The Preamble Matters
Every school system has a published curriculum. Teams of scholars organize the whole of human understanding into subjects (mathematics, arts, science, language etc.). Governments determine which topics within each subject children are to learn and when they are to learn them. This information is conveyed to educators by a series of curriculum documents - one for each subject.
Each secondary school curriculum document tends to have 2 main sections.
HOW to teach and assess the subject is in the front matter or preamble.
WHAT to teach and when to teach it follows the preamble. A list of curriculum “expectations” is presented for each course. These lists are organized by grade and stream.
For example: the curriculum documents for science have a common Preamble followed by lists of expectations - one list for a grade 9 academic science course and another list for the Grade 12 college preparation chemistry course, among many others.
Students are marked and ranked based on course expectations. The “expectations” specify WHAT content students should know and be able to do by the end of each course. In a given course, students showing at least 50% understanding across all expectations OR 100% understanding in half of the expectations will earn credit for the entire course.
HOW teachers conduct classes and how students demonstrate understanding is left to the professional judgement of educators. The preamble provides direction on HOW to approach a subject but has no bearing on how students are marked and ranked. When planning, teachers tend to skip the preamble and go directly to the course expectations for what content they need to cover. Students are marked on the list of course expectations not by the preamble.
Equity in education will not improve unless and until how students learn is valued as highly as what students learn.
Equity in education will not improve unless and until we value and support teachers in how they teach as highly as what they teach.
Equity in education will improve when teacher support and accountability extends beyond course content.
