Wayfinder Learning Lab – Stephen Taylor

Stephen

  • Differentiating… differently.

    Long time no post! The school year is well underway and a ton of topics are on my mind, but things have been chugging along busily. Without the MA assignment to procrastinate, there’s been a little less motivation to blog,… Continue reading

  • We are the Agents of Change

    Finishing up an assignment, I went back through some of the recommended texts for the Curriculum Studies unit, and got fixated on the role of the teacher and coordinator in the curriculum. As it says in Kelly (2004) we are… Continue reading

  • The Year to Come

      Team Taylor arrived in Japan a year ago yesterday, and what a year it has been. We have been warmly welcomed by new friends and colleagues and CA has proven to be a great place to work and live.… Continue reading

  • Disconnect to (re-)Connect

    It’s the summer, and we’ve had some great – but short – trips in Japan: camping, surfing, lake-going and playing. Academic work has dominated the time we’ve been at home, though, as well as thoughts of getting ready for the… Continue reading

  • Teaching in the Third Dimension: Moving into Concept-based Curriculum

    This post is a quick organisation of thoughts based on the new position paper by the IB. There is more in the paper than is discussed here, so please head over to the IB’s Position Papers site to read it.… Continue reading

  • Paper.li: A quick review

    A couple of weeks ago I started paying attention to tweets such as: The international-educators Daily is out! http://t.co/PkFp88qY ▸ Top stories today via @neilringrose @toniobarton @mouseflip — Adrienne Michetti (she/her/hers) (@amichetti) July 16, 2012 These paper.li things seemed to… Continue reading

  • Time to Think

    If we want to push students beyond merely procedural tasks and rote learning, we need to give them enough time to think. I know I sometimes feel that I’m not earning my keep if I’m not actively engaged with each… Continue reading

  • Educational Hip-Hop: Creativity and the Curriculum

    Yesterday I had the pleasure of spending the afternoon with the Rhymebosome, Tom McFadden (@Tomcfad), famous for his Tomcfad YouTube channel of academic hip-hop, as he ran a workshop for students at Kyoto University. After he gave a performance at… Continue reading

  • The MYP: Becoming its own ‘Baccalaureate’?

    This is just a thought at the end of a couple of weeks of readings and responses to Bath MA International Education Curriculum Studies tasks. The term baccalaureate has diverse meanings, with examples such as in context of the IB… Continue reading

  • A pedagogy of personalised learning

    While reading about “Current issues in curriculum” today, I was pointed to this document from the UK government: Personalised Learning: A practical guide (pdf). I thought it might be worth sharing and of use to others. It’s long, but outlines… Continue reading

  • “Not everything that counts can be counted.” Edvaluating the Curriculum

    “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” Albert Einstein Spiraling into control? The process of curriculum design, like any product, should be cyclical. Some even describe it as a spiral staircase –… Continue reading

  • All Change: Teachers, Developers, Curriculum

    #GOveLevels Big edunews last week (at least in the UK), was the leak of some details of a large-scale overhaul of secondary education. @TeachingOfSci has a bettter write-up of it on his blog (Edit: and some more here: Gove’s Resit), but… Continue reading

  • Philosophy First: Contrasting approaches to the Curriculum

    I’m a pragmatic idealist. As an idealist I chose the international pathway and a career in IB schools because I believe in education, global-mindedness and the philosophy of the IB. I want my kids to grow up this way, I want… Continue reading

  • IB Education: Internationalism or Globalism?

    I found this presentation really interesting in my reading for the “Culture and Curriculum” section of the Curriculum Studies unit. Dr. James Cambridge discusses how internationalism and globalism serve as contexts for international education. Click to view (SlideServe doesn’t embed… Continue reading

  • Whose Culture? Whose Curriculum?

    Culture before curriculum Denis Lawton, in Class, Culture and the Curriculum (1975), defines culture as everything that has been created by humans in society, including tools, technology, language, literature, attitudes and values: the whole way of life. He suggests that school… Continue reading