Refreshing and renewing the curriculum
“I want you to imagine that you have been asked to form a new department of … Given the rare opportunity to write without constraint, would your curricula bear much resemblance to most of the formal courses of study to be found today? With any luck your answer will be something like, good grief no! If your answer is something else … there is not much hope for the future!” - Gould (1973, 253)
The aim of this workshop is to reflect on a range of different approaches to curriculum design, assess their potential usefulness in informing the changes departments and institutions are planning to their curricula, and facilitate participants to plan their own changes. This workshop should be particularly useful for: a) teams of staff (and students) who are planning curriculum change; and b) staff who have responsibilities for the development and support of the curriculum, such as heads, associate heads, programme leaders and teaching fellows. After a scene setting and discussion of the applicability of the approaches to curriculum development, the facilitator will arrange for participants in groups to generate their own ideas for how best to refresh their curricula, and then take them through a process of prioritisation and discussion. Both the ideas and the process by which they are generated may be useful for you to implement in stimulating discussion in your School and Faculty about curriculum renewal.
Mick contributed workshops on this topic to the joint Leadership Foundation and HE Academy ‘Leading Transformation in Teaching and Learning’ Programmes 1-8 (2013-16)
Comments
“The workshop was carefully tailored to meet the needs of academics who lead education at a research intensive University. It was very stimulating, highly interactive and provided the impetus and motivation for these leaders to take both the ideas generated and active approaches Mick used back to their own departments. As one participant said – it was immensely enjoyable and the two hours went past in a flash.”
— Exeter University
“An extremely interesting and thought provoking session.”
— University of Reading
“An outside perspective is really, really important because you need someone there going ‘actually you can do it differently, you don’t have to do it the same way you always do it.”