#curricular sequencing

One key part of learning is: internalizing norms, criteria or standards.

If you cannot do something to a certain standard, there is little sense in which you can do that thing at all.

Some used to compare free verse to "playing tennis without a net."

We may not hold this low opinion of free verse: after all, if it scans, alliterates, etc., it may be 90% poetry, and that may be poetic enough.

Learning as part of education, is a part of the larger process of socialization. We have no problem thinking of socializing as internalizing norms and rules. But we sometimes lose our agility when thinking about how internalizing criteria happens in learning, let alone what kinds of criteria there are and what roles they play. As so often, the single word "criteria" blinds us to the variety that word hides.

In the interest of practical utility, I'd like to identify three kinds of criteria which I don't think are sufficiently differentiated. Each comes at a different moment in the learning process, is expressed in a different kind of language, has a different degree to which it is shared with others, and each plays a different role in the learning process.

Examples from prose-writing, bread-baking and cake-making may provide some assistance in clarifying these admittedly broad notions.

Minimal criteria are concrete. "You must be this tall to get on this ride." They can be expressed in declarative language. A full description may be rather detailed; but it is possible to give one. Minimal criteria are widely shared and shareable. And they are prerequisites to correct performances.

The ability to write a grammatically-correct sentence is a pre-requisite for many other activities. It is a minimal standard, a set of entry conditions. It may be complex, but it can be described exhaustively.

The longer the sentence, the longer the list of ways it can be grammatically defective. But beginning with a capital letter, having a subject and verb, the subject and verb agreeing, the words being spelled correctly––the compass is not vast.

For baking bread, kneading is a basic skill. If you can't knead the bread correctly, all the rising and baking is mostly for naught.

Similarly, to bake a cake, you must be able to keep butter chilled, cream sugar into it, probably whip egg whites until they form stiff peaks, etc.

Ideals are another kind of criteria. These are maximal criteria: they represent the highest performance a discipline, art or craft can reach. Their language seems declarative but is actually connotative: clarity, beauty, delicacy, grace are ideals for writing prose, creating art, baking a cake, and dancing, respectively.

The role of such ideals is both guiding and summative. They lead the learner forward, but they also summarize an understanding which must be achieved.

Saying a sentence is "clear" sounds simple enough: clear like glass. But what makes a sentence clear, and whether this sentence is more or less clear than that is a complex judgement. Once you've mastered it, it seems self-evident––which is why teachers have such a hard time teaching these high-level values: the language describing these values seems literal once the complex meanings are internalized; but it is anything but simple to those early in the learning process.

Ideals are public and shared, but not all publics overlap. Hence ideals are often contested. Some bakers believe bread is best when it's chewy and airy; others when soft and finely-textured. Likewise, when it comes to cakes, if you want to start an argument, talk about "crumb" and "lightness."

One of the things disciplines argue about is what their ideals are or mean. Different theories are not simply different in what they hold to be true: they are different in what they consider a theory should be and do. "Theory" is an ideal, and its definition is therefore often contested.

Terms referring to ideals need to be used throughout instruction, even though they're only understood gradually.

Finally, the fuzziest set of criteria are those we give ourselves. These are self-created rules-of-thumb. They encapsulate the learner's emerging understanding, and therefore I call these criteria "emergent." They are complex and simple at the same time. Their language is idiomatic: you may understand them, and I may not, but likely I get a strong feeling from them. It may be useful to share them, but they are not a common parlance. They are a by-product of the process of learning, rather than a pre-requisite or an end-point (as minimal criteria and maximal ideals are).

Bakers know when the batter "looks like thick latex paint" that they're in good territory––or in deep trouble.

Experienced breadmakers may recognize a certain smell as "yeasty" or "fruity" or "alcohol-y," and based on that they know just what to do.

Likewise, prose writers can tell you that they are done drafting when they find themselves polishing sentences excessively.

In many activiites, knowing when you're done, and how to push yourself towards being done, is not so much a matter of deadlines as it is of rules-of-thumb.

Learners can be encouraged to formulate their own emergent rules-of-thumb, and this seems to facilitate the learning process. For in fact, learning is not pure socialization: it's not simply internalizing others' rules. Learning always has a personal dimension. Even if learning is forced on you strictly in the most aggressive and regimented way, you will develop your own internal resistance to it, a sort of ridicule or gallows humor that you use to survive indoctrination––and to resist it.

These three kinds of learning criteria may be summarized in a table:

scope complexity language how widely shared role in learning minimal concrete declarative shared prerequisite maximal abstract connotative contested ideal, guiding emergent mixed idiomatic individual by-product

But then we've made just another set of vocabulary terms––which become disciplinary ideals, hence something to argue about.

Whereas what I really wanted to do was to say:

Put the minimal criteria first to help the learners succeed.

Bring out the disciplinary ideals at regular intervals, but don't expect them to be understood right off the bat.

Encourage the learners to create rules-of-thumb as they go.

Or: know how to knead, whether you like your bread chewy, and what to do when your dough smells like beer.

Seven Ways To Scaffold Authentic Learning

Let’s say you want to learn to play the piano.

(That's called "authentic learning": a real thing that a normal person can recognize, rather than a pencil-and-paper test about an abstract concept or heap of facts.)

What’s more: you want to play a Beethoven piano sonata.

So how do you go about achieving something

big, complex, and difficult?

Practically-speaking, you should likely start with something

small, simple, and easy.

Maybe start with a folk tune or a two-part invention.

Heck, even just plunk out a single melody.

In the theory and practice of learning, there are many names for this.

One is “curriculum design” or "curriculum theory": the way you sequence tasks and goals to make them achievable.

There’s another concept called “self-efficacy”: this means that if you think you’ll be able to do something, you’re more likely to be able to. It sounds like ‘the power of positive thinking,’ but it’s actually well researched. So if you can prove to yourself “yes, I can do this,” even in a small way, that can build your sense of self-efficacy.

Maybe most on-target is the notion of scaffolding. Scaffolding mean: the structure around the learner that helps her to reach the goal. Briefly: instead of jumping upward ten feet, break that leap into ten one-foot steps.

(In a sense, it doesn't matter why starting small, simple and easy is a good idea--any more than it matters why too much salt makes things taste bad: it's just something you need to deal with.)

Sadly, much of the discussion of scaffolding is mired in very paternalistic forms of instruction: the teacher scaffolds by explaining, demonstrating, coaching. Okay.

But the center of the process should be the learner, not the teacher.

And the conceptual basis of scaffolding in this sense has to do with psychological and cognitive development: it’s not appropriate for adults--or really even teens.

Finally, what many people called "scaffolding" sounds more like methods of instruction--tell them, show them, help them, etc. Nevertheless, the general term is probably good enough for us.

“Start from small, simple and easy and work to big, complex and hard” is a kind of scaffolding. It’s very common in practical arts like cooking or sewing, games and art forms that amateurs enjoy--like playing the guitar or the piano. (I discussed that here.) And so as we teach or plan learning (even our own), practical arts and games can guide us: they give us clear images of ways to make something more learnable.

Cooking provides excellent examples. The boss is coming to dinner, and you need to make a four-course meal with a gourmet dessert. (I know: it’s not the 1950’s, but go along with me for a minute.)

Let's say you can handle the first three courses. It's the dessert you want to focus on: you figure if that wows them, any earlier sins will be forgiven.

Let's say you settle on Tiramisu. You know: it's that lovely Italian dessert consisting of little cake-y cookies soaked in coffee, syrup, maybe liqueur, and layered with some kind of creamy eggy mixture. It's a big, complex task. How should you proceed?How can you break it down into a series of smaller tasks that will build your skills and give you confidence?

You could start by tasting a lot of tiramisu.

You could work separately on the cake, the icing, the syrup.

You could practice making the dish for two instead of eight.

You could make a simpler version without the syrup.

You could substitute some easier ingredients--like a cake that’s simpler, maybe a quickbread. Or you could just throw the elements into a bowl (like strawberry shortbread) instead of layering it carefully.

You could make a few using storebought ingredients.

You could just work on the flavors by mixing liqueurs in a cocktail, trying to get just the right balance of coffee and cake and chocolate and rum (if you even like that).

What I’m thinking here is: making one whole thing that’s big, complex and difficult is often also assumed to be:

100% original and embedded in a specific discipline--like cooking vs. mixology.

And the “making” part is the opposite of: using, analyzing, criticizing.

Taken together, this gives us a neat-enough distinction amongst seven dimensions or axes along which difficulty can be scaled.(The "big, complex, difficult" elements I've already flagged are shown in silver, so you can see clearly the other dimensions I'm pointing out.)

  earlier: preparation later: goal 1. analysis vs. synthesis make & take apart aka “cross-training” make 2. wholeness whole or part aka 'component' skills whole 3. scale/scope smaller bigger 4. complexity, number of dimensions simpler more complex 5. difficulty easier harder 6. originality partly pre-made more original 7. disciplinarity/domain non-discipline-specific or from another domain discipline-specific within the target domain

Training for sports and practicing various games all have ways of doing these things.

Athletes watch films of their games and their opponents.

In tennis, we might practice just the service or just the backhand.

Young people playing baseball sometimes just use the infield.

One-on-one basketball is a smaller version of the full-team, full-court version.

Whiffleball and T-ball are ‘scaffolded’ versions of baseball: they focus on making the hitting part easier.

Chess players can start playing an historical game, to see how they can handle that situation. (It’s not their own game played from the get-go.)

Athletes sometimes do strength or endurance training that’s completely separate from the specific skills of their game.

Whether this is doing curriculum design, promoting self-efficacy or scaffolding hardly matters. What matters is: the arts of teaching and learning are very practical affairs. And any desired behavior or goal can be made more do-able by using these seven axes.

--Edward R. O’Neill

P.S. One thing I've done here is to break learning out of the disciplines which claim to study it--instructional design, psychology, etc.--by comparing the planning and implementation of learning to other domains where the practical organization seems more obvious.

The idea is: to make methods of planning learning 'portable' or transferrable from one domain to another. Whatever theories we apply or whatever psychological or social processes underly them, teaching and learning are still practical activities: you need to unlock the classroom door before you can go in and learn. Hence, learning is susceptible to the kinds of common sense planning we do everyday.

Helping others to learn is not always easy. There are many challenges and obstacles. Two obstacles are worth discussing--because they are actually pretty easy to solve. Obstacle One. You can't learn Skill X without some material or content on which to apply it, and developing the content takes even more skill.

You can't sew a garment if you don't know the stitches. But if you don't know the stitches, your garment will be a mess. So you basically can't start--or you can only start by failing.

You can't write a screenplay without having a story. So your first screenplay will be terrible, because even if you can write it well, the content will be poor.

You can't give a good presentation without a good topic. Even if your slides and organization were great, weak content would sink you.

Obstacle Two. What you're teaching is a process, and the first part of the process is the hardest. It would be easier to start with a later step in the process. But you can't do that step until you've done the earlier, harder steps.

Kneading the dough correctly is probably the hardest part. But it's fairly early in the bread-baking process. So by the time you get to the easy part, your work is already inedible.

Configuring the software that lives on web servers can be complex, whereas using the same software after the configuration is actually pretty easy. So you can't get to the easy part until you do the super-difficult part.

The solution in both cases involves scaffolding. If you watch a building being built, you'll notice that in order to get at the building, the workers need to be at the right level. It's hard to stand in mid-air while applying the stone or whatnot. So builders create scaffolding all around the building. This makes it easier to get to the right level and place so you can do your work. Scaffolding in learning is the same thing. You break down what needs to be learned into small enough steps so that each can be mastered progressively. But "scaffolding" is general. To learn to create scaffolding requires...scaffolding. So specific methods or approaches to scaffolding would be useful, and this blog post offers two. (I make no assumptions about how many methods there are: so I am not implying any 'ontology' of scaffolding.) Solution One: Sewing Rags. If you ever learned to sew--even just a tiny bit--you know that you don't start making a suit, sewing in a jacket lining, or sewing in the zipper. These things are hard. Indeed, when you start, you're really not good at anything. You can't really make much of a garment. You need to practice the basic stitches. For this, beginners sometimes just take some old rags and start sewing them. In short, sometimes the content doesn't matter. You can start with any indifferent content.

You can't write a screenplay without having a story--so the solution is to start by giving the budding writer an existing story. This method was good enough for Homer, Sophocles and Shakespeare, all of whom adapted existing successful plots.

If you can't give a good presentation without a good topic, just give the budding presenter a good topic. This way the learner can practice the skill without needing to invent all the content.

After working with good content, the learner is ready to originate the content, since then she had a better idea of what "good" means. This used to be called "apprenticeship."

Artists worked in others' studios.

Playwrights began as actors.

Beginning craftsmen did the easier more boring part of the task for more advanced practitioners.