Bishop, P., Downes, J, Engaging Curriculum for the Middle Years, in Curriculum Matters 4: 2008, Wellington, NZCER press ,pp.52-68.

Summary

The authors present a number of studies that show student engagement in years 7-10 is declining, especially amongst Maori boys. They suggest there is a mismatch between many middle school students’ learning needs and the schooling they experience. The school environment, they claim, doesn’t fit the socioemotional changes happening to adolescents. This looks like increased teacher control, stern disciplinary consequences, and a decrease in positive relationships and opportunity for student decision making in the classroom. Bishop and Downes argue that the new focus on middle years as a specific learning pathway in the new curriculum provides a rich opportunity to systematically revaluate what schools need in order to engage year 7-10 students more. They propose 3 essential characteristics necessary to achieve this goal:

Relevance

This characteristic requires students “tackling challenging problems based on their interests and concerns”. It is suggested that “a curriculum of topics and activities designed by committees of adults and implemented by adults” is not likely to enable the development of the Key Competencies, particularly Managing Self, Relating to Others and Participating and Contributing.

Negotiation

Negotiation is much more than simply ‘co-constructing success criteria’. Instead, it means that teachers draw on and understand students’ genuine needs, concerns and questions as the basis of curriculum decision making and preparation. Negotiation assumes that teachers know their subject well enough to have the confidence to go with the flows of genuine student interest and concern while still maintaining coherence and introducing new ideas...

Integration

Integration is described as the logical conclusion to relevance and negotiation. The authors define integration as “seiz[ing] on the non-linear development of knowledge typical of real world problem solving and participatory action. Information is learnt as knowledge-in-action as opposed to the knowledge-out-of-context found in most subject-centred designs”. It should be noted that integration is defined as much more than organising subjects around general themes. The authors also emphasis that for integration to be successful and not fall on the shoulders of individual teachers or teaching teams, systems, expectations and curriculum need to be honed with a coherent vision in mind.

Finally, Bishop and Downes recommend place-based education and service learning as useful frameworks to achieving a more engaging curriculum for students in years 7-10.

Some possible implications for the average secondary school

We wouldn’t teach ‘topics’ in quite the same way. The statement “what topic are we doing next” wouldn’t make sense if we took these ideas on board.
All teachers would need to be able to articulate what an engaging curriculum could look like; this can only happen when we reach a critical mass of teachers that realised that education was, as Jim Neyland describes, “autotelic” –worthwhile in and of itself and not intended for some future-oriented goal of passing NCEA or getting a job.

Potential Problems

We would need strategies for teachers for developing units around genuine needs concerns and questions of years 9 and 10 students.
Faculties would need to be open to fitting the curriculum standards to class interests, rather than trying to generate a class interest from an AO.
We would need a much more organic approach to resources. It is unlikely we would work through a text book or PPT. These would be used only as stimulus material or in response to a common question.