When can a Curriculum tick?

What do we need to implement quality curriculum in a given school situation? This article attempts to answer the question to some extent. 

As a mentor, I used to present math lesson problems as follows to teachers and ask them to let me know the method which  they would use to solve them:

1. Two pens cost Rs 27 each and two pencils, Rs 13 each. How will you find the total cost?
2. There are 38 oranges in one basket and 42 in the other. How will you find the difference?

Most often, participants' response would be as follows:

1. I will add Rs 27 and Rs 13 and get Rs 40 by using the conventional method (using place value)
2. I will subtract 38 from 42 and get 4.

Very rarely would teachers come up with `of the box' responses as follows:

1. I will add Rs 20 and Rs 10 which leads to Rs 30. Then I will add Rs 7 and Rs 3 which leads to Rs 10. Therefore the total  is Rs 30 + Rs 10 = Rs 40.
2. I would keep removing one orange from each basket simultaneously. This will eventually lead to one basket empty and the other,  with 4 oranges. Therefore the difference is 4 oranges.

Sometimes, when we take any cylindrical or cuboidal pill or capsule, it gets stuck at the throat. What I do in such situations is to keep the pill or capsule on my tongue in such a way that its longer axis is parallel to tongue's axis. When we drink water or  any other appropriate liquid by keeping the material in this position, chances of its blocking the throat or food pipe is largely reduced.

I think our K-12 curriculum fails to teach such scientific methods of doing things.

In India, we have witnessed phenomenal changes in school education in the past 40 years. Syllabus boards raised the number of lesson concepts to be taught at each class level. Textbook publishers followed suit, as this was an opportunity to increase the number of pages in their textbooks. Authors welcomed the move as this paved way for more income.

One of the first steps to achieve quality curriculum would be to reduce quantity. Our textbooks should be written in such a manner that will help children integrate lesson concepts, wherever applicable, in their day-to-day experiences.  In 1956, in the United States, physicists from the MIT and high school physics teachers teamed in to develop Physical Science Study Committee (PSSC) Physics Curriculum, one of the best curriculums ever developed in the history of physics education, for use at the Grades 9-12 level. The first PSSC PHYSICS Textbook came out in 1960 followed by several editions including those published by the National Council of Educational Research and Training in New Delhi. Films, teachers’ guides and paperback support materials accompanied the textbook. In the ‘60s, science teachers in our government schools were also trained to use the PSSC Curriculum in Summer Science Workshops. In an interview published in the Chennai based newspaper "THE HINDU" dated 26 November 2009, Nobel Laureate Dr Ramakrishnan mentioned that he studied PSSC Physics Curriculum material during his Pre-science Course.

I had the pleasure of using PSSC Physics Textbook as a reference material during my student days and teaching it later, in different countries. This was one of the best textbooks to have used very simple and cost effective laboratory equipment (which could be designed by teachers themselves) to teach concepts such as refraction of light. I remember how my Grade 12 students enjoyed learning “Alpha Particle Scattering” when I used a model from the textbook, in a remote village in Ethiopia in 1982. The textbook contained excellent multiflash photographs like the one below, to explain difficult concepts such as wave motion.

The lesson concepts in the textbook gave due consideration to students’ day-to-day experiences. Our textbooks should be written in such a manner that will help children integrate lesson concepts, wherever applicable, in their day-to-day experiences.  Instead of copying illustrations and examples blindly, our textbook authors shoud do extensive research into best classroom practices, analyze them, apply in theiro own classrooms and then write textbooks.  In other words, textbook writers should have had excellent experience as teachers themselves before writing textbooks as indicated in my letter to the editor of a local newspaper.   

A few decades back, when technology crept into the school system, a math teaching software package known as LOGO was introduced in North American Schools. This package didn’t last long because it overlooked basic principles of child psychology. While children enjoyed using the mouse to learn math on a virtual screen, it was never like how they enjoyed doing `real' math using `real' paper and pencil. But still our schools continued to use the package. I think that computer assisted classroom processes should support activity based ones instead of replacing them.

If we aim for effective curriculum, we should invite all practising teachers to express problems and recommend changes based on their classroom experience. The process should include several workshops in which relevant activities are carried out by teachers as well as pupils.

When developing any effective syllabus, important dimensions such as available resources, contextually relevant education research evidences and best practices should be considered. In terms of priority, educational resources and child friendliness should top the list of essential requirements. Once the revised syllabus is approved, it should be circulated to all schools for implementation. The syllabus should then be finetuned according to the outcomes and then finalized. Textbooks and other teaching learning materials should be produced accordingly. This should be followed by stringent quality assurance methods to monitor the quality of textbooks and other teaching learning materials including digital ones. Such a curriculum can tick.

Reference:

1. http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/exhibits/pssc/
2. ‘I absolutely believe that scientists should be paid more than they are currently’, an interview published in THE HINDU dated 26 November 2009, p15cf.