I have gone through high school, my undergrad and currently the education program; and I have seen a variety of ways that our educators have presented, motivated, and graded their curriculum.

During elementary school and high school, the content of the curriculum was presented as a product. The view of curriculum as a product refers to the idea that there were specific objectives that students had to meet. This led to teaching of specific set of information set up through specific learning experiences and then a specific grading criterion. The way in which I experienced this was with the mannnny work sheets through elementary school and mannny textbook practice problems through high school, that allowed us as student to output the product of our learning (content of the curriculum).

In university, I felt that the curriculum was similar that it had a rigid structure of content, grading, and learning intentions. However, the way that it was outlined was different. In university, the curriculum was viewed as a syllabus. This means that the curriculum was listed in the syllabus, very specifically in what topic would be covered, in what order, with what assessment. Whereas, in elementary and high school because these outlines were not always evident.

In the education program, we have looked at the way that curriculum is being taught today in the new (to me) BC curriculum. During this examination it seems that this curriculum is a praxis. Praxis, meaning that the curriculum is a flexible, movable, set of ideas where teachers want to achieve certain things in the classroom but there is room for growth and differentiation. For example, this curriculum highlights a teacher’s ability to be adaptable and reactive to what is going on in their classrooms. The teachers must act in response to the children learning. Then critically assess moving forward with a lesson, go back if they don’t get it, build off it if is going really well; in order to foster student’s inquiry and experimentation. Furthermore, the teacher must try and appeal to student’s intrinsic motivation- or desire to learn for the sake of learning.

The BC curriculum being a praxis allow for us to move away from the reward-based motivation system that is typically associated with curriculum structured as product or syllabus. Daniel Pink mentioned that reward-based learning is not enough to motivate and can even inhibit a person’s ability to reform a task. This idea of trying to get a reward takes over our ability to think critically. I have experienced this. In high school, I had one math teacher who would put a riddle, puzzle, or word problem on the board. The fastest one to solve the problem would get a candy. But I felt every time I would become flustered and couldn’t really think past the first way, I tried the problem.

After watching Daniel Pink’s video, I thought of how students probably feel when they are writing tests, where the stakes are a lot higher than a piece of candy.  When scholarships, GPA, and post secondary admission are on the line, a student is probably inhibiting their own ability to write that test from stress and anxiety alone. So, it makes sense how test anxiety be such a prevalent issue in our school system. I think it is for this reason that there has a been a push towards more formative and gradeless assessment. However, what I really wonder about is how you still produce summative assessment without grades. Since using words like “extending” compared to “A” or “86” can seem to mean the same thing when the grading system has been ingrained in our expectation of school. I think that there will have to be a real cognitive shift in teachers, kids, and parents in order to get to a point where it becomes second nature.

For now, as I continue to learn about assessment and curriculum, I think I would use a lot of formative assessment. Allowing kids to learn, receive feedback, and adapt. I don’t feel a student has to be summative assessed while they are learning, because knowing myself, I don’t want to be judged on something I have not had time to wrap my mind around. However, at the end of a unit or what not, I think coming up with a variety of ways for students to show their learning will make it more accessible than just a test. We know every student is different and should have an opportunity to represent their learning in a way that is meaningful to them.