum we have well integrated Dewey's ideas concerning the trans-formative role of experiential education.Surely, the decision-making process suggested by Ozar may be a interesting learning for us. It may help us to create a dynamic and rich curriculum as well as strengthen our community of teachers.
ReplyDeleteWe are changing the curriculum of the past because we want to answer the questions of today. Yes, we need to retain whatever we have learned in our academic formation for the rest of our life. The residue of what we can remember becomes the basis of our improvement. We need our past knowledge for us to develop a new thought. The smaller piece of knowledge we can remember, the smaller amount of what we can improve. In that sense, the students could only have a big chunk of knowledge to retain if they could be active participants in their learning environment.
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