#on/curriculumdesign | # Key dilemmas facing all curriculum designers: ## Big ideas and transfer versus specific knowledge and skills - How do we balance the goals of “understanding” with “facts” and “skill”? How do we focus the work on big ideas without making the work too philosophical or abstract, leaving students without essential knowledge and know-how? On the other hand, how do we avoid the all-too-frequent focus on discrete information and isolated skills that leaves students with little meaningful learning and limited ability to apply what they have learned? ## Complex, realistic, and messy performance versus efficient and sound tests - When should we strive for contextual realism in assessment and when should we strive for the obvious efficiency of traditional (indirect) testing? Authentic application is clearly a good thing, but it is difficult and time-consuming to implement easily and to evaluate precisely. However, traditional tests of knowledge and skill, although easy to design and grade, often yield invalid results and unhelpful feedback about what learners actually understand. How, then, do we make assessment rich and educative while also feasible and efficient? ## Teacher control versus learner control of the work - When is it the expert’s job to frame the issues and guide the learning? When is it wise, by contrast, to enable students to pursue their questions, interests, and approaches? When should our understandings drive the design and the instruction? When should we strive to help students come to their own understandings? ## Direct versus constructivist approaches - When does direct instruction help learning and when does it impede it? When does efficiency demand explicit teaching, and when should we teach more inductively? (Similarly, in training teachers, when should new teachers be creative as designers, and when is it wiser to have teachers work from expert designs to avoid reinventing the wheel?) More generally, when must the work involve constructivist uncoverage and the inevitably messy and personalized “construction of meaning” required if understanding is to occur, and when is direct instruction just more efficient? ## Depth versus breadth of knowledge - How do we balance the desire to provide an in-depth and thorough understanding against the reality of what is feasible, given all the demands and constraints teachers face? When are we obligated to provide a broad survey of material, exposing students to a wide array of information and ideas? When do we perform a greater service by limiting breadth, delving more deeply into fewer subjects, in the service of real understanding? Similarly, when is it wise pedagogy to design interdisciplinary work around a few big ideas, and when does such work unwittingly result in superficial learning by trying to do too much in too little time? ## Comfort and a feeling of competence versus a real challenge - How do we strike the right balance between an important “stretch” for students and the need for a comfortable learning environment? When should we provide a lowstress context for learners to feel that they can take risks and still be successful, and when do we appropriately challenge students (and even cause them stress) in the service of powerful new learning? How, for example, should we construct learning around essential questions, knowing that they may provoke student irritation and confusion? When and how should we use complex performance tasks even though they may frustrate less able or easily defeated learners? ## Uniform versus personalized work and expectations - We typically teach classes with students who differ in prior knowledge, achievement levels, work habits, interests, and learning styles. How should we manage the competing demands? How should we design for and instruct a large group efficiently and effectively, without losing learners along the way? How do we simultaneously hold appropriately different expectations of understanding without lowering standards or treating some students as second-class citizens? How can we personalize the work without driving ourselves crazy and losing focus? How do we know when differentiation is appropriate in teaching for understanding and when it is counterproductive? ## Effective versus merely engaging - The work we provide by design should be interesting and engaging, but those criteria are not sufficient. The design must address the goals and standards efficiently and effectively. How do we hook learners but also hold them to perform to standard? How do we make the work minds-on, not merely hands-on? How can we keep sight of our responsibilities as teacher and assessor without failing in our role as provider of interesting work—and vice versa? How do we avoid aimless (yet fun) activities without going to the other extreme of making the work boring and ineffective? ## Simplified versus simplistic - How do we make big ideas accessible to all learners without dumbing down those ideas? How do we get at the richness and complexity of genuine intellectual questions and issues without losing students or focus? How do we simplify a complex subject without being so simplistic we cut off future inquiry and discussion? How do we ensure developmental appropriateness without rendering the work vapid? ## A well-crafted plan versus appropriate flexibility and open-endedness - Achieving goals requires a carefully thought-out design, but we can usually achieve our goals only by deviating from the plan, in response to the considerable feedback and teachable moments that will occur in class. How do we avoid being too rigid and thus ultimately ineffective? On the other hand, how do we avoid losing sight of our goals in response to every student reaction or question? How do we balance our design goals with the serendipity of opportunities for learning? ## A great individual unit versus larger goals and other designs - How can each unit have a natural flow, standing on its own as an elegant and logical work of design, while honoring all local program goals and content standards that frame our obligations? How do we use textbooks and work in all required content without subverting the principles of good design? How do we deal with pressures to raise test scores while teaching for understanding? How do we develop a logical learning plan, while mindful of all the differeing and perhaps competing demands we face? ## The solution? In any field, the value of regular feedback is recognized as a key to continuous improvement. In education, the benefit of the “design, try, get feedback, adjust” approach was formally recognized in a major study of college teaching: This sounds like [[Design thinking]]! We asked faculty members and students what single change would most improve their current teaching and learning. Two ideas from faculty and students swamped all others. One is the importance of enhancing students’ awareness of “the big picture,” the “point of it all,” and not just the details of a particular topic. The second is the importance of helpful and regular feedback from students so a professor can make mid-course corrections. (Light, 1990, p. 66) Wiggins, Grant; McTighe, Jay. Understanding by Design (p. 271). ASCD. Kindle Edition.