Curriculum mapping for pedagogical change? Case studies from Asia

Phillip Towndrow, Michael Vallance

Japan

• Japanese universities being semi-privatised, undergoign reformation
• Lots of universities making laptops compulsory for students
• Curriculum mapping: collecting and analysing data about everything
• Especially interested in interdisciplinary work
• Still at early stages, things move slowly
• Using backcasting - where do they want to be in 2020, what do they need to do to get there?
• Main barrier supporting people with transformation

Singapore

• Research project where all school students have laptops
• Singapore system has strong centralised curriculum and tradition of lectures, reproduction and high-stakes tests
• Further down curriculum mapping process than in Japan, diagram of stakeholders and relationships/tensions between them

Questions for discussion

• Can curriculum mapping help foster sense of joint enterprise that is scalable and sustainable?
• How can members share stories to allow them to negotiate meanings, set curriculua?
• Are new media and digital tools sufficiently compelling to drive curriculum design?

Juliette Culver
12:39PM 8 September 2009