UNESCO Chair International Seminar 2014

‘Revisiting the Fundamentals of Traditional Curricula. R/Evolution: what “R” would Mean for Education’

The X International Seminar of the UNESCO Chair, which took place the 1st and 2nd December 2014, considered the topic of the curriculum. In general, the curriculum tries to answer questions such as: what and when to teach, how to teach, and what, how and when to assess. The curriculum designs and plans the academic organization and activities that will take place in a given time and context.

Given that nowadays it is very difficult to envisage how our society will evolve and which will be the people’s future learning needs, we could consider that a modern curriculum should educate for dealing with this systemic lifelong uncertainty.

The very nature of knowledge is changing, too: it is becoming more fragmented and distributed; most of it is being constructed through collaborative contributions in open source scenarios. Thus, it is becoming more and more difficult to merely transmit it as content. If accepted that content is not the same than knowledge, and that some kind of mediation is needed to transform information or content into new knowledge, then content cannot be anymore the central point of the curriculum. This calls for a balance between the current practice of early specialization and a consideration of the growing role for general education – an emerging trend resonant with liberal art college education.

Speakers

• Joe Bower, Blogger and Teacher at a Middle School in Red Deer, AB, Canada. 
• Graham Brown-Martin, Author and Director at the Learning and (Re)Imagining Transmedia Project, WISE, UK. 
• Cathy N. Davidson, Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Center of The City University of New York, USA.
• Núria Miró, Principal of the Col·legi Montserrat, Spain.
• Mark Priestley, Professor and Director of the Curriculum and Pedagogy Research Cluster of the School of Education of the University of Stirling, UK.
• Helen Soulé, Executive Director of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21), USA.
• Tom Caswell, Director of Instructional Design at Helix Education, USA.
• Brandon Muramatsu, Assistant Director of Strategic Education Initiatives at the MIT, USA.
• Audrey Cooke, Lecturer at the School of Education of the Curtin University, Australia.
• Anna Díaz, English Teacher and Secondary Education Coordinator of the Institut Broggi, Barcelona, Spain.
• Antonia Dolcet, Coordinator of SetMesTres, Spain.
• Alba Rodoreda, Setmestres, Spain.
• Cathy Ellis, Director of Enquiry and Emerging Practice at the Highbury College, UK.
• Ankit Khandelwal, India.
• Pere Monràs, CEO at Sangakoo, Spain.
• Judit Castro, Product Manager at Sangakoo, Spain.
• Jasmina Nicolik, Coordinator of the “Reforming Foreign Language Studies in Serbia” Project at the University of Belgrade, Serbia.
• Karl Royle, Principal Lecturer of Curriculum Innovation and Knowledge Transfer at the Centre for Developmental and Applied Research in Education (CeDARE) of the University of Wolverhampton, UK.

Presentations

Opening Session (Josep A. Planell Estany, Emma Kiselyova, Albert Sangrà)

Keynotes:

• Cathy Davidson: “Changing Higher Education from the Classroom Up”
• Helen Soulé: “Patterns of Innovation-Transforming Early Learning and Beyond with 21st Century Skills”
• Mark Priestley: “The New Curriculum: Policy into Practice in Scotland”
• Núria Miró: “A Curriculum for Ownership, Ubiquity and Accountability”
• Joe Bower: “Do Schools Conceal or Reveal Learning?”
• Graham Brown-Martin: “Learning {Re}Imagined: How the Connected Society is Transforming Learning”

Demos:

• Audrey Cooke: “Encouraging Pre-Service Teachers to Re-Vision Mathematics: Focusing on the “Have a Go” Aspect of Numeracy”
• Pere Monràs and Judit Castro: “Sangakoo: Proven Effects of Collaborative Learning”
• Jasmina Nicolik and Karl Royle: “Agilifying Learning: How Agile (SCRUM) Organization Techniques Can Enable Learner Agency, Dialogue and Democratization in Learning Within Any Curricula”
• Antonia Dolcet and Alba Rodoreda: “Interaction, Reflection and Competencial Work”
• Anna Díaz and Paco Rico: “Holistic Education: the New Model’s Learning Objective”
• Cathy Ellis: “Can Learning Using the Internet in the Context of Self-Organised Learning Environments (SOLEs) Replace Traditional Vocational Education and Training?” 
• Tom Caswell: “Open Assessment and OERs as Enablers in Competency-Based Education”
• Ankit Khandelwal: “Zero Cost Management Graduate”

Albert Sangrà: Conclusions and Takeaways