Designing the Classroom Curriculum Designing the Classroom Curriculum | Page 42

Designing the Classroom Curriculum
to most people that the expectations of schooling now include resolution of the challenges presented by
these circumstances (see, Cochran-Smith, 2006; Masters, et al., 2005; Darling-Hammond, 2000).
Sub-optimal academic achievement by students (or in particular kinds of schools) is no longer a well-kept
secret but is openly discussed in public forums. Student outcomes are part of the civic culture discussion
and in turn, the conversation turns to teachers and teaching. Reliable assessment data then provides both a
rational basis for discussion and a benchmark for education policy, school strategies and teaching
effectiveness. Such data are the bedrock of attempts to reform the effectiveness of schooling.
What’s needed in all this is a revised approach to curriculum develop ment: as the plan for effective teaching
and optimal student learning outcomes. Welcome to the theory and practice of Learning Management.
Learning Management
In coming to understand the theory and practice of Learning Management, one has to appreciate that it is
more than just another approach to developing a classroom curriculum: and this is perhaps its greatest
strength. Learning Management, in effect, is both a curriculum development model and a defined set of
processes which require the teacher to bring to bear all that is known about effective teaching and learning
for optimised teaching effects. But Learning Management is not just about following a set of instructions, it
requires the teacher to develop a new set of teaching knowledge and skills and a mindset that fits the new
requirements of ‘teaching’ in a knowledge based socio-economic circumstance (Smith and Lynch, 2010).
More on this in a later section.
Learning Management can thus be understood as comprising a defined knowledge and skill
base that enables the teacher to achieve learning outcomes in all students (Lynch, 2012; Smith and
Lynch, 2010). Note the emphasis on all students.
Let’s examine the theory of Learning Management in more detail.
The core of Learning Management is the explicit intention to modify, develop or change someone’s knowledge,
their conduct or their practice--- to enact states of learning in all students. Learning Management thus
involves someone or something that is called a “teacher”. The teacher has, or has access to, the necessary
resources to do the teaching and also has the means of evaluating whether or not the student has acquired the desired
knowledge, conduct or practice (Bernstein, et al., 1966). Notice that Learning Management requires intentional
action to do something on the part of a teacher. It implies a propensity to intervene in a state of affairs, to
design a plan of action. In the previous discussions our focus has been the notion of an adequate classroom
curriculum: its development and implementation. Our core concern is the notion of a pedagogic void, the
lack of focus on teaching and how to do it, which leaves the act of teaching to the teacher’s idiosyncratic
preferences and capacities to teach. The consequence is that teaching:
(a)
(b)
fails to deal with the profile of individual students. A failure to enable all students to achieve desired
academic outcomes, such as literacy and numeracy, is a major contributor to the educational
inequalities that afflict Australian education and
deskills teachers at the very point in history where capacity to teach and to ensure that all students
reach their schooling potential, is at a premium.
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