Experiments with the General Capabilities as starting points for curriculum design

ENGAGING AND DEVELOPING ETHICAL BEHAVIOUR

ContextThe Hills Montessori School – Adolescent Program

Adelaide Hills

Small school, Year 7 to 10

Accountable to the National Montessori Curriculum and the

Australian Curriculum

Small highly collaborative staff – committed to finding creative

problem solving

Key pedagogical approachesSelf direction

Prepared environment

Authentic work

Authentic consequences

Multiage classes

Flexible/responsive timetables

Integrated curriculum

Learning with head and hands

Meeting fundamental human needs

Project developmentBrief – adapt the existing Community Service Program

Journey - toward a General Capabilities focus

Integration

• Humanities

• Occupations

• Mathematics

• Advisory

• Language

• Student Interest Groups

• Science

Key Experiences‘Tell me and I’ll forget,

Show me and I may remember,

Involve me and I’ll understand’ (Chinese proverb)

1. World Trade Game – Ethical dilemmas

‘We thought we played the game well but so many people lost!’

‘I gave my chocolate away, I couldn’t bear to eat it’

‘I can’t believe how sneaky those rich girls were, they didn’t think

about us at all and we got nothing!’

Key Experiences (cont.)

2. Slum Survivor – Ethics under pressure

‘They wasted our hard earned money on chocolate behind our backs so we disowned them.’

‘Now I know what it’s like to be poor.’

‘I was cold.’

‘Slum Survivor was really hard, next year we should do it for a whole week and be out in the bush somewhere.’

‘It was just so unfair, I can’t believe the world is actually like that.’

‘I never want to make another paper bag again. Ever.’

Key Experiences (cont.)The Bitter Truth – Ethical decisions

‘It’s not right that our cheap chocolate costs the lives and childhoods of people our age’

‘I’m a bastard – I know it’s unfair but it’s not my fault, it happens anyway and it’s not illegal’

‘It was just a small step towards making the world a better place’

Developing knowledge

Miniature Earth Project – locating ourselves in the global picture

Story of Stuff – Who is responsible? Who is more valuable? Why?

Readings and seminars

Remembering the issues are not so much ends in themselves for us as educators but merely the contexts for engaging and developing ideas and applications of ethical behaviour

Structured specialisation

Guided investigation: Working conditions in offshore electronics manufacturing (Apple)

Providing a model for their own Independent Research Projects over the break

Going Further

Donations through

Economy and Events

Occupation

(to TEAR Australia)

Actions taken up by

Student Interest Groups

World Religions:

People of Compassion

http://db.tt/nDVh98kC

Tracking Development and Assessment

• Outcomes drawn from the Ethical Behaviour Assessment Rubric -

http://db.tt/Ismyu8Ku

• Tools for mapping an integrated curriculum

http://db.tt/hoMNMJPS

Where to from here?

Interpreting and owning the General Capabilities (beyond accommodation!)

Developing developmental continua

Integrating General Capabilities as central forces in the organisationand development of curriculum