Making Curriculum Relevant to a New World

As part of the Top Global Teacher Bloggers / CMRubinWorld.com / Global Search for Education  http://www.cmrubinworld.com/TGTB, this is my answer to this month’s question: “Making Curriculum Relevant to a  New World” 

The static old world has become a constantly changing unpredictable common village! In every corner people face the same problems or are at least are aware of them.  Which could be the real actions in the society to prevent the existence of terrorism and/or its spreading? How to make people to accept increasing population diversity? We all know very well the environmental threats, but how to change the direction of the development? WHAT should we teach to young people, when it seems that they have a lot to solve in the future? According to the Center for Curriculum Redesign (CCR) “We must deeply redesign curriculum to be relevant to the knowledge, skills, character qualities, and meta-learning students will need in their lives.”

How fast can national education system be changed through curriculum development? Do we need partly common global curriculum?

Curriculum has changed during my teaching time in Finland almost every tenth year. When I started my career curriculum mostly included exact descriptions of every subject and it has to be followed as the National Board of Education (NBE) wrote. Also NBE inspected the books publishing houses sold to the schools!

But then education policy changed. The reforms were made in the education system in the 1980s. Now local education providers —the municipalities—have broad autonomy.  Schools and teachers have been responsible for choosing learning materials and teaching methods since the beginning of the 1990s, when the national level inspection of learning materials was terminated.  We are valued as professionals in curriculum development, teaching and assessment at all levels. Now the core curriculum discusses values, learning, learning environments and general goals and aims, like learning of 21st century competences. The curriculum lists basic concepts in each subject but the list is just a suggestion —not obligatory.  We can plan and implement our teaching and assess students’ learning and learning outcomes, collaborate with other teachers and develop our teaching profession within the whole school context. We have a big responsibility concerning the way our students learn, but at the same time we can develop our own autonomy in designing the curriculum, using instructional strategies and assessment methods.

20161221_151931Photo: Maarit Rossi

Yes, my experience is that national curriculum can make a huge change – but is the change big and fast enough? This generation will live in global village – we need to know best education politics, latest knowledge of learning and learning practices to prepare them ready for the future!

We could have partly common curriculum in the areas concerning issues of the whole globe? How many countries have in their curriculum like some of the following text?  End poverty in all its forms everywhere. End Hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.   In 2015 the UN General Assembly formally accepted a new set of 17 measurable Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), ranging from ending world poverty to achieving gender equality and empowering women and girls by 2030. You can read these goals and targets from https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/topics/sustainabledevelopmentgoals. National curriculums need to have similar global goals. Best way to put them in practice is to give teachers enough autonomy to implement them. #teachersmatter