Introducing the Capacities

Or, How to Think Like a River.

In British Columbia, we are about 6 years into 8+ year process to implement new curriculum in our K-12 schools.  The "redesigned curriculum" seeks to make some of the implicit goals of education -- communication, critical and creative thinking, personal and social responsibility -- explicit by identifying them and calling them core competencies.

Within each course, the curriculum is framed by Big Ideas. Curricular Competencies, and Content.  Depending on who you talk to, or which Ministry of Education document you read, or video clip from an expert you watch, these frames (the whole new curriculum really) are quite fluid...

• Big Ideas can be rolled in or out, curricular competencies can be swapped out for others, and the content is merely a suggestion.
• There are no standard assessments to measure success.
• There are multiple opportunities to embed indigenous perspectives, but no detailed prescriptions for what this should look like.
• There are entry points for community and place-responsive education, and a greater emphasis on holistic interdisciplinary learning.
• There are implications for pedagogy, but no actual dictates about what that looks like or what paradigms should guide the "new teacher."
• Having common course outlines within schools will be elusive -- choice and flexibility is where it's at.
• The implementation was underfunded and lacked clarity, and the whole process has had political undertones related to government funding and control of educational agendas (i.e. as opposed to teachers' agendas).
• Parts of the process were too slow or experienced punishing delays (e.g. piloting Grade 10 curriculum for three years in a row).
• Some teachers are organizing their course and assessment using the Big Ideas, others are using the curricular competencies for this purpose, while others are sticking with content to structure units and guide assessment.
• Most teachers will, of course, pay attention to all three and aim at some kind of synthesis.

For better or worse, this is the plan for the next long while in BC. I am still rather excited to be part of this change, or at least parts of it, but very much aware of its shortcomings, its unintended consequences, and the challenges faced by teachers in making sense of it. I often work with new teachers, both in the local UNBC teacher training program and early career teachers in my school district. These are the ones who are thought to have been "trained in the new curriculum" but in reality they are more uncertain than the "vets" about what it all means. They realize that the "fluid curriculum" gives them creative reach and freedom to experiment, but wow would they ever like some modelling and guidelines.

Speaking of fluidity, I have given some thought to how to assess students in the this brave new curricular world. It is a competency-based system, and yet assessing competencies on their own is great for formative work (try, evaluate, reflect, revise, re-try) but not so great for summative (final standing, marks, and advancement).  For example, I don't think we want to start having report cards that say Johnny got an A in establishing significance but a C- in perspective taking. The curricular competencies work well for individual tasks, for taking apart problems and developing skills.

In the study of stream dynamics, we have a couple of terms to describe how rivers move sediment -- competence and capacity. Steam competence refers to the size of particles that can be carried; the higher the competence, the bigger the particle size. This is mainly the job of young rivers in steep terrain, rolling and dragging big stones and carving away at the valley walls. Stream capacity refers to the total volume of sediment that can be carried.  Rivers with high capacity have already seen the big particles broken down, and carry a big load of sediment in suspension and solution, and lay it down beside the river or cary it out to sea.

I love these terms as a metaphor for what happens in classrooms. At first we take on big problems, one by one, and start to see how it gets easier when the problems start coming apart with small, repeated tasks and strategies. We erode the barriers, and build a unique channel through a challenging landscape. Later, we have the capacity to make broad connections between problems, to communicate what we have done, and take responsibility for the impact of our knowledge and understanding. This process is cyclical, happening over and over again in a class, in a course, and in K-12 education. Thus, I am interested in using my classes to develop both student competence (an explicit goal of the curriculum) and capacity (my understanding of an implicit goal of the curriculum).  While any individual task may practice and assess competence, when it comes to overall marking categories and summative assessment, as well as readiness to advance to the next grade, my focus is on capacity. For the context of Social Studies,  I have settled on four: Foundations -- this is knowledge and understanding of core content, Skills -- both hard and soft, like the ability to read maps, determine bias in sources, or organize an argument, Thinking -- application of concepts (mainly the curricular competencies) and cognitive skills to problems of history and geography, and Connections -- inquiry, synthesis, and activation of learning. Here is the framework I use to position "The Capacities" within the new Social Studies curriculum (and here is the pdf link):

This is my latest stab at trying to reconcile the various parts of the hidden and revealed aspects of the curriculum, and to provide a topography for student assessment. As always, feedback welcome via @gthielmann, in a comment below, or by email gthielmann (AT) gmail (DOT) com.

New job

After 23 years of teaching Social Studies, English, Geography, and other fun stuff, sometimes with various pull-outs blocks for leadership or support and coordination, I'll be out of the classroom next year, for at least one year.

I will be splitting my time between Pro-D Coordination (managing the local teacher Pro-D fund and organizing Pro-D events and conferences) and Curriculum Support for senior Humanities teachers.  The first job I've had for 5 years, but the second one is new for me.  I'm thrilled to start this -- in some ways it looks like the work I've done off the side of my desk for years, but it will also involve some new roles.  Here is the concept map that I used to prepare for the interview:

I would like to focus some of this "Curriculum Coach" time on our early career and new assignment teachers as they grow into their roles, even those who may not have senior courses next year.  I will be available for mentoring, curriculum & resource suggestions, inquiry & assessment design, co-teaching or classroom visits, and whatever else may be of use. I'm also envisioning a new addition ro our mentoring series in our district where we connect early career secondary teachers with experienced teachers in an interactive seminar setting -- something like a carousel with hands-on activities. The one-to-one and small cohort models have worked quite well for the elementary teachers but we have not drawn out the secondary numbers we hoped for. The goal here is to impact the development of a vibrant classroom, purposeful teaching & learning, and authentic assessment.

Of course, the other side of this is that I won't be at D.P. Todd next year, perhaps never again as I imagine landing at a new school or situation when my current seconded assignment ends.  I have been at this school for 15 years -- two-thirds of my career -- and I leave with mixed emotions. As I survey the vast hoard of books, lesson material, artifacts, and remainders of student projects that have accumulated in my classroom over the years, I am reminded, mainly, of the things I love about teaching. About teaching high school Social Studies students in particular.  There have been frustrating parts, too, but I've disposed of that evidence and generally suppress those memories because, hey, when you're in in for the long haul it has to be about the passion and positive stuff, otherwise it is time to get out.  I have been really fortunate to have some special students in the last few years, students who may not have been at the top academically, but really stepped up to conduct meaningful research and find creative ways to express their learning.  That's the group I have enjoyed teaching the most.

Approaches to the Revised Curriculum

The path by which BC has arrived at a new curricular landscape for Social Studies is neither straight nor intuitive. Many teachers have expressed concern over the loss of Social Studies 11, considered a "flagship" course due to it's emphasis on the world wars, a changing Canada in the 20th Century, and meaningful exploration of politics, government, climate change, and global population and development issues. Other teachers have expressed concern over the elevated status for history and historical thinking within Social Studies and the resultant (perceived) demotion of geography in particular -- in my opinion it was not embedded strongly to begin with. Teachers are also not clear on whether the curricular competencies are skills or concepts meant to make the job of exploring content more purposeful, or whether they are ends in themselves, and thus a direct focus for assessment. Delays to implementation have caused frustration (how many times can we teach SS11 to students who have already sat the same material in SS10?), as have the confusion over whether electives should be designated as Grade 11 or 12 or both. The proliferation of choice and flexibility, once touchstones for the BCED Plan, are now seen as fragmentation and indecision. By accounts from curriculum team members (and pundits who make assumptions about these things on twitter and elsewhere), some feel they had too much freedom to make decisions while others feel they had too many constrictions imposed by the Ministry of Education. The very fact that the curriculum across the disciplines so strongly reflects the personalities and projects of individual members is itself a source of interest. Is it even possible for the curriculum to be free from the stamp of individuals? What would it have looked like if others were involved? Whose feedback made it to the top of the pile?

So what do we do about it? It is my belief that the chaos introduced by the planning and implementation process over the last few years, and the resultant curriculum documents, will amplify some of the strengths and weaknesses that currently exist in BC schools. We have teachers unprepared to teach their subjects, who have come to rely on worksheets and modules (usually not their own) or a series of disconnected projects. We also have teachers who have intense passion and knowledge for certain topics or methods, some of which were closely tied to pre-existing course structures and titles, some of which were never fitted to the courses to which they were assigned. For better or worse, the revised curriculum offers a window of time in which teachers may indeed write their own narrative into the curriculum, to shape the very contours of their teaching practice, and define big ideas, competencies, and content in a way that resonates with their core values as educators. This is, of course, both dangerous and exhilarating, and will result in as much bad practice as it does success. If this opportunity is combined with a commitment to take our respective disciplines and our own teaching craft seriously, to hold each other accountable, and to be willing to share our curricular decisions and classroom results with other teachers, then the experiment can be a positive one.

Take it for what it's worth. Along with so many other teachers, I intend to drag as many Social Studies teachers from the unprepared, uninspired side to the knowledgable and passionate side. Trust me, I know both sides personally, and have in fact built many snow-storms of worksheets that have blanketed students over the years.

Making the case for storytelling

Some recent thoughts and discussions have made it clear to me that something is missing from the new BC Social Studies curriculum. Up until now I was not sure if it was something personal and connected missing from the curricular competencies, a mechanism by which Aboriginal perspectives could enter more fully into the classroom conversation, or an practical extension of the core competencies into the learning standards. Turns out it is at the centre of all three. For those uninitiated into the vast realm of education jargon, I will explain these ideas bit using Social Studies as a context.

Curricular competencies are the skills and strategies that students develop in order to approach problems of history, place (geography), and other topics that come up in Social Studies. They include research skills and inquiry abilities. The competencies include variations of six historical thinking concepts that are well explained at The Historical Thinking Project and also at The Critical Thinking Consortium. These "Big 6" are sometimes described as establishing significance, working with evidence, continuity and change, cause and consequence, taking perspectives, and ethical dimensions. I believe there are two important things missing from these competencies -- language that extends historical thinking into the area of geographic thinking, and the skill/space/support for students to make authentic and meaningful connections to their learning, the Social Studies content, and the other skills they are developing. Regardless of the fine-tuning, the competencies represent an academic approach to the study of Social Studies, capable of being post-colonial and culturally sensitive, but nonetheless a modern (if not fully modernist*) incarnation of the positivist tradition in education. The curricular competencies, starting with inquiry and working with a variety of critical thinking concepts, get students to the edge of answering "so what" questions in Social Studies. *Update: an expert on both the new curriculum and Big 6-derived competencies has pointed out that the Historical Thinking Concepts have been profoundly affected by a turn towards post-modernism (presumably among the academics who developed them for use in education). This in itself is a interesting discussion but I'll leave it at that for now.

The new curriculum emphasizes the opportunity to include more Aboriginal perspectives and knowledge, in some ways a challenge to the positivist tradition and in other ways a means to embed alternate views and powerful stories alongside the empirical approach and a Eurocentric narrative. In parts of the curriculum these opportunities are made clear, and in others it is not. What is missing is some mechanism whereby this emphasis can be layered and interactive with the competencies -- and does more just establish a quota for Aboriginal content. There are many ways in which indigenous perspectives can become more responsive with the Social Studies class. I feel as if I am only starting down this path and have much to learn (see Q6/A6 on this post about Social Studies 9). A good starting point for teachers in the same position is the First Peoples Principles of Learning. If you want a interesting thought experiment, read these principles and then read the curricular competencies for a new BC Social Studies course. What's the connection? For me, it is as if the FPPoL represents the reasons why developing the competencies is important work and to end they should lead. Each Social Studies course could be subtitled with Principle 2, 3, 6, 7, or 8, e.g. "Learning is embedded in memory, history, and story."

In providing a framework for the new curriculum and "personalized" learning, the Ministry of Education and teacher teams developed the Core Competencies. "[A]long with literacy and numeracy foundations and essential content and concepts," these aver-arching standards "are at the centre of the redesign of curriculum and assessment. Core competencies are sets of intellectual, personal, and social and emotional proficiencies that all students need to develop in order to engage in deep learning and life-long learning" (https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/competencies). One of the three core competencies is Communication. There is obvious importance in all course and grades to the various ways in which students interpret prompts, engage in activities, express their understanding, show their learning, and collaborate with others. Where "Communication" could be more practical is at the level of curricular competencies, the discipline-specific skills and strategies that guide exploration of content in each course. What is an actual ability that can be employed alongside interpretation of bias, perspective-taking, and establishing chains of causality in Social Studies?

I believe that all three of these "problems" -- incomplete curricular competencies, inclusion of Aboriginal perspectives, and the need to explicitly apply core competencies -- centers around storytelling. This is skill, a competency, an arena for discovery, and a way of beginning difficult conversations, that has always been indispensable in the Social Studies classroom. I'd like to see storytelling included more prominently in the new curriculum. Read a few of the student stories on this blog post to see my own bias on the importance of storytelling. Maybe one day there will be a Storytelling 12 that leverages interdisciplinary learning from K-12 and allows students to tell their stories. I think it would be a fitting way to finish high school and honour their diverse paths towards success. For now, Storytelling will be an unofficial curricular competency and will be the main strategy with which teaching and learning in my Social Studies class get the heart of the three problems I have described above. For the visual learners out there, I have summarized and represented these thoughts in a graphic below.

Q and A on New Curriculum and SS9

Recently, I was asked some great questions about my draft/sample Social Studies 9 outline that I am using at the moment to pilot the new BCED curriculum. I've been asked "where's the French Revolution" by a few teachers, "where's the competencies" by another, and so on. I've gathered the various tweets, texts, and response emails in what I hope is a useful summary below.

Reference: an outline for Social Studies 9

Q1. Are there topics that have to be included in the new curriculum? Some expected topics are missing from your outline, like the French Revolution and Napoleon. 

A1. No, there are no required topics beyond the "topic areas" that are listed in the content learning standards. Although some teachers could conceivably structure a course that had no firm topics, perhaps around approaches to the study of society, completely based on competencies, or daily analysis of current events, we can be quite confident that many "familiar" topics will remain in BC Social Studies courses. Out of courtesy to fellow teachers, I think most course outlines will not stray too far or too often beyond the new course bookends of 1750-1919. Yes, my new SS9 outline does not include the French Rev and Napoleon (nor the American Revolution per se). These topics, like all the other content, are now optional. Teachers can pick and choose as many of the "old topics" as they wish to tell the story they want, to explore the themes/big ideas, and work out the competencies. Teachers can also add new content, such as other global revolutions or conflicts, if that helps them with their goals. I have explained this in some detail on the 11x17 "content shifting" planning documents posted at http://www.thielmann.ca/new-bc-curriculum.html. 

Q2. How should teachers decide what to include, or how to set up a SS9 course?

A2. Much of the content will naturally be suggested by the course bookends of 1750-1919. However, the decision to focus more on Canada vs Canada/Europe or Canada/World or just World is up to the teacher. Teachers can pick four favourite or important topics and build a course from there, or they could take on forty topics if they want. Teachers may add topics from outside the bookends (e,g, current events) or from outside of formal history altogether, such as architecture, political science, or sociology. Teachers can work through content (and competencies) through talk-and-chalk, worksheets & assignments, press play on the dvd, project-based-learning, debate & discussion, whatever. Some teachers will have core content, and optional content to be explored by students (e.g. project topics). Some teachers will align topics to themes, the content learning standards, or the competencies themselves, others will stick with a sequential outline powered by the topics themselves. Say farewell to common department exams, unless your dep't has a solid history of doing things the same way. There will be good, bad, and ugly all over the place, not much different than now, really, but I think eventually there will be some consistency and productive models to follow. I intend to work towards that, anyways. 

Q3. Why drop French Revolution and Napoleon, but keep the Industrial Revolution? 

A3. My Grade 9 course has a Canadian focus, so, with the exception of the Industrial Revolution, I've dropped topics that don't directly involve or take place in Canada. The French Revolution is interesting, and so very important to European and World history (as are so many other events), but something has to go. I don't  want to teach a fast-paced, low-depth survey course. Ironically, by extending the historical bookends, the new curriculum does more to encourage "survey" vs" depth" than the old curriculum -- although that was not the intention. Our grade 8 teachers will probably not pick up the French Revolution, although it may be an optional area of study for either Grade 8 or Grade 9. A bit later in the course I plan to a short American vs French Revolution activity; more for the competencies, though, and less about the content, e.g. deconstruct some images and sources that either glorify or condemn revolutionaries from each country. I have included the Industrial Revolution because it is part of a truly global story, it is related to Canadian migration, ties to WWI, and is often ranked by historians as one of the top 5 influential events in history. Almost every object and many of the ideas that govern our society, gender roles, environmental issues, labour conditions, and way of life have a link to the Industrial Revolution. Students can wrap their mind around those kind of connections, far more so than some of the nuanced lessons of the Tennis Court Oath and the Reign of Terror. I started the course with the Industrial Revolution as the backdrop to a "skills bootcamp" -- using invention, factory age, results of enclosure, social conditions, and environmental change as ways of introducing competencies and getting students used to interpreting documents and sources, especially images but also graphs and maps. I keep copies of an aged little text around almost exclusively for these lessons - "Thinking about our Heritage: a Hosford Study Atlas" (example here). I also had a student teacher with me for these lessons and he produced some very effective activities and critical thinking prompts, and used some great media.

Q4. Why so you include virtually every other "Canadian" topic (in some form) from 1750-1919 carried over from existing courses? 

A4. The rest of my course is decidedly Canadian (with plenty on and about British Columbia) because I believe it is important in the few short years of Gr. 8-10 to leave students with a sense of the Canadian story, their place in it, and their agency in regards to its future. All other topics are interesting to me as a Socials teacher, but not mission critical for building active, empathetic, and informed Canadian citizens. It is also the Canadian topics that will help me provide an arc and consistency in the use of themes such as Aboriginal content and perspectives. Students can get plenty of world history and culture in Gr. 11 and 12 if they want it, plus some in Grade 8. I have truncated some Canadian topics and left others alone, mainly a reflection of which of my past lessons resonated with students and were fun to teach, or had good class activities to go with them. The topics in my course are also a reflection of the print resources and media that I like to use with students and that our school already owns. We have been, no doubt most school have been told, that there are very little funds for new learning resources. I try to build a course-long narrative that has a point to it; in the past it was part of our job in the class to decide together what the point was. Now we have "big ideas" to frame that discussion. Perhaps we need a new term to describe the blend of narrative, discovery, and repetition that form some kind of class goal. What is it that we actually expect from a successful Social Studies student? Beyond the ability to apply critical/historical thinking to problems and evidence, and the development of good Canadians (itself a problem worth deconstructing), I think we are well served by stirring students to become storytellers. The objective is as simple as students being able to talk about Canada's past, present, or future using emotion, humour, insight, and authenticity. Part of that ability is ease with which students can look at fresh material (like what's on the daily news) and have something interesting to say about it, something that connects with what they learned in the course. In my mind, that is as solid an indicator of readiness to move on to the next grade as is a test score. 

Q5. Why don't you include other (new) topics that fit the time period and big ideas? 

A5. For SS9 I have not yet planned for entirely new topics, Canadian or otherwise. This is my first time through so I will be recycling many old lessons and focusing more on designing new competency exercises and class activities than I will on new content. I am a busy guy with a 1000 interests and a beautiful family, so crisp topics will have to wait their turn. One of the interests I have, however, is developing curriculum. I am currently working with a group of teachers from the Pacific Slope Consortium on curriculum projects, but that is more a long term thing and does not help me out this semester. I find that without quality resources in place, taking on new topics involves too much internet surfing and photocopied materials. One topic that doesn't come up too much in the old or new curriculum is local history and geography. This is passion of mine and an area that I want to spend more time with in my courses. I am also loathe to add more content to an already full roster because I have designed a large chunk of my SS9 course to include project-based learning - a Heritage Connections project that involves ongoing inquiry, source work, interviews, and multiple classes for student presentation. Three other factors influence my choice of topics and will probably drive any further reduction of content in my SS9 outline: increased use of role-play/simulations and the added presence of WWI -- the kinds of things teachers and students can do with this time period could fill a whole course. The last is more practical; I have arranged my units so that I can use the "Crossroads" text for the first part of the course and make a clean switch to the "Horizons" test for the next part. I figure we can do the handoff with the Social Studies 8 teachers who will use the Crossroads text for the second part of their course, thus we don't need to purchase new class sets of texts while they are still useful and current.

Q6. Any suggestions for including Aboriginal perspectives and knowledge? 

A6. We have a few decent local learning resources in SD#57 related to Indigenous culture, issues, and worldview. We have a large and well-funded Ab-Ed Dep't with many staff that are available to advise or visit classes. They recently put on a successful Ab-Ed Symposium that gave over 700 local educators a sense of the challenges and possibilities ahead. FNESC http://www.fnesc.ca; and BCTF have produced some great resources in the last couple of years. Check out this Project of Heart site http://bctf.ca/HiddenHistory/ and also this one: http://projectofheart.ca/. Like others, I have many existing lessons or lesson elements in various states of development on the Aboriginal cultures of North America (or Canada, or BC), Indian Act/Potlatch ban, residential schools (historical, modern i.e. TRC), land claims (process, results, protests), environmental issues that relate to First Nations, Aboriginal self-government, Aboriginal soldiers in WWI/WWII, 1960 vote, etc., etc. That's where I'll start -- include as much of that as makes sense, keep my eye open for critical thinking activities and continue becoming familiar with the First Peoples Principles of Learning and their implication for my classroom and students. Our union local's Aboriginal Education rep has also posted some resources here: http://www.pgdta.ca/aboriginal.html.

Q7. What's your take on the curricular competencies?

A7. I have been using the Seixas et al Six Historical Thinking concepts (significance, evidence, continuity and change, cause and consequence, perspectives, ethical dimensions) in one way or another for years, so they are not strangers within my lessons, although it has been hit and miss. While they were as good a place as any for the Ministry K-9 team to build their competencies, I feel as if they have squeezed geography in the process and go straight to the complex stuff at the expense of a few old-fashioned Social Studies skills like map-making, charting and graphing, making, and simply learning from a variety of sources and voices (as opposed to decoding them for bias, significance, etc.). I suppose if you teach/learn the core competencies alongside the curricular competencies, you can do it all. The Big 6 can be scaled, too, so that the process/outcome for students is basic... more like "thinking" than "critical thinking." The Gr. 10-12 Ministry team is working on some unique competencies for Geography 11/12 -- these will likely be similar to the six historical thinking concepts and will be useful for Gr. 8-10 Social Studies in the future, perhaps even incorporated in later edits (if that happens). Another area that seems to be missing from the core and curricular competencies is authenticity. Making personal connections to course material, using personal strengths to express learning should be considered a skill that can be developed, refined, and perhaps assessed (or at least self-assessed). Authenticity relates to quality of research, depth of inquiry, choice of strategies, plagiarism education, and acceptance in the learning community. Maybe that's just an extension of the three core competencies.

Q8. How will you use the competencies and how will they be assessed?

A8. It may not obvious from looking at my course outline how competencies fit in. My plan is to be more regular about using at least one competency-driven activity in each of my lesson. This could mean comparison of disparate sources, having students identify and explain turning point, do cause-and-effect webs, pick a position and defend it, debate issues involving ethics, etc. Some of this stuff I can just wing it -- there is enough of it in my lessons already, but some of it needs to be more deliberate, such as dropping direct/specific questions from lesson handouts and having more open-ended inquiry, perhaps around the image on the screen or an object in the classroom. Towards this end, the project I mentioned in A4 above will be useful -- one of the products we hope to end up with are "assessment boxes" with many source documents, laminated photos, and maybe some 3D objects that are meant to provoke thought, center discussion, and be the subject of competency-driven questions and activities. For example, the class gets a series of images of inventions and artifacts from the Industrial Revolution, with enough time or background info to figure out what they did, why they were important or what impact they had. These could be used for so many learning and assessment purposes, group or individual. Arrange in a timeline. Arrange in order of significance, based on criteria developed by your group. Guess (or find out) what technology this invention replaced and what specifically was improved. Predict the social or environmental consequences of the invention. Explain why YOUR invention should be on the cover of a museum exhibit brochure on the industrial revolution. Find one other invention that is related to yours and, with your new partner, explain the connection to the class. You see how this list could go on and on. Instead of having a test bank, we'll have a source bank that can generate fresh assessments simply by changing up the order or the activity. Combined with simple instructions and a couple of different assessment rubrics (e.g. formative, summative, self, peer), we think this method could actually simplify assessment and not take up any more time than the standard test. In our experience, we learn much more about a student's progress from these open-ended "explain your understanding" assessments than we do from ye olde multiple choice tests. I haven't dug into the TC2 http://tc2.ca resources in a while, or had a chance to read The Big 6, but there one can find many more ideas to drive work with competencies.

I wish all schools and colleagues the best as they wrestle with the many issues that come up with the new curriculum. Historical content remains important, and is a great hearth on which to spin a "Social Studies" narrative with your students and practice both critical and creative thinking, but it is not the only thing that matters in Social Studies. In addition to competencies, tend to the geography, tend to the broad themes of the Humanities and other disciplines that make Social Studies more than a history course. For those that are unfamiliar with the "elements of historical thinking" -- learn more at http://historicalthinking.ca or sign up for their summer institute http://pdce.educ.ubc.ca/historical-thinking-summer-institute/. For those that use them all the time, challenge the notion that competencies begin and end with these elements. I encourage BC teachers to experiment with diverse course outlines and find a way to compare notes afterwards. Social media works fine for this. The word will eventually seep out to teachers who don't use social media.

UNBC/CNC/SD57 Joint Feedback on proposed BCED Geography 11/12 Courses

Last fall I put a call out for interested teachers and post-secondary Geography faculty to meet and discuss the Draft BC Curriculum: Human Geography 11/12 and Physical Geography 11/12. Here are the results of that discussion

Joint feedback developed and submitted by:

• Sinead Earley, Lecturer in UNBC Geography & PhD candidate in Geography (Queen’s University), Prince George
• Dr. Greg Halseth, Professor, UNBC Geography, Community Development Institute, CRC Chair, Prince George
• Dr. Neil Hanlon, Professor, UNBC Health Sciences, Prince George
• Chris Jackson, Senior Lab Instructor, UNBC Geography, Prince George
• Dr. Peter Jackson, Professor, UNBC Environmental Science, Atmospheric Science and Engineering, Prince George
• Alex Koiter, lecturer, UNBC Geography, Prince George
• Mark Lafleur, secondary teacher, Duchess Park Secondary, SD57 Prince George
• Dr. Zoë Meletis, Associate Professor, UNBC Geography, Prince George
• Dr. Catherine Nolin, Associate Professor and Chair, UNBC Geography, Prince George
• Steve Porter, secondary teacher, Kelly Road Secondary, SD57 Prince George
• Stephanie Powell-Hellyer, Sessional Instructor, UNBC Global and International Studies, Prince George
• Cliff Raphael, Instructor, Geography and Leadership, College of New Caledonia, Prince George
• Glen Thielmann, secondary teacher, D.P. Todd Secondary, SD57 Prince George
• Dr. Roger Wheate, Associate Professor, GIS Coordinator, UNBC Geography, Prince George

Meeting location
Held at University of Northern British Columbia, November 30th, 2015, 4-6pm, Admin Bldg 1069

Meeting agenda:

1. Orientation to curriculum change in BC K-12 Education system
2. Overview of the new curriculum framework and role of geography in Social Studies courses
3. Defining and contextualizing big ideas, competencies, and content
4. Feedback groups and sharing out (see five questions below)
5. Wrap-up discussion on geography education and opportunities to connect K-12 teachers with post-secondary faculty and the UNBC Geography Program

Reference:
“Social Studies: Proposal for Grades 10-12 Curriculum,” BC Ministry of Education, retrieved Nov 20/2015 from https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/curriculum/10-12

Group activity questions:

1. What is the point in studying Geography? Put another way, what are some of the “Big Ideas” in Geography?
2. What are some competencies (skills/processes/ways of thinking and expression) in the study of Geography?
3. What areas of study, key concepts, and topics are important for students to learn about in a well-rounded and interesting introductory course in Human Geography?
4. What areas of study, key concepts, and topics are important for students to learn about in a well-rounded and interesting introductory course in Physical Geography?
5. Anything else to add?

FEEDBACK

General comments:

• Why two courses (plus environmental studies, plus earth science)? Wouldn’t a general, interdisciplinary geography course with flexible content have more appeal to both students and teachers?
• Content and competencies should use the heading/bullet approach used in the draft Earth Science course - allows differentiation between main ideas and lesser ideas within each category
• One course: human-environment interaction and process
• The draft competencies are for the most part about history education and not geography education
• How about a holistic geography course with options for students to get credit for human vs physical based on the projects the complete?

Feedback from the group activity

1. What is the point in studying Geography? Put another way, what are some of the “Big Ideas” in Geography? (this section also includes general statements about the draft curriculum)

More about Human Geography:

• environment
• spatial learning
• place
• inter-relationships (local to global)
• based on data (observations | measurements
• human-environment interactions (also expressed as the human-environment dynamic)
• geography is about the study of space, place, and identity (these are core concepts, prompts for inquiry)
• why do people live where they do and how do they interact with the environment
• 3rd and 4th Human Geog “Big Ideas” are too similar

More about Physical Geography:

• measurement of space
• earth’s surface as a place of interactions
• systems
• understanding our world
• location, maps,
• patterns, trends
• purpose of (physical) geography includes understanding of basic composition and structure of the earth, forces that share the surface of the earth, and biomes

About both Human and Physical Geography:

• patterns
• understanding humans on Earth
• data-based measurements, observations, pattern recognition
• Geography is applicable to all fields - emphasize where geography takes you, e.g. experience-based learning
• systems thinking; scales - local to global
• cycles and interactions
• location, location, location
• make the relationship between humans and environment more interactive, less deterministic
• integration: knowledge of physical and social dynamics shared across both courses
• if they were one course, they should focus on human/environment interaction/process
• geography is an integrated science, interdisciplinary
• focus on underlying processes
• local-global interdependencies (a key-component in geographic thinking
• climate change
• linking human and physical processes
• globally connected world
• understanding connections/reciprocal relations between land and life
• how/why people live where they do
• basic geographic literacy (various definitions)

2. What are some competencies* in the study of Geography?
* “competencies” is the term used in BC Curriculum documents to describe skills, capacities, practical abilities, and habits of mind. Some are discipline-specific, some are interdisciplinary, while others are meant to apply generally to “critical thinking” and “inquiry.”

More about Human Geography:

• critical thinking
• isolating what we’re thinking about (metacognition)
• levels of “Why?”
• ability to express in a variety of means (e.g. photo essays)
• reasoning
• recognize patterns in the world that relate to people

More about Physical Geography:

• experiential learning (mentioned multiple times)
• clear expression from qualitative through to quantitative
• basic geographic literacy
• ability to spatially represent and interpret data
• basic mapping skills
• inquiry
• analytical tools to use/interpret geographically referenced data
• integration of different geographic understandings
• chain of explanations: be able to explain things that are interconnected
• transfer and translation of geographic knowledge
• capacity for interdisciplinary research, thought, and expression
• refer to http://pics.uvic.ca for competency ideas
• problem-solving
• ability to discuss and make chains of explanation (e.g. Syrian Migration)
• concept maps/mind-mapping
• writing/expressing thoughts clearly (qualitative and quantitative thinking)
• integrative; interrelated thinkers - knowledge transfer - discussion - linkages (mind maps)
• explain “so what”
• visual representations of space; patterns, meaning
• see the “Big Picture” when presented with geographic data and phenomenon
• identify key factors as explanation
• ability to trace interconnections
• knowledge translation - from science to policy and back (bridging)
• data management
• spatially integrated data - interpretation of multiple data sets
• make predictions and apply conclusions to geographic evidence
• find and assess geographic data

About both Human and Physical Geography:

• math skills
• recognize patterns in the world that relate to physical characteristics
• ability to work with case studies

3. What areas of study and key concepts are important for students to learn about in a well-rounded and interesting introductory course in Human Geography?

One group summarized their work as such:

1. Settlement - urban/rural/mega-city/migration
2. Culture - conflict/change
3. Environment - climate change/environ. degradation
4. Economy - globalization/eneven development
5. Geopolitics
6. Colonial Legacies

One group created themes of content:

• class, race, space, place, identity, gender, diversity, patterns, trends, locations, processes

Other submissions:

• identification of…, applicability of…, interrelationships…
• dynamic relations between humans and the environment and human-human relationships
• scale - interdependence of scale from local to global (e.g. commodity chains)
• nominative values
• case study learning
• inquiry and project-based learning
• spatial literacy
• how applicable geography is to all disciplines - interrelationships
• different kinds of spatial analysis
• representing the world visually (e.g. animations, maps, art, writing, photography)

4. What areas of study and key concepts are important for students to learn about in a well-rounded and interesting introductory course in Physical Geography?

One group summarized their work as such:

1. Atmosphere
2. Lithoshpere
3. Biosphere
4. Hydrosphere
   ... interaction and spatial distribution

A second group summarized their work as such:

• Earth’s systems - and thinking about these systems:
• Atmosphere
• Hydroshere - Cryosphere
• Lithosphere
• Biosphere - Anthroposphere
  ... for all: processes and flows of energy and matter in each and between each system. Details within - refer to competencies and concepts

And also a third:

• The Four Spheres (atmosphere, lithosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere)

Other submissions:

• processes: glaciation, water erosion
• structure/framework: tectonics, rocks, volcanics
• systems: equilibrium, open/closed (e.g. watersheds), emergent properties
• history - past events and conditions, current processes and landforms
• multiple layers in landscapes
• significance of physical features (e.g. as resources)
• earth systems
• linkages (e.g. between biosphere and lithosphere)
• organization of phenomena
• use more inquiry-based learning and media-based learning: offer examples and cases for investigating concepts and themes in geography
• sources to be included: census data, maps, photos, images, government docs, northern BC archives
• integration of knowledge
• local physical geography (integration and experiential learning)
• local interaction of the spheres

5. Anything else to add?

• Suggestion: replace language in competencies — replace “assess the significance of…” with “appreciate the diverse nature of our world and patterns within it”
• The Physical Geography draft does not mention the biosphere — exploring the spheres without the biosphere or ecology does not make sense

Facilitator’s notes :

• The responses to both Question 1 and Questions 3 and 4 contain many items that the Curriculum Team will recognize as potential competencies in addition to thoughts about big ideas and content.
• The list of suggested competencies related to Question 2 have great integration of human and physical — it seems likely that a single set of competencies could emerge for both geography courses
• Most of the feedback group agreed that having a single integrated geography course would have more appeal to students — high schools in northern BC already have a hard time getting a single course of geography going, and might have a harder time trying to sell two courses, or one at the expense of the other

Draft Curriculum Feedback

I thought I'd post an edited version of what I posted on the BC Ministry of Education site for curriculum feedback <https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/feedback> on Nov 2.  Like the curriculum itself, my thoughts about the 10-12 Drafts are a work in progress. The stuff below is specifically about Social Studies 10 and Human / Physical Geography 11/12. While these are my own views, I have developed many of them in collaboration with other Social Studies teachers.

Please leave your own feedback on the new curriculum -- they have a lot to work to do and will take their cue from the teachers that offer feedback.

1. What do you like about the proposal? Please comment on the core and optional curricula.

I like that the proposal is an attempt to carry the streamlined ideas of the K-9 courses forward for 10-12. Requiring students to take one "Socials" elective after Grade 10 is a bare minimum -- it should be two. Alternately, students should be required to take a set number of credits from Humanities (e.g. English and Socials electives) as well as Math/Science, such that it is natural and encouraged for students to take more than one post-Grade 10 Socials elective.

I appreciate that Social Studies 10 is in a tight position -- does it simply replace the old SS11 minus WWI, allowing it to "breathe" a little in the absence of a Provincial Exam, or does it try to be something new, a true "Social Studies" course that employs multi-disciplinary inquiry to examine Canada and the World in the last 100 years? At this point it is not quite doing either.  Ironically, this is due, in part, to the admirable (but very much history-based) competencies.  The irony is that the heart of the competencies (the so-called "benchmarks of historical thinking" developed by Peter Seixas of UBC among others) are a great way to study history and other related subjects, but as a day-to-day "skills" guide for Social Studies students they might be too much -- they may cloud the other joyous offerings of history (such the art of storytelling) and also cloud the strong role that geographic thinking (and other "competencies") should play in Social Studies. Nonetheless, I'm glad to see the "benchmarks" present as I (and many others) have been using them in Social Studies for years as a way to shift the focus from content-for-content's sake to content as a tool for developing thinking.

I like that Geography has been split into Human and Physical, although this will make it tough for smaller high schools to "fill a block of geography" with an even more specialized choice of courses. I think some teachers will be tempted to combine them where possible, just like some teachers will likely want to combine First Peoples Issues and Social Justice, or will want to include them as part of a larger program. Will this be possible? We don't know enough yet about the Grad Plan, funding model(s), cohort-based programs vs course credits, opportunities for blended learning, etc. It is difficult to apply for an innovation grant or envision how a new program will play without knowing if the proposals will even be possible -- schools have a hard enough time figuring out when their lunch time should start, let alone whether they are ready to upend the timetable to launch something like cross-curricular learning inquiry time/spaces.  I like that geographic thinking and literacy are mentioned (once) in the draft proposal -- this needs to be built on and used in both (new) geography courses.

2. What do you think should be improved? Please comment on the core and optional curricula.

First -- the proposed Social Studies 10. Too much content has been squeezed out of the old Social Studies 9, 10, and 11 into the new SS9, and as a result the new SS10 is, in part, too vague on content. Yes, teachers can now pick and choose the content they will use to address the big ideas and explore the develop the competencies in SS9, but there is too much history that will be glossed over -- if anything it encourages SS9 to be more of a survey course than ever. Speaking of which, the competencies rely so heavily on Seixas' history benchmarks that it takes away from other aspects of Socials, particularly Geography. I think that geographic literacy should have a more prominent role in the SS K-10 curriculum. Assuming SS K-9 will not receive further edits, one thing that can be done is to adjust the new SS10 -- it needs an additional content item: "development of Canadian Identity in the 20th Century at home and on the world stage." This will help make it clear to teachers that events of note in 20th Century Canada will still be something students get to learn about -- the Great Depression, WWII, Canada and the Cold War, Quebec Nationalism, etc. As it stands, there is nothing compelling in the content that suggest teachers need to pay attention to what was once the heart of the old SS11. At present, SS10 looks like a contemporary civics, issues, and human geography course (in fact very much like the old 3-part pre-2004 SS11 without explicit reference to the History section), and yet relies on history-based critical inquiry for competencies and mandates a timeline of 1919-present. If we are to do the job of teaching human geography effectively in the new SS10 (just like we did in SS11), there needs to be a term added to the content item "interconnections between demography, urbanization, environmental issues, and globalization." Between urbanization and environmental issues add "stages of development." Additionally, for the content item "development, structure, and function to Canadian and other economic systems" add "...and their impact on standards of living." This line of inquiry in the old SS11 (why are some nations better off than others and how do we close the gap) was for me, along with "why bother voting," the heart of the course. As for the SS10 Big Ideas -- they are quite generic and basically reiterations of the content and competencies -- they lack the nuance of the SS9 Big Ideas. As such they are not very useful as course organizers or even themes that could guide the construction of units.

Next -- the optional content. Geography 11/12 courses have a few serious issues that need to be addressed. I see that most of the competencies have been copy-and-pasted from other SS courses (the benchmarks of historical thinking plus statements about inquiry). These ones specific to historical thinking should out rather than suggest they should guide geography studies. To a lesser extent, the competencies for 20th Century World History 11/12, Contemporary First Peoples Issues 11/12, and Social Justice 11/12 will also need to be adjusted to make them more discipline-specific. Interdisciplinarity is great, but requires it's own "competencies" separate from those specific to the study of History. As an aside, I would suggest that the biggest support for interdisciplinarity comes from the 3 Core Competencies.

So what to do with Geography 11/12? First the Human Geography 11/12 has too much overlap with the "human geography" aspects of the proposed SS10. It is a rough (and in my mind inaccurate and outdated) survey of topics from post-secondary "human" geography programs put through the filter of the bits of geography that currently exist in Gr 10-12 curriculum. It reads a bit like the chapter headings from a 1980s Geog text, or a list of old Geog courses (Economic, Regional, etc.) prior to the extensive use of technology in gathering and interpreting geographic data, and prior to some wicked developments in Geographic thinking and post-colonial inquiry. There is too much emphasis on resources and not enough on "environment." Content items 3 and 4 should be combined (they are really the same thing). The imbalance can be corrected with more emphasis on place-conscious learning, making sense of human interaction with place, and the prompt to use of many types of texts and data in order to explore themes and thinking in geography (literary sources, photography, video, and especially maps).

The Physical Geography 12 course is primitive but not far from what would be expected -- it is all the "physical" bits from the old Geog 12, especially the geomorphology. I think what it is missing is a window for the inclusion of geology and ecology, two important "subtopics" (arguable of course) in a holistic study of physical geography. A geographer worthy of his or her dirty dirty fingernails will relish the opportunity to share a bit about rocks, plants, and soil. Some colleagues (who stare at clouds) will also want to see a stronger role for atmospheric science in the new course (beyond the existing mention of human interaction with the atmosphere). As mentioned, a discipline-specific set of competencies is needed, as will a decision of whether Physical Geography 12 will count a lab or science credit towards university admission.

In neither geography course is there mention of how technology has shaped geography (e.g. GIS, GPS, satellite imaging). This relates to the need for data literacy, for the need to make geographic data more important in the Geog courses. The Human Geog proposal misses this, although it is mentioned in the Physical Geog competencies -- it appears as if there was the beginning of an attempt with competency #2 to adapt benchmarks of historical thinking to the realm of geographic thinking.

Beyond tech, maps, and discipline-specific data, the other side of the missing coin is sense of what these courses are for. "20th Century World History 11/12" is, arguably, about how our world is still dominated by conflicts and cooperations based on ideas with incredible realizations in the last 100 years.  Why take Human Geography 11/12?  The content (and still-to-be written competencies) need to convey the profound questions about how we relate with place, about the deep impact of environment, about how we read landscapes, and about how we conduct ourselves as humans on the planet. The new curriculum does not prevent this from being the basis of the course, but it does not go very far to encourage it either.

So what do competencies look like in Human Geography (and perhaps Physical Geography)? They could be based on the "five themes of geography" (Location, Place, Human-Environment Interaction, Movement, and Region). They could be based on the "six elements of geography" (The World in Spatial Terms, Places and Regions, Physical Systems, Human Systems, Environment and Society, and The Uses of Geography) or some kind of synthesis of the two. See my blog post about these for references: http://thielmann.blogspot.ca/2012/10/benchmarks-of-geographic-thinking.html.

Following is a list of focus areas for the application of geographic inquiry. They are somewhere in between "Big Ideas" and "Competencies." If I get around to it, I'd love to work these into specific competencies, but here is where they were at when I blogged about it in 2012.

• Structure of place - form & function of human and/or physical systems
• Use of Evidence - selection & interpretation of phenomenon related to human and physical features of past and present landscapes
• Causality and Change - function of space & time in the evolution of human and physical systems
• Human-Environment Interaction - mutual impacts and dependencies, modes of adaptation
• Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives - role of history, sociology, biology, economics, geology, etc. in the study of geography
• Responsibility and Sustainability - resource ethics, interconnected issues, planning & management

3. Does the core curriculum require anything further to meet the needs of students graduating from BC schools? Please provide details.

Yes -- see comment above for #2 (SS10 needs an additional content item: development of Canadian Identity in the 20th Century at home and on the world stage). Students should not graduate without this basic grounding in Canada's history in the 20th century. As well, "development" and "standards of living" need to be retained in the new SS10 curriculum in order to fully realize the human geography component.

The new curriculum

BC is part way through a "transformation of the education system" which has, at its heart, curriculum revisions throughout K-12.  Having sat through a number of "new curriculum" sessions in the last year, and even delivered a few, I find it interesting how teachers and other educators talk about it.

"The new curriculum is about _______ (fill in the blank)." It seems to have become all things to all people, even if ________ has little basis in the actual new curriculum. It is a tabula rasa on which educators are placing all of their dreams, goals, and fears about the future of education and all of the justifications for the way they conduct their practice, or wish to.  I know I have done this at times, perhaps influenced by dozens of examples from others in BC. The version I like the best is where teachers (with cause) cite the infinite Choice that the New Curriculum offers. Basically we can now do absolutely anything we want whenever we want, as long as we reference inquiry and/or personalized learning. The curriculum will "allow" more depth, more authenticity, more PBL, more inclusion of Aboriginal learners, more time to follow passions. The teachers that say these things are awesome teachers who do this stuff anyways, so maybe the "NC" just affirms that they will continue to be supported. The open-endedness is reinforced by a curriculum process (e.g. the Ministry process) that has been sufficiently vague along the way about how it will all work, and is still vague regarding where it will end up (the grad plan).

I suppose this speaks to latent hope, and a legitimate need for new approaches to teaching and learning, but is also a bit disturbing as it gives the "new curriculum" a mysterious lustre and the function of an oft-quoted (or alluded) but poorly understood religious text within the milieu of education change. This metaphysical approach shifts curriculum from a guide or a track that has been laid down to a series of interconnected, fluid, and subjective feelings. This work is done by the priests of the new curriculum who are involved in conversion experiences -- from the "old" way of teaching and learning (whatever the heck that is) to the Transformed Way. The conversion is considered to be successful when the inducted teacher can use "21st Century" jargon convincingly and with effect.

I mock it a bit, but I am also intrigued to see where it all ends up. After all, "fervour" is hard to manufacture, and is often a necessary step on the path towards "transformation" in all its forms.

Tapestry Workshops

Hello Victoria, Sooke, Sanich and Gulf Islands Teachers!

The organizers for the Tapestry Conference tell me that my workshops need some more souls or they might have to cancel. I'm really hoping to make the trip down there (from Prince George) for your Feb 21 Conference, so if you can help recommend a few people (or yourself) to attend one or both of these sessions I would be very grateful.  Tapestry Registration here.

Morning Session:

Heritage Inquiry: Connecting Land, People, and Narrative

Target audience: Secondary Humanities especially Social Studies, History, Geography, and English

Project-based learning using heritage research as the basis of cross-curricular inquiry and application of critical thinking skills. Case studies from Social Studies 10 and 11, Geography 12, and suggestions for adapting this work to other contexts. These projects have grabbed students and provided relevance, a basis for empathy, and really great presentations. You'll be amazed at the artifacts that students find in their basements.  Examples of Heritage projects.

Afternoon Session:

When Educators Co-create: Experimental Course Design for Secondary Schools

Target audience: Secondary teachers

Listen to some ideas from a Northern BC Professional Learning Network about course combinations, blended learning, simulations, and cross-curricular projects, including Middle Earth 12 and the Language and Landscape program (combination of English 11 and Geography 12).  Other courses and combinations we've tried or are trying "up here" include Yoga, Peer Mentorship, History of Social Justice Through Music, Geography combined with Digital Media Arts, History combined with "Cultures in Conflict" (another local course), and Genocide.

Then, the conversation can move to match the audience:

• engage in a “critical friends” activity that will tune your own curriculum/instruction ideas or designs for project-based learning
• look at what it takes to build your own locally developed course or adapt an existing one to new curriculum structures, including Board approval process and incorporating team teaching
• discuss how blended learning (mix of in-class, online, and community-based settings) can be used with new and existing courses, including use of digital portfolios

So.... sign up for one or both, and bring a friend with you!

Cheers,

Glen Thielmann

http://thielmann.ca

hammer or the anvil

So far, I've avoided leaving even a single comment on any of the BC Edplan feedback forums. It's partly because of time, partly because of initial unease over the plan's origins, but also because I've often felt that the coming changes are inevitable. I'll adapt one way or another regardless of what it looks like, and help others do the same. Much like an anvil -- sturdy and reliable, but typically on the receiving end. A few discussions and experiences over the last while have convinced me to exercise my inner hammer and get involved one way or another. This was my motivation for applying to present at the recent Ed Leadership Conference and also why I've worn a path on this topic for most of the last two years at the district level.

During the Grad Requirements Dialogue that came to Prince George in October, a group of secondary and post-secondary educators, administrative officers and boards from various institutions (including our school district, CNC, and UNBC) parents, trustees, First Nations and partner group representatives (associations, unions, DPAC, etc.), political, business and trades types, and other stakeholders met to discuss how the structure and flow of high school might evolve in BC to meet new and existing expectations for our students.

One of the things we discussed at our tables and reported out to the whole group was how curriculum could or should change. Curriculum is currently organized into Prescribed Learning Outcomes (PLOs) and Suggested Achievement Indicators (SAIs). For example, one of the PLOs in Social Studies 11 is to "explain how Canadians can effect change at the federal and provincial levels." One of the matching SAIs is to "compare mechanisms whereby public policy can be changed (e.g., elections, petitions and protests, lobbyists, special interest groups, court actions, media campaigns)." The plan is to organize the discipline-based curriculum around Big Ideas (the themes of the PLOs), Learning Standards (the heart of the PLOs) and Links (that connect to various applications, competencies, and assessments of curriculum, replacing the SAIs).

This topic is also featured in the latest issue of Learn (BC Teacher Regulation Branch Magazine -- "wisdom" from the Ministry of Education). The article Transforming BC's Curriculum describes a perceived need to reduce the total number of outcomes while emphasizing higher-order thinking and more depth (online version not yet posted, but here is some context from Janet Steffenhagen). I was encouraged to see the involvement of Peter Seixas (UBC Ed Prof) with the Social Studies portion -- I've been working with benchmarks of historical thinking for a few years and I think using these as a framework for understanding curriculum is great. I was a little worried that the minority of voices clambering for dumbed down outcomes would gain traction, but with folks like Seixas onboard I am hopeful that this will be a way to streamline without losing depth. The critical inquiry approach has changed the way I teach, and also assess. Colleague Rob Lewis and I got the chance to play with the benchmarks while making unit study guides for Pearson's 2010 SS11 text Counterpoints. This exercise in collaboration and professional learning has led us into a new way of doing assessment where we are firm on the critical thinking and soft on the factoids. I've already put my two bits in on Socials Studies 11 curriculum change, but the Ministry should also invite some of these other educators to dialogue as well as Counterpoints authors Mike Cranny and Garvin Moles.

One thought I had while reading the Learn Magazine article is that spelling out the big ideas of the curriculum could actually restrict rather than liberate diverse learning. The present focus on skills, content, concepts allows teachers and students to build their own narratives with the curriculum, discovering and applying their own big ideas. This is what makes Social Studies exciting -- having students make profound connections precisely because we haven't made these for them. The idea of passively "delivering content" to students is very much out of favour, but will we be "delivering meaning" instead? What if students disagree that a "big idea" is important? Yet, we are still accountable for outcomes based on that big idea?  Constructivist and Inquiry-based learning work best when the end goal is not pre-determined. Many of our texts (like SS11 Counterpoints) have already made the switch to big idea, focus questions, and supporting concepts, skills, content. I suppose mine is more of a philosophical or semantic concern as the new proposal looks like what many teachers do anyways (when they're not chasing content). There are also some teachers that deliver a course as they have had it handed down to them, and sometimes never reference what they do back to the curriculum, and many students who never take the time to figure out what learning outcomes they need to pay attention to, so a more teacher- and student-friendly curriculum may be in order. This also speaks to the need for exemplars to be shared in a non-threatening manner and maybe a chance to meet other educators to initiate informal mentoring and collaboration.

At the Grad Requirements Discussion, we were shown a prototype of what the new BC curriculum website might look like (slides 22/23 on the Slideshow ppt posted at http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/graduation/, slide 22 shown above). The "Links" section caught the attention of our table, and we speculated about what would happen if the Links actually connected to an interactive space for exemplars and ideas populated by teachers and students. These would showcase regional applications to curriculum, multimodal expressions of learning, meaningful assessment practices, wicked lesson outcomes, and unique examples of ordinary students doing significant learning. It could feature adaptations for ESL/ESD, enriched, at-risk, or students with a learning disability. It would need to be moderated in some way (e.g. ensure FIPPA, monitor size and repetition, prevent corporate encroachment), but this could be a launchpad for teacher education, student research, parent involvement, academic study, expert input, and professional development. Wiki, mobile app, forum style, digital learning commons... lots of ways to go with this idea, not every form appeals to every educator. We have informal and formal "learning repositories" at many levels already; I'm not thinking about a one-stop centre for lessons plans or complete set of learning resources (uhh, that would be the "internet"). This would be more of an exhibit of successful teaching and learning achievements, including assessment and the role of technology. Using the Social Studies 11 PLO mentioned above as an example (affecting political change), the Links section could feature a curation of BC exemplars.  This might include sample student petitions, a weblink to a lobby group formed or investigated by students, a teacher's best lesson for letter writing to politicians or setting up a mock parliament, a comparative analysis of austerity protests in Europe, a rubric for self-assessing active citizenship, an RSS feed of current events that relate to provincial and federal politics, proceedings from a Personal Learning Network that has critiqued problem-based cross-curricular projects that include political agency, testimonials and student interviews (politicians, journalists, new immigrants, special interest groups), student video on what they learned from taking a Canadian Citizenship test, student media campaigns or field work, and so on. The Links would change over time to reflect new discovery, and balance friendly competition and useful cooperation among BC schools.

More than just a list of links and exemplars, some level of interactivity would be ideal. This could be user rating scale or comment section to evaluate posted content and ensure that curriculum change (at least at the achievement indicator level) is an ongoing process and not something that stops and starts every few years. This would create a fluid user-generated curriculum guide that builds on what the experts have laid out as big ideas and learning standards, a necessary step towards flexible instructional design and personalized learning. There could be a sandbox or "guild" space where new exemplars and learning schemes could be tested and critiqued by the BC educational community, perhaps directly in the Ministry webspace or alongside the "Links" via social media. The Ministry of Education is already using interactive digital tools for gathering feedback -- whittle this down to something sustainable and never stop asking for feedback. Another route is to build a registry of BC educators and existing web resources, lesson elements, and student exemplars that match the various learning standards and assessment goals of the new curriculum. This would formalize the data that is flowing all the time on social media , a constant exchange and evaluation of curriculum design, teaching strategies, and student support of all kinds for student learning. It could also kickstart local discussions about mentorship and personal learning networks. Whatever the approach, the final step of new curriculum websites should involve some kind of dynamic space that will benefit new and old teachers looking to explore new paradigms.

The other interesting idea I pulled from the Grad Requirements Dialogue was the uncommon discussion itself.  We had one of the most extensive collections of SD57 educational stakeholders assembled that I've seen in 17 years of teaching. Let's just say our district doesn't tend to reach out in this fashion. The sum of what was said (and then forwarded to a regional contact) can be seen as our local community's shared beliefs about education and expectations for youth as they become "whole selves" -- active citizens, fulfilled employees, empathetic adults, etc. I was struck by how the discussion fit as well for our top academic students as it did our at-risk and vulnerable students -- it wasn't about raising or lowering standards as much as it was about how much we care about how our students turn out. I'm looking at some new forms of assessment for my next year, some methods that anticipate rather than react to changing ideas about competency and cross-curricular learning. I want to be able to present my students next year with a framework of expectations not from me, but from the whole local community that supports their learning, an invitation for them to create their own path of assessment within a social context. This locally gathered data provides that context -- an actual community-based expectation for understanding student achievement. I saw a few community-based approaches at the recent Ed Leadership Conference, and this seems like the right scale to build ownership for students. Students already set many of their own expectations (especially when their identity is engaged in the learning process) and try to meet the expectations of their parents, teachers, and schools (sometimes). We also expect them to meet provincial standards, too, but what would it look like to meet the expectations of their local educational stakeholder community? This is the milieu in which their ambitions will sink or swim, the people who will be encouraging, supporting, judging, teaching, employing, cajoling, and depending on them. I think this could be exciting. I'd like to try this with a group of Grade 11 students in a new blended learning program next year -- start their first seminar session by learning how to do qualitative analysis using the community stakeholder data. From this we move into shared assessment design where students build a plan for the course program based on the big ideas, learning standards, personalized goals and passions, and community expectations. I'm not sure if this will appeal to every student, but we'll definitely take care of the "why are we doing this" question right from the start. This is especially important for at-risk students who are often at odds with what they think their community thinks of them. Maybe this would be a step past the academic judgement they receive and move into a more care-based ethos (as in, let's all care enough to give a you-know-what).

Just some ideas here to stretch my thinking; I'm actually pretty content to stay the course on my own pedagogical trajectory in concert with the great ideas that come from my personal learning network, but it's better to be the hammer than the anvil when it comes to changes to curriculum and assessment. I've seen some crazy schemes arrive, turn into cliches, and depart in the last 17 years, so if we're going to be plunged into someone's version of 21st century learning, we might as well "own" our capacity to craft something original.

Teachers and other educational stakeholders, if you are able to set aside reservations about system upheaval, the scary libertarian bits, pressure on the BCTF, and challenges to our comfort zones, I am interested to learn what cool things can you do in your space that are opened up by BC Edplan. I'm taking it for what it's worth, the first major self-evaluation of compulsory schooling in at least a generation, and one that not only allows but enables diverse instructional design and respect for student inquiry.

What do you want to get out of the coming changes? What can future Ministry Curriculum websites do to support you? What do you think about community-based expectations for students? Tweet your responses to @bcedplan, visit their forums, or leave a comment here.

staff mtg course presentation

Language landscape staff presentation from thielmann

It's official... time to let my staff know where this is going. What started as a set of ideas about course combination and imaginative content, and became a project in curriculum and learning design is ready for the next level.

This course proposal for D.P. Todd Secondary will see English 11 and Geography 12 combined in a blended learning environment. Students enroll for two blocks of course work, half of it class-room based and half of it outside of class with individual, group,and seminar work. The "blend" refers to both the mix of traditional lessons with flipped or flexible learning, and the mix of in-school with distributed (e.g. online) content and coursework.

We will emphasize self-reliant learning, developing personal learning networks for students, cross-curricular themes, performance-based assessment, interactive technology, social learning, and exploring horizons of significance and authenticity.

In short, a new way for Grade 11 students to complete two courses with compelling curriculum in a two-block program that blends different approaches to teaching and learning.

Space permitting, this program will also allow Grade 12 students to audit parts of the double-course offering and complete a single grad credit board-authorized course: Middle Earth 12.

Comments and feedback welcome. An open planning site for this course can be found at http://dpts.sd57.bc.ca/~gthielmann/middleearth or at http://landspeak.blogspot.com

Perspectives on SS11

SS11 students re-creating a Great Depression Era experience for a weekend

A colleague from Ft. St. James asked me on twitter yesterday if I had any thoughts about BC Social Studies 11 curriculum review, so I thought I'd lay out some ideas in more than 140 characters.

Social Studies 11 is a fantastic course. Despite its many manifestations from class to school to district, it centres around the basic question of Canadian Identity. Who are we? What does it mean to be Canadian? We ask this of our students, they ask of of each other, their teachers, parents, elders, employers. We ask them to work this question through in terms of political choices, active citizenship, cultural expressions, societal change, historical evidence, environmental relationships, gender & race, international contexts, global issues, and the very history, identity, or experience of our students.

It is so important that our Ministry of Education and in some ways the entire province deems it (or something very much like it) as a requirement for graduation. The alternatives, Civics 11 and First Nations 12, ask the same big idea but with a specific focus on citizenship and Aboriginal identity respectively. We could probably ask powerful questions about Canadian Identity using variety of curricula or a reduced curriculum, but we (our province) have settled on 20th & early 21st century Canadian-centric history, civics, and human geography. I think we made a good choice.

The course is tightly packed (here's a sample course overview), so much so that some teachers complain about curriculum overload and having to rush through or survey topics rather than explore them in depth. There is a provincial exam at the end, a grad program requirement worth 20% of the overall mark, that has been in place for 8 years. Again many teachers complain that the exam drives the course, forces us to teach content over skills and deep understanding.

I'd like to call road apples on that. I think the course provides a challenging, creative, and fast-paced context to explore the big questions. The content areas can be broken down very well into powerful, focused inquiries, and that there is enough flex time for both meaningful projects, deep understanding of core topics, and the inclusion of current events. I have to manage my instructional time very carefully as a teacher, but I still have classes where we goof around, argue about the news, and watch stuff on youtube. I think an interrogation of Canadian Identity benefits from the backdrop of 20th century history, forays in politics & government, an empathetic survey of global development issues, and an ongoing effort to connect what students know and who they are with the story of Canada. This course provides it, and the students come away going wow that was intense and did I ever learn a lot. I'm serious, and I can say that because the same students don't necessarily say that about the other courses that I teach, and the students enjoy SS11 even when I'm not firing on all cylinders. When students come in with an agenda, a passion or deep interest (as many of them will given the space to do it), I feel the best way to abet their quests are with broad horizons of Canadian evidence across political, economic, environmental, and social landscapes.  Of course many deep interests awaken along the journey, so I'm glad it is not a short or easy path we follow.

I also think the exam is beneficial. The provincial exam features 55 well designed MC questions surveying basic curriculum (selective, not exhaustive), connections between important ideas, and short, precise opportunities for critical thinking. The questions use graphics like maps, cartoons, newspaper headlines, and quotes -- often to the embarrassment of old-school teachers who used to reward their students with 200 question text-only MC tests. They are balanced from each area of the course (Civics, History, Human Geography) and balanced in terms of knowledge (40%) and understanding (60%). The exam has 2 essay questions that require higher-level thinking and synthesis of learning from very broad topics in the course: French-English relations, standards of living, treatment of minorities, global poverty, international conflicts, climate change & water, the Great Depression, and so on. Some of the questions are worded in a difficult way, but the topics are not a surprise to the teacher or the students.

When the provincial exam first came out in 2004, many SS teachers across the province gasped and thought to themselves (or out loud) "you mean I'm supposed to teach this stuff?" Sorry to be cynical so close to the end of a school-year, but I'm embarrassed by how many teachers have never read the IRP or parsed the PLOs for the courses they teach, and stop with the textbook. The SS curriculum was revised in 2006, dropping PLOs from SS11 related to government structure, law, pre-1914 history, and aspects of human geography.  Some of these entered into the SS10 curriculum. This helped reduce the content/knowledge pressure without compromising the basic set of inquiries. Six years later (with a new, exemplary textbook) and some teachers haven't yet made this connection, as evidenced by the old course outlines and tests they work with. The exam literally kick-started an entire generation of SS teachers to re-examine how they designed their courses and gave them a once-in-their-career notice that fidelity to the curriculum was important.

With a tight curriculum that many teachers felt they now had to follow (because of the provincial exam), no doubt many things were dropped along the way. Like 20 hours of Socials videos!  Did I say that? Okay, like cool projects, such as the two-week long "build a sustainable city" project I saw in a colleague's class in the 1990s, or empathy building activities around important events (e.g. ties to Remembrance Day). Many other teachers started teaching population geography for the first time, and actually took the history course through the modern era in order to discuss contemporary Canadian issues. Others dusted off their government & law units and realized that the new curriculum was devoted to active citizenship and gaining insight into rights, social values, and our political system. There is still time for cool projects and presentation time in SS11, like the Depression-Era experience, the Echo Project, and Community Involvement Challenge (all involve home and class time), Letters from the Front (1 class) or the Rwandan case study (3 classes) placed before a "Canada's role in the world" activity (peacekeeping middle power vs peacemaking model power -- 3 classes). This year a colleague from Mackenzie built her WWI lessons around trench conditions... her class planned out and dug trenches in the huge Mackenzie snowdrifts and simulated a Canadian's day in 1917.  Garvin Moles, a respected Prince George/Nanaimo SS teacher (now-retired) and text-book author, told me he used to teach the courses he wanted to teach, and then spend the last week or two bending what they had done towards the exam, and actively preparing them for it.  Exams can be scary for students, but they are just one thing that needs doing in a course, and need not run the whole show.

The survey nature of the course allows us to work through what is means to be Canadian from multiple perspectives. This year alone I had students with family backgrounds that involved the Chinese head-tax, Komagata Maru, Ukrainian Sifton-era immigration, fighting at Vimy Ridge, Japanese Internment, Liberation of Holland, Aboriginal Residential School, and rallying with the FLQ. These connections came up precisely because our curriculum danced in and out of these topics, and because we made some time for Heritage Inquiry. Many of these student didn't know they had these connections until they both learned about the topics and engaged their families with heritage inquiry. Some needed the learning in order to know what questions to ask, and some needed to ask identity-based questions before they cared to learn about the content. The exam doesn't specifically exploit this learning, but it does say that our society values emerging citizenship so much that we're willing to apply standards and assess at a "grand" scale.

I do wish the exam "answer key" had a bit more encouragement for markers to look for personal connections to the curriculum like family stories and focused examples. Most markers are sane about this, but some are still looking for students to complete a checklist of facts and repeat what they were "supposed" to learn in a way that is easy to recognize. I also wish there was an opportunity to demonstrate learning with something other than an essay. Here's what two of my students wrote when I asked (on a closed notes test) what challenges were faced by developing nations trying to achieve a higher standard of living: example 1 and example 2. One of these girls happens to be a good writer, one is not, but I'd say they both have a great understanding of the issues behind the question. Without the provincial exam I'm sure we'd see a move to more diverse learning and demonstration of learning in the classrooms of our awesome SS teachers, but we'd also lose the healthy motivation to address a full set of learning outcomes. I think it is amazing that a group of young British Columbians (who more or less took SS11 from 2004-present) have a common expectation for being knowledgeable, active, aware, and empathetic Canadians.  Grab one off the street and quiz him... see if he feels the same way!

Perhaps we could tell an even more inclusive story of Canada by re-arranging the course, but I don't think it is the curriculum or the exam that needs shifting. I think we could do more with project-based learning (have you seen the cigar box project?), teaming with other teachers/students/courses (why not do the Rwandan Case Study in an English or Psychology class?), and simply beating down our PLOs into student-friendly focus questions and core skills. It is a hard habit for many teachers to break, but we also need to take perspectives out of the footnote category (women's history, for example), and start rather than end lessons with these. It would be great to sign stuents up for two senior Social Studies courses at the same time and mash the lessons together. I'm thinking about what SS11 and Social Justice 12 would look like taught together. The PLOs are different, but the curricular fodder is similar, so finding time for grand projects and inquiries would be natural. We could also conceive of Social Studies 8-11 as a continuum, in which we lay out goals around curriculum (e.g. Canadian history, environmental issues), skills (e.g. decoding images and interpreting evidence), inquiry (heritage connections, Canadian character), and themes (politics & gov't, autonomy & internationalism, society & identity, economy & environment), and relevance (heritage presentations, current events, community service, political/social action, interviews). Parts of these "classes" would be classes -- age-grouped, instruction based, content-centred but always aiming at higher level thinking. Parts of these "classes" could be cohort based and focused on the universal goals but responsive to current events. Parts of these "classes" could be community based, leveraging online/flipped/blended learning and centred around the themes and inquiries (more interaction with each other, for example, on "being Canadian"). Parts of these "classes" could be seminar-based and involve other disciplines, teachers, students, and even parents; I'm thinking about big project that tie many outcomes together and might span more than one year. Crazy ideas, yes, but not unprecedented in our province.  While I like that superintendent's ideas, the trick is make progressive changes to public education without allowing the personalization agenda to erode the parts of the foundation that aren't already cracked.

As you can see I'm looking more at education reform than curriculum review. I think our curriculum is fine as it is, it is just challenging enough to keep students and teachers alert and takes the fluff away from the corners of my lesson plans (so long, 6 page worksheets and Canada A People's History except for a few pieces involving Trudeau!). What needs changing (for some) is the approach, not the curriculum, and maybe the teacher skill-set at taking down what they perceive to be a mountain of material and learning outcomes and getting them to realize they can slow down and focus on fewer, stronger inquiries without the BCED plan or the IRP telling them to do so. The permission is already implicit in the existing expectations, and I think the exam doesn't ask much more than this.

Please, comment on what I've written, challenge it, and provide something from your own bias and experience. There are hundreds of ways of getting SS11 "right" and I know some of them are far more creative and successful than mine. I'm proud of how my students fare on the provincial exam re their class assessment and the provincial averages, but I'm way more proud of how they navigate through a challenging and engaging curriculum and emerge with sense of their own place in Canada past, present, and future. In particular, please share how you slow down on important outcomes -- these are the activities that tend to engage students and make me reconsider my arguments for a fast-paced course.