Designing the Classroom Curriculum Designing the Classroom Curriculum | Page 48

Designing the Classroom Curriculum
The Structure of the Learning Management Design Process
The Learning Management Design Process (LMDP) has three developmental phases: Outcomes, Strategy and
Evidence (see Figure 3.2). Each phase has a series of design questions (examined in detail in the next
Chapter). The teacher develops a classroom curriculum by engaging with each phase and its questions and
recording ‘findings’ (or answers) in plan form. Chapter Five explains this process in detail.
So, each phase contains focal questions that provide the teacher with the material to develop a classroom
curriculum. The Learning Management design process is analogous to building a house. There is a vision or
a desire for what is to be achieved; for what the house will look like; how the internal and external
arrangements will be configured to meet the vision or construction brief and so on. This series is a parallel
to setting outcomes.
Once the outcomes have been specified, the builder enacts a set of strategies that reflect the standards of
their profession and the circumstance of the building site in order to achieve those outcomes. This phase
can be termed strategy. Once built, the homeowner ascertains whether or not the house has been built to the
required specified standards. This process we can term the collection of evidence. The amalgam of these three
phases becomes the plan, the classroom curriculum in teaching parlance. The plan is then followed logically,
despite inevitable difficulties from the environment and probably resource constraints, to achieve the
outcomes as set. Should the finished house not meet the outcomes, either during construction or after
construction, then a process of diagnostics is employed to ascertain why there are apparent defects or the
house has failed to meet the set outcomes (See Chapters Eleven and Twelve). Let us now deal with the three
phases in the curriculum development context.
The Outcomes Phase
There are three elements that inform the outcome phase: the syllabus, the type and the hierarchical nature
of knowledge to be taught and benchmarking.
The Syllabus
While the house-building context gives the homeowner licence to design the house as they want, there are
set standards and regulations that govern house building and to which the owner must adhere. In teaching,
there are regulations also that govern what the teacher has to do and achieve. Government legislation relies
on acts of parliament to regulate what occurs in schools and what schools and teachers have to teach to their
students. Despite the fact that such syllabi are always contested by community interests that have alternative
visions of what should be taught, the syllabus encapsulates the government perspective 15 . The syllabus
defines, through learning Stages or Year Levels, what the teacher is employed to teach their students.
The agenda of each syllabus is for all students to make the required learning gains. Students however have a
range of learning abilities, achievements and interests, personality peculiarities, learning and behavioural
problems and idiosyncrasies. The teacher is faced with designing a classroom curriculum so that all students
are taught the prescribed syllabus, taking into consideration each student’s profile.
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A Syllabus is normally developed by collaborative teams established by curriculum authorities with representation from stakeholders such as teacher professional associations,
teachers’ unions, Government, Independent and Catholic schools, academics, Indigenous groups and increasingly, the private sector. Syllabi, therefore, tend to be consensus
documents.
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