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Report on Curriculum Development Workshop
Competency Based Curriculum Development: Seychelles Curriculum Reform
February 2016
Seychelles Conference Centre Victoria, Seychelles
Lori Rabinovitch, Ph.D.
March 4, 2016
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Acknowledgements This weeklong curriculum development workshop would not have been possible without the on-‐going support of members of Seychelles’ Ministry of Education. Thank you to the Minister of Education, Macsuzy Mondon, for her warm reception and support. Thank you also to Dr. Odile de Comarmond, Marie-‐Reine Hoareau, and their entire team for helping to plan the agenda, organize the venue, prepare documentation for participants, provide audio-‐visual equipment, as well as meals and breaks throughout the week. Thank you to the sixty participants, ranging from teachers to members of the Ministry of Education, who worked tirelessly in order to continue the process of constructing a competency-‐based curriculum reform for the Republic of Seychelles. Their enthusiastic participation ensured that the important questions for their specific context were raised. Thank you to Philippe Jonnaert and the Chaire UNESCO de développement curriculaire at the Université du Québec à Montréal for continuously providing rich and deeply meaningful theoretical material.
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Résumé From February 15 to February 19, 2016, approximately 60 curriculum developers, including members of the Seychelles’ Ministry of Education, principals, head teachers, classroom teachers, and technology experts participated in a weeklong training session intended to deepen their collective understanding and ability to build a competency-‐based curriculum reform. The workshop was prepared and presented collaboratively by Dr. Lili Ji from the International Bureau of Education (IBE) in Geneva, and Dr. Lori Rabinovitch from the Chaire UNESCO de développement curriculaire (CUDC) at the Université du Québec à Montréal. The week began with a one-‐day series of meetings between visiting members of IBE and members of the Seychelles’ Ministry of Education, including Minister of Education, Macsuzy Mondon. The purpose of these meetings was to establish a broad context for the weeklong training session and to discuss the evolving needs of the technology sector and its relationship to education and schooling. In particular, three important elements were discussed: Early Childhood Education, the integration of technology, and constructing a competency-‐based curriculum. This first day of meetings was followed by four days of workshop training sessions held at the Seychelles Conference Centre. The sessions were constructed around the concept of a holistic curriculum that orients, guides, and supports all of its constituent elements, including competency-‐based programs of study. These programs of study must be coherent with the overall values and principles articulated in the curriculum orientation document for the Republic of Seychelles, The National Curriculum Framework (2013). This document provided a structure for our work during the remainder of the week.
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Competency-‐based Training Session Opening Remarks by Dr. M. Marope February 16, 2016 The competency-‐based training session began on February 16, 2016 with opening remarks delivered by Dr. Marope, Director of the International Bureau of Education, Geneva. She spoke eloquently about the exigencies of a small country in the process of building its capacity to compete on the global stage. She promoted the adoption of long term, holistic development perspectives that include social, human, material, and technological resources – the collective elements of development. When discussing curriculum issues, Dr. Marope spoke about policy statements that are aspirational but that don’t identify the specific tools and resources education systems will need for development purposes. For a holistic curriculum framework to be relevant, it must bridge the aspirations of Seychelles’ development outlook with its philosophy of education. Curriculum is critical to realizing national lifelong learning policies. Curriculum is the integrative core of an education system because it relates to and provides coherence for every aspect of education. If the curriculum is well designed, it will automatically be connected to development and the competencies needed for development purposes. Generally speaking, at development meetings in countries around the world, people do not discuss curriculum issues, but nor do educators discuss development issues. Dr. Marope suggested that this division must be closed, as it no longer contributes to the important conversations taking place around the world. Curriculum and development must be associated in geographical and temporal terms. Opportunities to learn must be present both vertically – systems that support lifelong learning, and horizontally – systems that recognize learning from formal, non-‐formal and informal educational contexts. Competency-‐based curriculum reforms are intended to transform human beings into individual and collective resources, and help whole societies build the capacity to move forward into an unknown future. We cannot know what competencies will be required in the future but we do know that learning how to learn – the heart of every competency-‐based curriculum reform – will be the key to future development. Teaching in this way will require trained teachers, equipment, an increasingly comprehensive use of technological resources, coherent forms of assessment, and, most importantly, a systemic approach to education.
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Competency-‐based Workshops February 16 – 19, 2016 Day 1 February 16, 2016 Dr. Lili Ji introduced the workshop and the supportive role that Unesco and the International Bureau of Education are offering to Seychelles during this period of curriculum reform and development. This is the first IBE training session on this topic in this country. A major concern is to create coherence between locally driven education policy and the results of this training session. What are the areas of concern that will permit stakeholders to realize their national priorities? How will these national priorities be translated into actual practices? Dr. Ji spoke about the concept of curriculum as a holistic entity that encompasses, orients, and guides every aspect of the education system. She situated the present workshop in the local context of a curriculum reform project that will adopt a constructivist approach to education and write, rewrite and adapt programs of study based on the development of competencies within learning and evaluation situations. Ultimately, curriculum developers and teachers must identify the competencies needed to meet Seychelles’ overall needs and goals; these competencies must then be related to areas of learning and programs of study; teachers must be trained to understand, implement, adapt, and monitor the on-‐going construction of this curriculum reform. Dr. Lori Rabinovitch articulated four goals for the weeklong workshop on the competency-‐based approach:
• To meet the needs of the participants; • To model the competency-‐based approach; • To simplify the competency-‐based approach; and, • To create a template for writing the new competency-‐based programs of study.
The overall intention of the workshop was to offer theoretical explanations as providing underlying justifications for various decisions and practices related to this approach, without specifically presenting decontextualized research and theory. This approach was followed throughout the week. As a form of modelling a competency-‐based learning situation, participants were told that the workshop was their learning situation; both individually and collectively they were asked to think of themselves as learners developing the same competency for the entire week: Communicates about the competency-‐based approach. Lori explained that because competencies can potentially develop indefinitely, from the outset there would be participants with a greater understanding of this approach but that everyone was in the same learning situation and developing the same competency, including the workshop leaders.
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In order to meet the participants’ needs, each person was asked to articulate his or her concerns, goals, questions, and preoccupations to ensure these were evident from the outset:
• Need for initial and on-‐going teacher training that fully prepares teachers to implement competency-‐based programs of study;
• Concern about how to get started on this reform; • How do we make connections between the National Curriculum Framework and
the competency-‐based programs of study? • What competencies do very young children need? • Some of us received training in the competency-‐based approach that left us
feeling confused; • There is a great deal of terminology, much of it unclear, associated with this
approach. In order to share experiences of curriculum development and the implementation of competency-‐based programs of study, Lori used a PowerPoint presentation to introduce concepts, vocabulary, successes, and challenges associated with a similar project from Québec, Canada where traditional programs were replaced by a new approach and new programs of study. Following this relatively formal presentation, participants were asked to divide into groups and each group was asked to write their definition of a competency. The definitions were shared in a plenary session. Key elements emerged from each of the definitions and these were adapted and rewritten until consensus was formed around the definition of a competency. This important work formed the foundation for the remainder of the week. Day 2 February 17, 2016 Participants worked in groups to begin the process of creating a template for the new competency-‐based programs of study. The program writers, beginning their work in March or April of 2016, will use this as their common template. Groups were asked to brainstorm, without any editing or censorship, every element that might possibly form part of a program of study. These lists were read out loud in a plenary session and notes were taken. A synthesis was made of concepts similar in nature and with this shortened list, the entire group was asked to come to a consensus on which of the elements to retain permanently. One category named “Other” contained several elements that either appeared only once or were only very loosely defined.
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Day 3 February 18, 2016 We continued the process of creating a template for the new competency-‐based programs of study. From the list of elements retained on the previous day, each group was assigned one element and asked to define what it might contain in a program of study. The group assigned the category named “Other” had several elements to define, eliminate, or regroup under existing headings. These definitions were shared in a plenary and consensus was reached on which elements to retain, move, adapt, eliminate, or rename. The group who defined an assortment of concepts under the category “Other” succeeded in adding two important elements to the template. In order to continue the process of modelling a competency-‐based learning situation, a self-‐reflective activity was proposed for the participants. The aim was for each participant to carry out a process of self-‐assessment based on the development of the competency, Communicates about the competency-‐based approach. Before carrying out this activity, participants first had to create a series of four or five evaluation criteria on which to judge their competency development. In small groups, participants formulated several evaluation criteria; these were shared in a plenary session during which consensus was reached on five criteria. This activity led to an important discussion about various aspects of evaluation: assessment for, of, and as learning; expected outcomes; reporting practices; observable indicators of competency development; etc. Participants were also asked to prepare a list of questions, concerns, and preoccupations under the heading: “What I still need to know”. Day 4 February 19, 2016 The day began by providing participants with feedback on the self-‐assessment activity and its purpose as well as sharing some of the concerns raised under the heading: “What I still need to know”. Some responses were provided while other questions were shared but left open-‐ended for the present time. The final template for the programs of study was reviewed for overall approval and consensus. This will be shared electronically with all participants during the coming weeks. A plenary discussion took place on the topic of learning situations and how crucial it is for teachers to design increasingly complex learning situations throughout the school year as a means for guiding students to the level of competency development articulated in the expected outcomes for a particular program of study and school level
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(or key phase). The various components of a learning situation that can increase in complexity over time were reviewed and discussed: role of the student in the situation; resources; actions; and, expected outcomes. Lili concluded the training session by asking participants to name one action they will take in the near future that will allow them to apply their new learning and continue the process of their own competency development in, Communicates about the competency-‐based approach. Final Meeting and Workshop Follow-‐up February 19, 2016 All workshop participants will meet together in two weeks in order to review and share what they learned during the week, to confirm their common understanding of the competency-‐based approach, and to discuss future actions. Odile will send Lili a list of all participants and their e-‐mail addresses for further communication. Lori will visit the Ministry of Education to ensure that Odile has electronic copies of all documents used at the workshop. The curriculum development plan is to begin writing the competency-‐based programs of study as soon as possible. A series of programs will be produced by the end of April and sent for validation by the end of May. They will begin with Primary 3 programs in six learning areas. Following the validation process, feedback and adjustments will be incorporated into the new programs of study. This will permit the curriculum development team to ascertain whether or not there is a need for additional capacity building workshops in the form of face-‐to-‐face visits. If the programs are well written and conform to the validation criteria, they will act as a model for future program writing teams. Visits: University of Seychelles and Two School February 22, 2016 Accompanied by a representative from the Ministry of Education, Lili Ji and Lori Rabinovitch spent one day visiting various educational institutions. Their first meeting was with Dr. Justin Valentin, Dean of Faculty of Business and Law, University of Seychelles. During this meeting, Lili described a Post-‐graduate Certificate or Master’s Degree in Curriculum Development offered by the International Bureau of Education, and she suggested possible ways in which IBE could potentially support such an endeavour. Next, the group visited a post-‐secondary art school, Seychelles Institute of Art and Design and toured the facilities with the school’s director, Christine Chetty Payet.
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Finally, the group toured a brand new primary school headed by Miss Vivienne. This state-‐of-‐the art primary school opened this year and is still undergoing additional registration and staffing, as well as technological updates and installations. Written and submitted by: Lori Rabinovitch, Ph.D. Researcher and Member, CUDC Montréal, Québec, Canada March 4, 2016
