Steps for Small and Large Schools
Steps for Small and Large Schools
Small school: one team, five steps
- Study learners, life outside school, and specialist reports.
- Formulate the philosophy and psychology of learning.
- Select objectives and a general organizing framework.
- Plan learning experiences, in subject and grade groups.
- Review and revise the plan, then plan evaluation.
Large school: committees, seven steps
- Special committees gather the studies; drafting committees draft philosophy and psychology.
- The whole staff revises the drafts, then committees formulate and finalize objectives and framework.
- Planning groups design experiences; a review committee coordinates them.
The rationale is the same for every school, but who does the work depends on size. A small school can act as a single team; a large school has to divide the work across committees. Both follow the same logic in a different shape.
The small school: one team, five steps
In a school with few teachers, the staff can work as one team through five steps:
- Study the ground. The teachers work as a team to conduct studies of learners and of life outside the school, and to examine the reports of subject specialists.
- Set the screens. Having studied the ground, the team formulates the school’s philosophy of education and defines its psychology of learning.
- Select objectives and framework. The team uses these results to select objectives, and deliberates together on the general organizing framework for the curriculum.
- Plan learning experiences. Teachers who teach a subject, the same subject at different grade levels, or related subjects, work together to plan the experiences.
- Review and evaluate. The same team acts as a review committee, reviewing and revising the detailed plan of experiences, and the same procedure is followed to plan an evaluation program.
As one team, through five steps
The team studies learners, life, and specialists; formulates philosophy and psychology; selects objectives and a framework; plans experiences in subject and grade groups; then reviews and plans evaluation.
The large school: committees, seven steps
A large school cannot act as one team, so it distributes the same work across committees in seven steps:
- Special committees handle the studies of learners, contemporary-life issues, and subject-specialist reports.
- Drafting committees prepare initial drafts of the philosophy of education and the psychology of learning.
- The committee of the whole, the full school staff, studies, discusses, and revises those drafts.
- Committees formulate the objectives and the organizing framework as a first draft.
- The whole staff discusses and finalizes the draft of objectives and framework.
- Planning groups of teachers design the learning experiences, grouped by a subject area, the same subject across grade levels, or related subjects working together.
- A special review committee reviews and coordinates the detailed instructional plan.
The structure is more elaborate, but every step maps onto the small-school version. The difference is that a large staff splits the studying, drafting, formulating, and reviewing among groups, then brings the whole staff together at the key decision points.
The same work is split across committees, with whole-staff checkpoints
Special committees study; drafting committees draft philosophy and psychology; the whole staff revises and finalizes; planning groups design experiences; a review committee coordinates. The rationale is identical, only the labor is divided.
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