Our school is currently in the process of developing a localised school curriculum. Strategically this is recognised in our goal, “To ensure the diversity of our school and community is reflected in our curriculum” and will also capture and clearly outline our collectives beliefs around teaching and learning for our students.

It would be fair to say that our school is catching up in this area with various documents that have unpacked certain curriculum areas but no concise, collective and aligned document giving full effect to the NZC…

Curriculum is designed and interpreted in a three-stage process: as the national curriculum, the school curriculum, and the classroom curriculum. The national curriculum provides the framework and common direction for schools, regardless of type, size, or location. It gives schools the scope, flexibility, and authority they need to design and shape their curriculum so that teaching and learning is meaningful and beneficial to their particular communities of students. In turn, the design of each school’s curriculum should allow teachers the scope to make interpretations in response to the particular needs, interests, and talents of individuals and groups of students in their classes.’ (Ministry of Education, 2007, p. 37).

The process will go well beyond the 4 walls of the staffroom and involve ongoing conversations with the school community, parents and most importantly, our students. To support this process there are a wide range of other models from schools to review. While these have value and are a great reference, a local curriculum is a unique document and needs to reflect our students, community, beliefs and direction aligned to the NZC.

There are also a variety of collectively researched and documented approaches from schools, especially by ERO, through their National Reports and also by others such as in some aspects of the BES series. Additionally there are also some great stories and case studies featured on New Zealand Curriculum Online. These are all very helpful in seeing how other schools have successfully developed their curriculums i.e. through collaborative approaches from teachers, a clear focus on students and student achievement, and strategic professional leadership.

Over time the NZC Updates have also provided ongoing support for curriculum development. One of particular focus has been the NZC Update 26 – Future-oriented learning and teaching a summary of the NZCER Supporting future-oriented learning and teaching – a New Zealand perspective, outlining the key themes that will underpin future-oriented learning for young New Zealanders.

The 6 themes from this report are; personalising learning, new views of equity and diversity, rethinking learners’ and teachers’ roles, a culture of continuous learning for teachers and educational leaders, a curriculum that uses knowledge to develop learning capacity, and new kinds of partnerships and relationships.

It is this last theme, new kinds of partnerships and relationships, that I would like to explore a little more where schools are:

…no longer siloed from the community.

Some of the key words associated with this theme are:

resources, expertise, collaborate, community, public, learning, knowledge, innovative, partners, wider community, access…

What we want is for our students and teachers to engage with expertise from our communities and expose our learners to the “messiness” (p. 49) of real life situations and learning.

Exploring these concepts as a staff we did a quick drawing exercise. I use drawing quite a bit to explore ideas and concepts with staff (a bit of a fan of Patti Dobrowolski). Our drawing task was to draw a diagram/picture that showed the teachers beliefs and concept of a modern learning environment.

Here are a few of the outcomes from the drawing and what I noticed in these drawing of these teacher’s concept of their MLE. Note that these were drawn independently with no front-loading and while there are only three here, others had similar themes.

The student sitting on top of the big demolition wrecking ball labeled ‘breaking down classroom walls’. Students ‘learning from different people at different times’.

The concept of a school as a ‘base’ for learning. The community as a ‘resource’. Working independently, collaboratively developing social learning opportunities.

Pushing down the four walls of the classroom. Opening up learning to the real world. Using a variety of tools/people/environments.

Collectively, some strong themes emerging. Breaking down the four walls of the classroom will enable our students to engage in real life learning experiences while engaging with and creating partnerships with the people and community. Wahoo, a great starting point.

The key questions is how will we make that happen? Our developing vision and curriculum will capture this on paper and this will inform other areas of development, especially our property plan. We know, from the previously mentioned research, case studies and research that through collaborative approaches from teachers, a clear focus on students and student achievement, and strategic professional leadership will provide the platform.

But… my thoughts are still revolving around the key areas of our curriculum and property development (in particular the modern learning environment) and the need to ensure they are both future focused and aligned.

So a couple of quick of “what ifs” to prompt thinking…

1. What if your curriculum defined a MLE quite differently from the standard flexible learning space/breakout space/outdoor learning space approach?

or

1. What if your curriculum and MLE definition included a focus on real life learning situations that weren’t actually based at school?

I guess this is where my tension/internal dilemma revolves. That is… that no matter what walls are knocked down, what new furniture replaces old, increased access to breakout spaces etc. all of which sit beside the pedagogy of flexible, student directed, self-regulated and personalised approaches to learning… they are still based in a school which is, whether we like it or not, still removed and somewhat isolated from the community.

I am absolutely not knocking the pedagogy of the MLE approach, I am questioning or perhaps just prompting discussion around the real nature of what a future focused property looks likes especially when it aligns to a strong authentic real life community partnership model of learning.

If your vision and curriculum were to be built around the concept of immersion in the community, exposing our students to the “messiness” of real life learning is that really going to happen with the current MLE construct?

Perhaps this quote from Stephen Heppell from this EdTalk of “we know how to make schools that don’t waste energy, but not schools that don’t waste learning” is of a similar line of thinking.

Finally however, the last word goes to Mark Osbourne from the team at CORE Education who summarises the relationship between a vision for learning and the environment for learning quite succinctly:

What is your vision for learning, what’s your school’s vision for learning, and what kinds of environments, what kinds of strategies, teaching processes, learning activities, do your students need in order to achieve that kind of learning.