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How LTS supports implementation
By Alan Armstrong, Director, LTS
Learning Teaching Scotland have been working with stakeholders to provide the information, confidence and support needed to ensure successful implementation of CfE.
Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS) is playing a key role in the implementation of CfE, providing advice and support for practitioners in all sectors of education.
All new support materials will be available on the CfE website. They will also be highlighted in Glow, using Glow Meet to introduce the new materials and stimulate discussion and debate. In addition, teachers will be encouraged to share ideas and materials across curriculum areas and publish them in the national Glow Groups.
Key support includes:
- Support using experiences and outcomes
- Support with curriculum planning
- Support understanding and developing effective approaches to assessment.
Schools, centres and education practitioners across Scotland are working towards full adoption of CfE. They are actively engaged in, for example, discussing, designing and testing possible curriculum structures, and using the experiences and outcomes to improve learning and teaching - raising standards in ways that best meet local contexts and priorities.
LTS provides a wide range of advice and examples of how practitioners are working with the new curriculum in all areas. This support for staff and examples of emerging practice can be found in the experiences and outcomes area of the CfE website.
Support can be found here for each of the eight curriculum areas as well as for literacy, numeracy and aspects of Health and Wellbeing across learning. Within each section there are examples of approaches to learning and teaching that are already being used in schools across Scotland, including case studies with video clips of interesting and innovative practice.
Support for curriculum planning
LTS is continually providing new support to keep local authorities, schools and centres up to date with the latest thinking from schools.
Building your Curriculum is a process designed to support and reinforce the guiding principles of Building the Curriculum 3 - a framework for learning and teaching. Building your Curriculum can be found easily on the homepage of the CfE website in the left hand navigation by selecting Building the Curriculum then Building your Curriculum. From here, a number of options will appear in a drop down list.
There is a section on 'Guiding your thinking' which provides users with examples of the work some schools are doing to develop curriculum structures.
In 'sharing and developing thinking', schools can review their curriculum plans and decide what they want their curriculum to look like in the future, what they need to do to achieve this, and how they are going to manage that change.
There are also examples of curriculum plans from a variety of contexts, including broad general education, interdisciplinary learning, planning for change, and transitions. Examples at this stage are both real and fictitious with emerging ideas about strategic planning from early years, primary, secondary and special schools.
Alan Armstrong, Director of Curriculum and Assessment at LTS, explained: "We designed this process to help schools, their partners and education authorities to review their curriculum plans and develop their own curriculum frameworks. The support materials available on the LTS website can be used to help discussions about planning the curriculum, adapting and building on the ideas for each individual context and setting. More than 50 curriculum plans are available online."
Support with understanding approaches to assessment
To provide practitioners with examples of approaches to assessment in advance of the launch of the NAR later this year, LTS has been working with more than 170 schools and centres to support them in developing assessment practices in line with Building the Curriculum 5, focusing on particular Experiences and Outcomes in literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing across curriculum areas.
Alan Armstrong said: "Schools and centres started to become involved in the process in early January. With the support of LTS and local authorities, those involved have really risen to the challenge and shown over a short period of time how learning, teaching and assessment, within the context of CfE, come together effectively."
These emerging examples, available on the LTS website, are a work in progress and are still in the process of peer-review and quality assurance.
The examples show learning and teaching and evidence of pupils' work, for experiences and outcomes in literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing, across curriculum areas, stages and within levels.
When using the web area for support, practitioners may find it useful to follow the review, reflect, and respond sequence.
First - review materials relevant to the school or centre, for example by stage, or within a level or curriculum area, focusing in particular on the ways that practitioners have planned the learning, reviewed the evidence, reflected on what the evidence tells them, and then responded by giving feedback and suggesting next steps in learning.
Then reflect on how the materials or approaches might inform assessment practices and how they could usefully be adapted and improved.
Finally, respond, by summarising reflections in a feedback form provided on the website.
These emerging examples will then go through a process of national quality assurance and suitable materials will be published on the NAR when it is launched later in the year.
A quick guide to the National Assessment Resource (NAR)
The NAR is planned for launch this autumn. It is a joint development between LTS, SQA and the Scottish Government.
The NAR is essentially a single online solution to support assessment approaches for CfE. Further developments of this resource will support National Qualifications and national monitoring (SSA) arrangements.
The NAR will provide examples of a wide range of assessment approaches and evidence relating to experiences and outcomes across curriculum areas, ages, stages and levels.
One of the key purposes of NAR is to support teachers in developing a shared understanding of standards and expectations for CfE and how to apply these consistently.
In its first phase the NAR will support 3 - 15 assessment approaches. Future developments will support the senior phase. Some materials will be developed by SQA and others by users.
The NAR will support CPD in assessment with opportunities for professionals to discuss assessment resources and approaches through Glow, SQA Academy and SQA Understanding Standards.
Access to the NAR will be via Glow log in and will be via SQA for independent schools and colleges.