Ozar's Creating a Curriculum

We’ve used Lorraine Ozar’s work with our faculty for a number of years to focus on backwards design in creating and articulating our curriculum. The concepts and charts have proved helpful tools, but the exact use of language (goal, outcome, objective) originally generated as much confusion as clarity. The sea change in focus, however, from what a teacher teaches to what a student learns has worked well. Moreover, looking for evidence of learning, what a student can observably do, helps ground our discussions. With all that said, the task is daunting and we do not provide adequate time, in my opinion, for our teachers to do this work thoroughly, collaboratively, and consistently. Creating department outcomes, with the ownership of department members, takes a great deal of focus, especially if you want ownership and effective use of these outcomes. How do we create the time and incentive to do this work well? We’re currently examining our bell schedule to create more time for faculty collaboration and learning teams. I also think we need to make better use of the summer months as teaching professionals to prepare not simply our individual classes, but our overall curriculum. I’ll wait for the comments of my colleagues to figure out how to make that work or sell the idea to others.

The great debate, as I often encounter it, among faculty trying to determine a common curriculum is the issue of breadth and depth. Usually, I say breadth versus depth, because it is so often seen as the great trade off. In Ozar’s words, our school, department, and class outcomes need to “specify enough and not too much.” (Ozar, 5) As with many things, I find individuals are challenged to prune the scope and sequence of their courses. How can you leave out the Book of Job, or the presidency of Andrew Jackson, or the lab on thermodynamics? As others have commented, some of our history classes might be well renamed US History through 1950. Many teachers “runs out of time.” In our community, we hear about seat minutes per class, the number of student absences for Masses, retreats, fieldtrips, sporting events, etc. (I’m certain this doesn’t ever come up at any of your schools.) How are we to convince those few reluctant colleagues that part of the issue is getting bogged down in a curriculum based on content delivery? A corollary to this conversation is Ozar’s contention, that I strongly agree with, that “significant learning must include affective learning.” (Ozar, 48) Content driven faculty can often be dismissive of such notions. The use of taxonomies and the argument for integration can greatly assist in dealing with this mindset. The more surprisingly challenging ones (of which there are very few) are those who tend to emphasize affective learning almost to the exclusion of cognitive learning and stating that this sort of learning can’t really be measured. Most often I find that argument within the context of a discussion about the specifically religious outcomes we have as a school community.