Curriculum realisation: from national to local contexts

Introduction

This section considers international perspectives on curriculum realisation, assessment and progression. This includes conversations with international experts who talk about curriculum making in Canada, New Zealand and Norway.

It also includes materials developed by practitioners, school leaders and educational partners to support practical approaches to progression, including:

• ways of thinking and working in curriculum co-construction
• communicating learner progress with stakeholders

Key ideas

This video discusses collaborative building on new curricula in Norway and Finland and thinks about what we can learn from this in relation to curriculum realisation in general.

We then bring in the voices of co-construction group participants in terms of gaining confidence with curriculum realisation in practice.

A printable handout of the slides used to create this video can also be downloaded alongside a full transcript.

Exploring further

These interviews should be engaged with after listening to the key ideas video above.

Interview with Associate Professor Jenny Poskitt

In this video, Jenny Poskitt discusses curriculum making in New Zealand.

Key takeaways for schools and settings are:

• schools and settings can interpret curriculum guidelines in ways that respond to local contexts (5m18s)
• how progression is understood in the New Zealand Curriculum (22m49s)

Interview with Professor Chris DeLuca

In this video, Chris DeLuca discusses curriculum and assessment in Ontario, Canada.

Key takeaways for schools and settings include:

• Ontario’s ‘Growing Success’ policy, which introduced assessment for learning and assessment as learning as ways of thinking about assessment (5m53s)
• the relationship in education systems between formative and summative assessment, the ‘knotty’ problem of the relationship between formative assessment and accountability, and how teachers in Ontario negotiate these (12m46s)
• the support that teachers draw on in Ontario to help them realise new curriculum and assessment practices (20m26s)
• aligning the ‘letter and spirit’ of curriculum (34m25s)

Interview with Professor Kari Smith

In this video, Kari Smith first introduces schooling in Norway, before talking about the nature of assessment in the system.

Key takeaways for schools and settings include:

• general and subject elements of the curriculum and learners’ rights to formative assessment (16m00).
• ‘in-depth learning’ in the revised curriculum in Norway (20m22s).
• discussion of the ongoing exam debate following the COVID-19 pandemic (25m09s).
• introducing reform as a three-stage process (29m40s).

Thinking into practice

These materials have been produced by practitioners, school leaders and educational partners in the co-construction group.

The first set of materials is designed to share ways of thinking and working during co-construction of curriculum in schools and settings, and has been drawn from a process that co-construction participants went through to address a particularly difficult issue in designing progression in their curriculum.  

The second set of materials is designed to support consideration of how learner progression is communicated to stakeholders.

The third set of materials is designed to support new ways of thinking about progress in schools and settings.