One school that has not only embraced the idea but has also created a model of community involvement in the curriculum is Southbridge School, a small rural school in the heart of the Canterbury plains, with a roll of approximately 130 children from Year 0 to Year 6.
“My slant on the curriculum is that I’m picking out all those comments throughout the curriculum that says go out and consult your community,” says Principal Peter Verstappen. “Here’s an opportunity to do it and do it well. I work from the belief that if we’re going to fashion a successful 21st century education system we need to review and rearrange these relationships of power within a child’s educational frame.
Right: Peter Verstappen, Principal of Southbridge School: “Teachers were never the fountain of all knowledge. I think we used to pretend we were.”
“Teachers never were the fountain of all knowledge,” says Peter. “I think we used to pretend we were because it suited us but certainly in the years to come we will be even less so, the world and knowledge systems are not set up any longer for teachers to be the sole input into children’s education so we have to fashion different relationships with our communities and we’ve got to get all those people in a child’s life working together to get the best education for that child.”
The Southbridge School programme of curriculum consultation is entitled “2020Vision”, inspired by the knowledge that the new entrant cohort in 2007 will reach Year 13 in 2020.
But how do you forge useful relationships and partnerships when parents have no training in pedagogy? Peter believes the first step is cutting back on jargon. “We’re a jargon-ridden profession. Using language is all important because language is all about power too. We have to demonstrate to our community that we’re not going to hide behind that wall of eduspeak as we’ve done in the past.”
Southbridge uses a range of forums from Boards of Trustee meetings to strategic planning days to consult with its school community. “We haven’t just stood up and done all the talking, we’ve sat back and listened and tried to enable parents to talk about their own experiences and about their hopes and dreams for education. “They don’t have a grasp of educational theory but they know what they believe. You ask any parent and they will have stories that worked well with them. And they will certainly have a concept of the kind of world and the kind of values and skills that they want their child being fluent in.”
One thing that has worked particularly well for the school is parent focus groups. Groups of parents meet every six weeks to two months and the staff will ask them what their views are on a particular issue, such as information communication technology. “I’ve been really impressed by their willingness to engage, their enthusiasm to go away and do a bit of homework, to look up some websites, to gather some educational resources to come back and inform their own view,” says Peter. “I’m noticing their confidence to discuss curriculum is growing. It’s a small self-selected group but it does represent a voice of our community in curriculum conversations in school and I think as we move further ahead I would like to think that group would be the kernel of a larger group of people who are able to negotiate curriculum at that level.”
Consultation has also involved students and former students. A group of Year 7 and 8 students now at the local college were invited back to give their views on how well the school had prepared them for the transition to high school. “That was quite good and it’s something we intend this year to follow up,” says Peter. “With our own students, it’s probably an area where we recognise we haven’t done enough about yet. We believe that’s a little gap in our process at the moment. The bottom line for any curriculum is that if it’s not engaging the students then you’re failing. Somehow you’ve got to incorporate that student voice into constructing that curriculum.”
Above: Southbridge School: studying eels at Lake Ellesmere
This year Southbridge teachers plan to conduct teacher-parent interviews not in the school but in the students’ homes. “We think that could be a huge affirmation for our students of the value that their teachers place on the connection between school and home,” says Peter.
So, has increased consultation and community and parent involvement in reshaping the curriculum made a difference to teaching and learning in the school? An ongoing study of the initiative is being conducted with researchers Associate Professor Alison Gilmore and Dr Susan Lovett of Canterbury University. “Eight months down the track they’ve built a relationship with the school where they are now part of our process,” says Peter. “It’s a kind of reflective action model of research whereby the researchers are informing our process while our processes are informing their research. They’re becoming partners in it and they are involved in some of our parent forums. They’re involved as interviewers but also as people who can offer a point of view in constructing the curriculum with us. It becomes a really powerful mutual learning relationship.”
“There is very strong staff, parent and community support for the 2020Vision project,” says Alison Gilmore. “One of the goals of our research project,” says Peter, “is to see what effect all that we’re doing is having on student engagement. We’re not asking what effect it’s having on student achievement because we figure that’s too hard to work out. But we might be able to measure what effect it’s having with their engagement with learning. And we can perhaps draw the assumption that if they’re more engaged with their learning their achievement will follow.”
So what advice does he have for other schools that want to create a local curriculum with community involvement? “We have to send strong signals to our community that this is not just a wallpaper exercise,” says Peter. “The fundamental thing is to show them it isn’t once over lightly, a quick questionnaire, get the results back and no one hears any more about it – which is often what happens.”
Peter says it’s important to get the process right and not start off with discussions about, say, key competencies. “I think we need to start engaging in the community first and foremost about what is our vision in our school, what are our values in our school. Get that stuff straight first and leave the curriculum programme until further down the track. At the same time it’s important not to get stuck in the big picture. People get frustrated because they never see how the big picture is actually going to translate into concrete action.”
Peter says closer consultation with the community in creating a local curriculum is going to be a never ending process for the schools of the future. “We’ve got to treat this as a journey that will continue for as long as we can imagine it.”
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