BC’s new curriculum looked complicated at first glance. At second glance some of the interwoven qualities of the model started popping out. Then after more time reviewing and relating it to curriculum as praxis, and breaking it down into curriculum as syllabus, product and process more clarity emerged. Searching deeper into the design, I considered how formative and summative assessment may fit in and how moving away from certain summative assessment techniques are archaic.

It is clear to me that the center we are trying to expose within all students is literacy and numeracy, essential learning, and core competencies (thinking, communication, personal/social). This draws immediate attention to what British Columbians value in an educated citizen. We will call these the headlines of the learning in our schools. Digging deeper into the model of praxis they propose, I noticed what could be interpreted as curriculum as syllabus, product, and process. I would agree that the entire model encompasses what curriculum as praxis should look like. Namely, the interwoven and interacting content (know), curricular competencies (do), and big ideas (understand). These three points, while working together really help to frame our practices here in BC as an informed commitment with the pursuit of freedom through education. However, within this shell of praxis, I see the inclusion of curriculum as syllabus (content; know), curriculum as product (curricular competencies; do), and curriculum as process (big ideas; understand). I felt this elucidated the clever design of our curriculum and helped me link all this back to the headlines of our new curriculum.

This link to our curriculum headlines is significant because our freedom to use formative and summative assessments remains intact regardless of the subject we are teaching and learning. It allows for summative assessment in higher grades without deviating from curricular design while attending to the lower grades where formative assessment is more predominately used to grow confident, motivated learners. Now, we could get into the conversation about eliminating grades in favor of a more formative feedback system, but I do not think with the way this model was designed makes any sense. Both formative and summative assessments have great power depending on the subject being taught, the teacher using them, and the weight that each is given when achieving a “final assessment.”

The only concern I have regarding summative assessment, if this is your chosen technique, is moving away from grading on a normal curve. Simply put, nobody is “normal” and although statistics of a large enough random sample will presumably approach normality, I don’t believe that using mathematical equations to root out “learning” that is happening in the most complex organ know to exist, is something we should measure with “normality.”