Even if you think you have the best curriculum that would meet the expectations of even the most diverse and demanding group of students, there’s something you need to be aware of. Nothing lasts forever, and especially in curriculum design. In order to maintain the effectiveness and highest-quality of your institution’s teaching standards, you need to revise and update your content regularly.
Chances are, you feel like it’s an enormous amount of work and you are probably right in your thinking. But the good news is that no one says you need to do it all yourself. Instead, you can delegate it to someone who will do it quicker, just as well and on top of that, will save you all the stress that comes with it.
You are about to discover the key reasons why it is worth to keep your curriculum up-to-date and the potential risks of choosing to stick with the old content that “still seems to work but not really”.
1. Keeping up-to-date with innovative teaching methods
Over the last couple of years, there have been many innovations proving that best-practices in teaching approaches are innovative and the commonly recognised stand-and-deliver model of teaching, is drastically losing its effectiveness. It’s no longer sufficient to just “be there and deliver”. With diverse groups of students, their abilities, interests and talents, one-size-fits-all solutions are now seen as obsolete and outdated. As more individualised approaches to learning become necessary, this urgently calls for the development of new, innovative resources that would allow us to address the diverse group of students effectively and give everyone an equal opportunity to progress.
2. Changing student needs
Another important thing is that present-day students attending both private and public schools experience more difficulties than ever before, and the pattern shows no chances of being reversed (Evans, 2004). This means that for effective learning to happen, teachers are required to act far beyond what was once required of them. They are no longer here to communicate the knowledge but also to facilitate, guide and coordinate the whole class. As a result, this changed the whole perception of what teaching really is and what is expected of teachers and instructors. If all they do is what they’ve been doing for the last couple of years, then they won’t be meeting the students’ needs. This, in turn, will not only result in worse student engagement rates but could even demotivate young and ambitious learners to pursue their further career goals.
3. Follow a solid strategy plan
Of course, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and lost in what’s urgent and has to be taught tomorrow. No wonder – it is indeed a challenge for one teacher to lead the whole class to achieving all learning objectives. Unfortunately, this leaves almost no time for strategic long-term planning and analysing the needs of students who will be entering the new world of work in a couple of years’ time. So, what if we complete all curriculum goals and objectives by the end of this academic year if a couple of terms down the line it turns out that our students are unable to function in the current world?
Probably one of the trickiest parts of all is that everything has to be done simultaneously, without disrupting the academic year schedule. That poses an extra challenge for teachers who are already extremely busy with ensuring that all course objectives for the academic year are being met. Very little room is left for creativity and trying new teaching methods, which seem to be adding more work to teachers’ already overfilled calendar. In the ideal world the development of new learning solutions as well as their implementation should be done with a minimum lag time. As amazing as it sounds, it’s quite unlikely that you have a team of at least 10 curriculum designers at your school who could fully dedicate themselves to updating and innovating curricula alone.
As educators and leaders, it’s our responsibility to lead the youth of today and help them become the leaders of tomorrow. That’s why it’s tremendously important that we guide them in the right direction as the potential consequences of not doing this correctly pose a threatening risk not only to us, but most importantly, to the future generations.
Bibliography
Evans, R., 2004. The Human Side Of Change.