Sometimes what something is (especially something as complex as curriculum) can come more into focus by attending to how it changes, how its smooth understanding falters, slips and shifts when its authorities become visible, and thus more plastic or malleable. The means by which such transformation is engaged is discourse, or the surfacing what lives in otherwise inert language and practice, and here we are privileged to hear about some of the impetus for curricular change, its modalities, its venues and, above all, its rationale and significance to education.
In this brief video, a superintendent of schools, a school principal/teacher, a school vice-principal/teacher, five teachers and one student name some of how and why curriculum changes and what is most important in these processes: what curriculum is and should be implicated in, and for whom. They live and work in three rural school districts in British Columbia, in the province’s Kootenay and Gold Trail (south of the Cariboo) regions, as well as on Haida Gwaii. The interviews took place from 2012 to 2016.
Some questions to consider (we recommend brief small group discussions that can each then ‘compare notes’ about the different directions opened in how such ‘complicated’ conversations can go):
How do you respond to this video?
What does it bring to mind for you?
What questions do you have upon viewing this video?
What can a curricular culture of compliance create, according to Angus, the Superintendent of Schools who speaks first? In your view, what are the stakes of this culture (i.e. what does it promote and demote in society and to what ends?)
From where comes curricular change as described in this video? Why, in each case, is change thought to be important?
Sometimes curriculum is any or all of: Document, responsiveness, relationship (or what properly follows from it), historical justice (in reconciliation), and a co-creation with multiple participants in broad flexibility. What is most important to you as an educator in this complexity? What else needs to be said?
Documentation challenge: Name three commitments that guide your engagement with curriculum, as an agent of curriculum. How do these differ or align with your colleagues? As you assert them, how does your educational community change (or not), and how do your commitments change in the encounter?
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