The College of Education at Michigan State University is pleased to present a 30-hour professional development course in Curriculum Design and Development for teacher educators in Indonesia. This intensive, online professional learning course is designed to strengthen and enhance professional practice, engage participants in active learning, and transform teaching practices.
This course will explore the basis of curriculum in Indonesian educational philosophy and the academic disciplines. Participants and course administrators will consider how curriculum frameworks are taken up by schools and transformed into the enacted curriculum through planning and teaching practices.
It is essential for teacher educators to address what new teachers need to know to meet curriculum goals. Using the "Understanding by Design" framework, we will consider how teachers use knowledge of curriculum and knowledge of students to organize instruction so that students meet learning goals through carefully sequenced experiences based on assessment of their existing knowledge and skills.
This course will span a six-week period and will include a blend of synchronous and asynchronous learning opportunities. Much of the programming is asynchronous to allow participants to work around their own schedule constraints. Short videos and readings by MSU faculty will introduce each session. Participants will have the opportunity to interact on discussion boards and share their experiences and questions. These posts will prompt further videos and readings to address specific areas of interest, chosen by MSU facilitators.
Course administrators will hold a weekly synchronous meeting during the program that will provide opportunities for live discussion among participants and MSU faculty and graduate students.
Each participant is expected to spend an estimated 3 hours on asynchronous work per week with 2 hours of synchronous meeting time for a total of 5 hours/week for six weeks during this course. The culminating project is a critical analysis of one secondary unit in the subject of the participant’s choice with attention paid to how its assessments and activities could be changed to make it more engaging, effective, and faithful to disciplinary concepts. This analysis will be based on the work done in Sessions 4-6.
This session will address the question “What is curriculum?” by looking at the development of Indonesian National Standards and other curriculum documents. What do they tell us about the purpose of education in Indonesian society? Instructors will present examples of standards from the United States for the purpose of comparative analysis. Participants will choose one secondary subject area to explore during the course.
The K-12 curriculum varies by subject in its relationship to disciplinary concepts and practices. Looking at examples from the humanities and the sciences, we will consider the different purposes of schooling and how the K-12 curriculum reflects social values and discipline-specific knowledge. What is the relationship between a school subject and its originating discipline? What does this mean about how teachers approach the work of planning and teaching?
The most effective way to ensure understanding of key curricular concepts is to keep in mind your destination as you plan your journey. Readings and videos will introduce the Understanding by Design model of Wiggins and McTighe, and participants will be invited to apply this idea to one unit in their subject area and report on that experience on a discussion board. How does this framework result in thinking about teaching differently?
How do you know when students have met your goals? Backwards planning starts with that question. Only when you know what a student must do to show you they have learned can you design the experiences that will get them there. Formative assessments monitor their progress along the way and ensure your teaching addresses the needs of the learners in your class. Readings and presentations for this session provide examples of assessment types that give teachers actionable data and promote learning. As part of Session V, participants will develop an assessment plan for the unit they worked with in Session IV.
If standards provide the overarching goals, and the assessment plan provides a framework for your instructional design, the activities students engage in day to day are the substance of your curriculum planning. Given where students are at any one moment, how do you get them to where you want them to be? More than ever before, teachers are expected to be flexible and creative in response to their students’ needs. We will also discuss the expectations of administrators and the school community for what good teaching looks like and how you can work with your colleagues to implement your vision.
Classes will be held from 17:00-21:00 Western Indonesia Time (Jakarta) / 08:00-10:00 am Eastern Time (MI) on the following Tuesdays:
$2,400 USD per participant
Email: caughlan@msu.edu
WhatsApp: +1 517 974 8081
Dr. Samantha Caughlan is the Curriculum Coordinator for the College of Education’s Global Education Engagement program. Dr. Caughlan has coordinated curriculum and directed short-term training of international educator groups since 2015. Her previous projects and roles include: Coordinator for a two-week professional development program for faculty and instructors from Open University China: “Online Education to Meet the Needs of the Adult learner;” management of the Argentina Educators Training Program for teachers and principals, Fulbright of Argentina; and Director of PRESTASI, a USAID program for Indonesian teacher educators, where she was responsible for building strong connections between all program elements and leading the action plan thread as well as the M&E plan. Prior to this experience, she was faculty head of English language arts teacher preparation at two universities. She is widely published in the areas of teacher preparation, English education, and discourse analysis. Prior to earning her Ph.D., she was an English and theater teacher. In all of these endeavors, she has maintained a focus on assessment as a learning tool for teachers and students.
Lynn Paine was previously the associate aean for International Studies in the College of Education. She is a professor emerita of Teacher Education and affiliated faculty in MSU’s Asian Studies Center and the Center for Gender in Global Context. Her work focuses on teacher learning and development. Much of her scholarship has involved teaching and teacher education as well as the comparative study of teachers and has been supported by research in China, the United States, England, and other countries. She is interested in understanding teacher change in context and in support of local and global visions of reform. Dr. Paine’s work on learning in and from practice draws on her ongoing comparative research of teacher education, including her participation in a US Department of Education‐funded comparative study of mentored learning to teach and her co‐leadership of two US NSF-funded comparative case studies of policies and practices that support beginning teacher learning. Her current involvement as leader of the thematic working group developing a framework for future‐oriented teaching for the OECD’s Education and Skills 2030 will contribute to shaping the program. A secondary school teacher before she became a teacher educator, she has led international professional development for teacher educators and teachers from Indonesia, Argentina, Tanzania, China, and other countries. She is deeply committed to reciprocal learning in and through international professional development.
Email: tirtowal@msu.edu
WhatsApp: +62 812 1845 2634
Dr. Isabella Tirtowalujo holds a Ph.D. in Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education from the MSU College of Education. Dr. Tirtowalujo is currently the Assistant Director of the Asian Studies Center at Michigan State University and a co‐coordinator of the AsiaNexus initiative, which seeks to serve as a platform to innovate partnerships, build network‐of‐networks toward innovating global solutions, develop global citizens, and generate global investments. Her own research explores issues of out‐of‐school children; rurality, youth, and schooling; and capacity development in the context of decentralization of education in Indonesia. Prior to joining the MSU Asian Studies Center, she worked in education development projects supporting central and local governments and development partners including UNICEF and the Asian Development Bank.