Learning By Design: A tool to focus conversation

Just as I have previously blogged about the use of common ground as a forum where people can share ideas, pedagogical strategies and designed learning I have also been asked to reflect how the scaffold of Learning by Design helps in this process.
It allows teachers to focus on the design of their students learning. For a lot of teachers it is the outcomes and the content that matter and therefore resort to the same methods and modes of delivery. Students need to know X and will do so by learning from Y. However the process of using learning by design makes teachers reflect and consult with one another about how best to get students to learn. It does this by pushing them to articulate and classify the knowledge process that they are using. I know for a fact that a lot of science teachers implement the concept naming process but rarely venture from this area because to them Science is a lot of facts that need to be memorised. The learning by design process pushes teachers to think beyond their comfortable modes of delivery in order to design a package that delivers across the four learning domains. That asks them to think about how they will push students beyond the textbook and engage with the knowledge.
Using the placemat is a great start when working with staff unfamiliar with the Learning by Design. The act of articulating what is they want students to learn can be interesting as sometimes staff find it difficult to articulate what it actually is that they want students to learn. The four learning areas also ensure that they push the boundaries of how they are going to get students to learn.
The conversation that follows when using the placemat then becomes a professional dialogue about how best practice can be delivered as opposed to “oh, ive got a sheet for that.” This means that the design of several lessons together build knowledge as opposed to being associated with each other by topic. It has proven to be a valuable tool as a curriculum leader and I will continue to use it to develop units of work and beginning teachers understandings of what it is to teach and learn.