An Experience Centered Curriculum

Report of an education for international understanding project.

Place-based Curriculum Design provides pre-service and practicing teachers both the rationale and tools to create and integrate meaningful, place-based learning experiences for students. Practical, classroom-based curricular examples illustrate how teachers can engage the local and still be accountable to the existing demands of federal, state, and district mandates. Coverage includes connecting the curriculum to students’ outside-of-school lives; using local phenomena or issues to enhance students’ understanding of discipline-based questions; engaging in in-depth explorations of local issues and events to create cross-disciplinary learning experiences, and creating units or sustained learning experiences aimed at engendering social and environmental renewal. An on-line resource (www.routledge.com/9781138013469) provides supplementary materials, including curricular templates, tools for reflective practice, and additional materials for instructors and students.

THE LEARNER-CENTERED CURRICULUM “If an institution is to be truly learner-centered, all processes and practices need to be learner-centered, and the curriculum is no exception.”—From the Preface The Learner-Centered Curriculum is for educators and administrators who envision an educational environment that produces students who are creative and autonomous learners. By encouraging an appreciation and adoption of learner-centered practices, educators can transform their curricula to become more focused on the learner. The book presents a framework for curriculum design based on learner-centered principles while at the same time offering technical advice on implementation as well as the strategic use of assessment, technology, and physical spaces to support innovative design. The authors include several examples of existing curricula that illustrate their framework in practice. Throughout the book, they emphasize the need for assessment, both formative and summative, stressing the point that assessment is an effective driver of change. The book includes a wide variety of options both for individual classroom practice and for programmatic assessment. The Learner-Centered Curriculum explores the current technology and tools available to educators that can support learner-centered practices and foster autonomous learning and demonstrates how technology can assist in removing some of the obstacles to achieving a learner-centered design. In addition, the authors explain the importance of physical spaces in relation to learner-centered curricular design and show how to tie renovation to curricular implementation to foster incentive to innovate and provide a physical manifestation of learner-centered principles.

Learning-Centred Curriculum Design in Higher Education is written to inspire and empower university teachers to engage in curriculum design processes that centre both the learning process and the learning outcomes of students. The book is structured by a central model of curriculum design, which links together learning (how students learn versus what students learn) and curriculum design (he process by which we design versus what we design).

This book examines the historical context of African Americans' educational experiences, and it provides information that helps to assess the dominant discourse on education, which emphasises White middle-class cultural values and standardisation of students' outcomes. Curriculum violence is defined as the deliberate manipulation of academic programming in a manner that ignores or compromises the intellectual and psychological well being of learners. Related to this are the issues of assessment and the current focus on high-stakes standardised testing in schools, where most teachers are forced to teach for the test.

This indispensable guide combines proven curriculum design with teaching methods that encourage students to learn concepts as well as content and skills for deep understanding across all subject areas.

What is understanding and how does it differ from knowledge? How can we determine the big ideas worth understanding? Why is understanding an important teaching goal, and how do we know when students have attained it? How can we create a rigorous and engaging curriculum that focuses on understanding and leads to improved student performance in today's high-stakes, standards-based environment? Authors Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe answer these and many other questions in this second edition of Understanding by Design. Drawing on feedback from thousands of educators around the world who have used the UbD framework since its introduction in 1998, the authors have greatly revised and expanded their original work to guide educators across the K-16 spectrum in the design of curriculum, assessment, and instruction. With an improved UbD Template at its core, the book explains the rationale of backward design and explores in greater depth the meaning of such key ideas as essential questions and transfer tasks. Readers will learn why the familiar coverage- and activity-based approaches to curriculum design fall short, and how a focus on the six facets of understanding can enrich student learning. With an expanded array of practical strategies, tools, and examples from all subject areas, the book demonstrates how the research-based principles of Understanding by Design apply to district frameworks as well as to individual units of curriculum. Combining provocative ideas, thoughtful analysis, and tested approaches, this new edition of Understanding by Design offers teacher-designers a clear path to the creation of curriculum that ensures better learning and a more stimulating experience for students and teachers alike.