Getting to the Source: What
Curriculum Leaders Need to Know
(APS Global Conference, July 2012)
Teoh Tiong San,
Northland Primary School
Free Powerpoint Templates
 Transactional
Transformational
Curriculum/Instructional Leadership.
 Multitude of approaches in the market.
 Fullan: problem faced by schools is ‘not a resistance to
innovation, but the fragmentation, overload, and
incoherence resulting from the uncritical and
uncooordinated acceptance of too many different
innovations’.
 My search for underlying principles about teaching
and learning.
 Context of TLLM, PERI and 21CC
 Learning with understanding (TfU, UbD, Erickson)
 How People Learn
 The Learning Sciences
 The Finnish experience – understanding the
fundamentals
 Sharing my personal journey:
 Focus on the Learning Sciences
 From transmission model (Industrial Age) to
constructivist model (Knowledge Age)
 Key findings
 Implications on school design and pedagogy
 Learning sciences is an interdisciplinary field that
studies teaching & learning.
 Goal of LS: to better understand the cognitive and
social processes that result in effective learning, and
to apply this knowledge to redesign learning
environments so that people learn more effectively.
 Birthdate 1991: 1st international conference and
publication of Journal of the Learning Sciences.
 1st comprehensive review: R. Keith Sawyer (2006), The
Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences
 An industrial age model based on certain assumptions:
- Knowledge is a collection of facts about the world and
procedures for how to solve problems.
- Goal of schooling: get this knowledge into the student’s
head. Thus an educated person possesses a large collection
of knowledge.
- Teachers know this knowledge better, and their job is to
transmit it to the students.
- The way to determine the success of schooling is to test
students to see how much knowledge they have acquired.

Served industrial economy well – effective in
transmitting standard body of knowledge via a
standardised (structured, scheduled) way – the
factory model.
 KBE is based on “the production and distribution of
knowledge and information, rather than the
production and distribution of things.” (Drucker)
 In KBE, knowledge workers manipulate symbols rather
than machines; create conceptual artifacts rather
than physical objects.
 KBE is powered by human creativity and idea
generation.
 Minister Heng: students being able to ‘connect
seemingly disparate dots, and create knowledge
even as the context changes’.
Realisation that schools were designed for a vanishing
world led to commissioned reports on findings from the
learning sciences. Three important books/reports:
1.
2.
3.
US National Research Council’s How People Learn.
(Bransford, Brown & Cocking, 2000)
OECD’s Innovation in the Knowledge Economy:
Implications for Education and Learning. (2004)
ISTE’s Technology, Innovation, and Educatinal
Change. (Kozma, 2003)
The importance of conceptual
understanding
1.
‘Children retain material better, and are able to generalize it to a
broader range of contexts, when they learn deep knowledge
rather than surface knowledge, and when they learn how to use
that knowledge in real-world settings.’ (Sawyer)
•
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Research on how experts think and solve
problems.
Brain-based learning: brains as a pattern-seeking,
meaning-making entity.
Structure
of
knowledge
Lynn H Erickson
(2007)
Enduring
Understanding
Concept
Concept
Topic / Theme
F
A
C
T
F
A
C
T
F
A
C
T
F
A
C
T
F
A
C
T
CARL BEREITER’S THREE WORLDS OF
UNDERSTANDING
1st world
2nd world
3rd world
Surface
Deep
Conceptual/Constructed
Surface info or
knowledge of the world
Knowing
Thinking skills or deeper
understanding
Constructed theory of
reality
Integration or an
organising pattern of
pieces of info
(Relational)
Deduction of a general
rule or theory
(Elaborative)
Thinking
Constructing
“The process of learning is a journey from ideas to understanding to
constructing.” (J Hattie)
2.
Constructivism

Students do not enter the classroom as empty vessels,
waiting to be filled; they enter with half-formed ideas and
misconceptions about how the world works – naïve
knowledge.

Knowledge is not transmitted but constructed.
Teachers mediate the construction. [Piaget: ‘Construction
is superior to instruction.’]

Brain-based Learning: Plasticity of the brain.
Understanding ‘naïve’ knowledge
 Important to uncover and address this.
 Children’s thinking is qualitatively different; they have
different knowledge structures. They know differently,
not necessarily less.
 ‘Student-centric’ education – honouring the child.
 Teachers need to focus on learning rather than
teaching e.g. how to make a complex concept easier to
grasp for the learner.
 Learning is active and experiential; a contact not a
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spectator sport. (‘I do, I understand’ -- Xun Zi) . Active
engagement in meaningful tasks, manipulating, observing
and making meaning. Importance of deliberative
practice – the unconscious competence.
Learning is collaborative -- Vygotsky’s social
constructivism. Learning as a socio-diologic activity;
Classrooms as CoL.
Learning is ‘situated’; meaning constructed in context,
thus experiences must be relevant and authentic.
Learning is intentional. The learner consciously makes
decision about his learning.
BBL: emotions and learning – safe and nurturing
environment for genuine mistakes.
Reflection / Metacognition
3.
•
Learners learn more effectively when they externalise or
articulate their still developing understanding throughout
the process of learning. Articulating and learning go hand in
hand, in a mutually reinforcing feedback loop. Articulation
makes metacognition possible.
•
Making learning visible; importance of formative
assessment.
•
Articulation is more effective if it is scaffolded (Vygotsky’s
ZPD), with the scaffolding gradually added, modified or
removed according to the needs of the learner.
Customised learning
1.
•
More effective learning when learners are placed in
learning environments suited to their cognitive
abilities and needs.
Diverse knowledge sources & distributed
knowledge
2.
•
Teacher no longer the only source of expertise;
students learn from a variety of sources: the
Internet, actual experts, other institutions, etc.
•
Students learn collaboratively from their peers.
•
Schools as watering holes where students
reconnect with each other.
•
Teachers are facilitators of the learning process.
Curriculum
3.
•
Resequencing of learning materials and activities
that are more aligned to findings from learning
sciences about how people learn. Revising
Bloom’s taxonomy with new classification of
knowledge.
•
More coherence and depth (rather than
breadth), leading to deep knowledge; conceptbased and interdisciplinary.
4. Role of Teacher

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Teachers as knowledge workers; adaptive learning
experts and co-creators of conceptual artifacts. (in
collaboration with peers and students).
Have deep understanding of theoretical principles
and latest knowledge of how children learn.
Familiar with the authentic practices of
professionals (e.g. scientists, literary critics) in the
disciplines they teach.
Highly trained; adept at technology.
More autonomy, more creativity, and more content
knowledge.
Salaries comparable to other knowledge workers.
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J Bransford, A Brown & R Cocking (eds) (2000), How People
Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School. National Research
Council.
L H Erickson (2007), Concept-based Curriculum and Instruction
for the Thinking Classroom. Corwin Press.
C Bereiter (2002), Education and Mind in a Knowledge Age.
Routledge.
R K Sawyer (2007), “Optimising Learning: Implications of
Learning Sciences Research”.
J Hattie (2009), Visible Learning.
J Hattie (2012), Visible Learning for Teachers.
D H Jonassen et. al (2003), Learning to Solve Problems with
Technology: A Constructivist Perspective.
G Wiggins & J McTighe (2005, 2 ed.), Understanding by Design.