Goal Based Design

 1. Think about the standard of "goal-based design" (p.304), and the "Design-Down, Deliver-Up" Model (p.290), how does such philosophy resonate with curriculum alignment?

2. Imagine now you have total control over curriculum development and are creating a yearly planning guide - how do you plan to align assessments with learning objectives? How often and in what forms do you plan to assess the students?

  1. When using goal-based design, alignment is extremely important. If the goals and objectives are the most important thing for the school and community at large, educators need to be sure the students are doing things that lead up to those goals. To do this, educators need to sure that the goals match up with the summative assessments and the formative learning experiences. If the summative assessment is not properly aligned with the learning goals, we cannot be sure if the students have met the objectives or not. Similarly, if the formative work is not aligned with the learning goals, we are not allowing the students to practice and engage with the objectives. 

 The design-down, deliver-up method of curriculum planning seems to be a good way to ensure alignment. By focusing on the big ideas first, and then planning down, we can be sure that each lower level is aligned with the higher levels. The students would then encounter the curriculum in the opposite order than they were designed. In my personal experience, misalignment between the goals and the learning activities happens most often when teachers create assignments based only on what would be fun or engaging for the students. While fun and engaging lessons are desirable, the teacher should not lose sight of the learning goals. By using the design-down, deliver-up strategy, the teacher will be aware that their lessons must align with the goals. They should still make their lessons authentic, engaging, and fun, but they should not do that at the expense of the learning goals. 

 2. If I were in charge of curriculum development at my school, I would ask teachers to do formative assessments as often as possible. I work at an IB school, so each of these formative assessments would be aligned with one of the objectives within one of the criteria. In the IB framework, each subject is broken down into four criteria; A, B, C, and D. Each of these criteria has a theme. For example, In the Individuals and Societies course that I teach, criterion A is knowing and understanding, B is investigating, C is communicating, and D is critical thinking. Each criterion is described by several objective strands. For example, criterion A's objective strands are 'i. use terminology in context' and 'ii. demonstrate knowledge and understanding of subject-specific content and concepts through descriptions, explanations, and examples.' To be sure the students are engaging with each strand of each criterion, I would ask teachers to do regular formative assessments where one objective strand is assessed in isolation. I would also have teachers use the strands to develop their lesson plans. By doing this, I can be sure that the students are engaging and mastering every strand. I can also know their level of understanding of each strand by using frequent formative assessments. At the end of each unit, we would do a summative assessment where all strands of one or two of the criteria are assessed within the same task. Ideally, this summative task would be a transfer task where students can put their understanding into a new and authentic situation. 

   In summary, I would take each criterion objective and create a summative assessment based on one or two criteria in each unit. A rule in the IB framework is that each objective needs to be assessed twice each school year, so I would make sure that we meet that requirement. Then I would ask the teachers to use the individual strands to make unit-specific lesson plans and formative assessments. The objective strands are intentionally vague, so they can fit them into a number of different topics that would hopefully be engaging and worthwhile for the students. By doing the planning this way, I can be sure that we are meeting the IB framework guidelines in an authentic and aligned way. I am also trusting the teachers to design interesting lesson plans with their expertise and creativity, which I think they will appreciate.