Engaging curriculum for the middle years

Penny Bishop and John Downes

Abstract

This article explores the recent addition of Years 7–10 as a distinct learning pathway within The New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007a) in relation to the middle years’ historical struggle for recognition. It suggests that this addition presents educationalists with an opportunity to address anew the declining engagement of young adolescents by re-envisioning an engaging curriculum for the middle years. A brief theoretical framework is offered for understanding the importance of fit between learner and schooling. Based on this framework, three essential characteristics of such a curriculum are proposed: relevance, negotiation, and integration.

Introduction

New Zealand’s strong emphasis on quality education has earned the country a global reputation for innovation and effectiveness in schooling. This reputation is largely well deserved. New Zealand schools rank consistently high when compared to other countries. Out of 30 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, for example, New Zealand students typically perform within the top four in mathematics, science, and reading (Ministry of Education, 2008).

At the same time, like many other countries, New Zealand struggles to promote these strong academic outcomes for all of its students. Educationalists grapple with the country’s “long tail” (Education and Science Committee, 2008, p. 5), or the disproportionately wide spread of achievement within a school between top and bottom students, combined with a comparatively large number of low achievers. The academic achievement of New Zealand’s Māori population, in particular, continues to lag behind that of New Zealand European students: 20 percent of Māori students leave school before their 16th birthday, more than three times the rate for non-Māori learners (Education and Science Committee, 2008, p. 20).

Both schooling success and a continued effort for further improvement are reflected in careful attention to educational policy. Many of the youngest learners benefit from the 20 Hours Free Early Childhood Education policy; at the other end of the spectrum, senior secondary students are the target of the new policy initiative, Schools Plus, aimed at raising the compulsory schooling age from 16 to 18. While these two policies are representative of New Zealand policy makers’ long history of attention to education, one schooling group has remained largely invisible in the policy context: those in the middle.

The middle years of schooling in New Zealand have been referred to as “the forgotten years” (Education Review Office, 2003) and as a “black box” (Dinham & Rowe, 2007). New Zealand’s own Educational Review Office (2001) has noted that government policies most often focus on the early years and senior secondary school, and argued that the middle years are an equally important stage. Recently, however, the middle years in New Zealand gained a foothold when the revised New Zealand curriculum for the first time characterised Years 7–10 as one of five learning pathways. With this recognition comes an opportunity to reconsider what constitutes appropriate and engaging curriculum for young adolescents. Doing so is a vital step in ensuring that attention to the middle schooling years translates into educational benefits for young adolescents.

We begin this article by examining Years 7–10 student-outcome data, which calls for renewed attention to the curriculum for this age group. We next provide a theoretical framework for considering the middle-years learner in relation to schooling. Based on this framework, we propose three essential characteristics of an engaging middle-years curriculum: relevance, negotiation, and integration.

Student outcomes in the middle years

Student achievement

The middle years are no exception to other years of schooling with regard to New Zealand’s “long tail”. Although disparities between Māori and Pākehā young adolescents declined between 2002 and 2006, Māori achievement in literacy and numeracy in English-medium schools remains below average (Ministry of Education, 2007c).

Despite this disparity, data from Assessment Tools for Teaching and Learning (asTTle) during 2000 to 2004 and the National Education Monitoring Project (NEMP) revealed that “Student achievement increases in all subject areas from primary to middle schooling [and] some of the largest gains in reading, writing and mathematics achievement occur during the middle school years” (Durling, 2007, p. 4). According to asTTle, Years 8, 9, and 10 demonstrated noticeably steeper increases in writing achievement than the earlier and later years of schooling (Satherley, 2006, p. 13). Internationally, Year 9 students performed significantly above the mean scores of 46 participating countries in science and mathematics, holding steady for the past eight years (Satherley, 2006).

Student engagement

Although academic-achievement data illuminate several positive outcomes in Years 7–10, student-engagement data tell a different story for some students. Student engagement has many definitions. It is often measured by truancy, stand-down, and exclusion data. Others measure it by time-on-task behaviour, attentiveness, and work completion. Still others consider engagement as being enthusiastic, raising questions, contributing to group activities, and helping peers. And engagement is sometimes related to the concept of “flow” (Csíkszentmihályi, 1997), in which one is immersed and feels focus, involvement, and success in the activity.

These behaviours and beliefs often illustrate the degree to which students want to be in school, a desire intricately linked to student success. Overall, “students with positive attitudes tend to achieve better, so it is a concern that some become less positive about learning as they get older” (Ministry of Education, 2007b, p. 22). Student attitudinal and engagement data from seven separate sources reveal that some learners’ views of school, teachers, and subject matter become increasingly negative across the middle years. These data fall into two general categories: student attitudes and student actions.

Student attitudes toward school

Many students report declining attitudes towards school as they progress through Years 7–10. The New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER) surveyed student engagement in 2008. In a letter to schools describing the outcomes, NZCER said the survey revealed a decline in student engagement from Year 7 to Year 10, noting the drop-off between Years 8 and 9, regardless of whether students have changed schools. Other research has illustrated a similar decline; from age 10 to age 12 “students’ engagement in school begins to decrease, with lower proportions of students enjoying learning and higher proportions of students getting into trouble” (Durling, 2007, p. 51). During these years some students who enjoyed and performed well at primary school become “switched off” and do not find school rewarding or productive (Education Review Office, 2001). Also, fewer students report that teachers help them to do their best, treat them fairly, praise them, and listen to them in the middle years (Wylie & Hipkins, 2006). And some students’ perspectives on school work become equally negative as these learners fail to find a connection between their learning and their future (Durling, 2007).

Student actions in schooling

Further evidence of this declining engagement is the fact that absenteeism, suspension, and exclusion from school are most common during Years 7 through 10 (Durling, 2007), a time when behavioural and social problems can also escalate (Dinham & Rowe, 2007). And although truancy rates increase by school year overall, the middle years show an increase of truancy rates across all types of school structures. As Durling (2007) reported:

The onset of increased truancy rates begins in Year 9, in the middle schooling years … For the school types in which a school transition does not occur at this time (composite, restricted composite and Year 7 to 15 secondary schools) a rapid increase in truancy rates is also observed, suggesting other factors contribute to increased truancy rates. (p. 24)

Suspension rates also suggest that some students require other learning experiences at this age to maintain engagement. The suspension rate increases rapidly from Year 7 to its maximum in Year 10 (Durling, 2007, p. 25). Overall, between Years 9 and 10 a potentially destructive combination emerges: the greatest decrease in the proportion of students who report liking school a lot, trying hard to do their best, and getting along well with their teachers (Adolescent Health Research Group, 2003) couples in some cases with a decline in positive attitudes towards maths, reading, and writing (Cox & Kennedy, 2008, p. 3). By age 14 students are more likely to be “bored … restless, tired of trying, and getting into trouble but less likely to enjoy learning” (Durling, 2007, p. 51).

Māori learners demonstrate the lowest level of engagement of all ethnicities, with the decrease being more apparent in Years 9 and 10 than in Years 7 and 8:

The latest attendance, engagement and achievement data for Māori students shows that many students, particularly Māori boys in Years 9 and 10, feel disengaged from the education system, are vulnerable to not reaching their potential and leave school early … Māori students were three times more likely to be stood-down, suspended, excluded or expelled than their Pākehā peers and four times more likely to be frequent truants. (Ministry of Education, 2007c, pp. 94–96)

That some students demonstrate a decrease in engagement from Year 7 to Year 10 raises questions about the nature of students’ schooling experience and the degree to which the needs of the age group are being met within the curriculum. These data are compelling evidence that Years 7–10 can be an important point of intervention for later school success and school completion. The increasingly negative attitude of some middle-years students suggests a mismatch between their engagement needs and their schooling. But why is there a mismatch? What are the needs of this age group and what kinds of curricula are responsive to those needs?

Towards an engaging middle-years curriculum

Most contemporary Western industrialised societies view early adolescence as a time of great change (Stevenson, 2002). Youngsters aged 10 to 15 are thought to be working towards identity development, trying on myriad selves along the way. Caught between childhood and adulthood, they struggle for independence yet still require the support and reassurance of caring adults. They are faced with choices, many of them risky, that will shape their lives for years to come. Middle-years students also experience profound personal changes—in patterns of thinking, in physical growth, and in morals and friends (Knowles & Brown, 2000). The failure of many schools to respond effectively to students undergoing these changes is reflected in the poor motivation, low performance, and negative behaviour of some young adolescents and can be explained by a lack of fit between the student and the school environment (Wigfield & Eccles, 1994).

Theoretical framework

Stage–environment fit

Stage-environment fit theory emphasises attending to the fit between young adolescents’ needs and their school environment. The theory asserts that the fit between an individual and the individual’s social environment influences that person’s mental health, motivation, and behaviour. If the school environment does not fit with the developmental needs of the adolescent, a middle-schooler’s motivation, behaviour, and performance can be negatively affected (Eccles et al., 1993). Typical mismatches in stage–environment fit include an increase in teacher control and stern disciplinary consequences, and a decrease in positive relationships and opportunities for decision making (Eccles et al., 1993). Successful student engagement—and achievement—is predicated on a strong stage–environment fit; as Maharey (2006) noted, “Our focus today on the middle years of schooling ought to be on making our system better fit the student, rather than the student fit the system.”

Basics of personal efficacy

If such a fit is important, what then are the needs of the young adolescent? Stevenson (2002) offers one perspective; his five basics of personal efficacy address both academic and affective student outcomes. According to Stevenson, positive self-efficacy of middle-school students is built upon the following characteristics:

•&;&;competence awareness

•&;&;affiliation

•&;&;ethical sense of self

•&;&;responsibility.

Although human development is often discussed in terms of cognitive, socioemotional, and physical domains, a construct of efficacy integrates these other aspects of development within the five elements, thus revealing a more holistic understanding of the young adolescent (Bergstrom, 2001). The New Zealand Curriculum’s recent designation of Years 7–10 as one of five learning pathways (Ministry of Education, 2007a, p. 41) presents educationalists with a rich opportunity, and, some would argue, an ethical obligation, to consider how an engaging curriculum for young adolescents might foster personal efficacy and increase stage–environment fit. Although the achievement objectives and key competencies are thoughtfully outlined within the curriculum framework, stakeholders would benefit from conversation about the overall characteristics of an engaging middle-years curriculum.

Guidelines for a middle-years curriculum

Although there has been a great deal of rhetoric about middle-years curriculum and the needs of young adolescents, we find few examples of truly thoughtful guidelines within the educational literature. Curriculum committees often flounder as they try to reconcile government policies, community pressures, tradition, school-level capacities, and individual philosophies. It is no wonder that the outcomes from these efforts often fall short, reflecting instead bureaucratic inertia.

Beane has suggested one set of guidelines, steering us towards “qualities that should be brought to life in the middle school curriculum” (1993, p. 17). He argued that these are “‘desirable’ regardless of the practical obstacles that may interfere with their realization” (p. 17). Beane asserted that the middle-years curriculum should “focus on general education; help students explore self and social meanings; respect students’ dignity; be grounded in democracy; honour diversity; be of great personal and social significance; be lifelike and lively; and enhance knowledge and skills for all young people” (1993, p. 17).

Beane’s guidelines provide useful tests of whether one’s curriculum serves the adolescents in our midst well. Does it help them to explore self and social meaning? Does it respect their dignity? Is it of great personal and social significance? These are questions we rarely ask in the course of curriculum design, and they present new challenges and opportunities for educationalists and students alike. They challenge terms commonly used in curriculum conversations. Rethinking three terms in particular—relevance, negotiation, and integration—helps us imagine an engaging curriculum and how we might bring it to life with young adolescents.

Relevance: Self, social meaning, and significance

As educationalists we each have our favourite examples of units that claim to be relevant to the interests of young adolescents but nonetheless leave us unimpressed. Students may study much-loved animals, for instance, as their teacher strives to tap into young adolescents’ affection and compassion toward animals, while hoping that the students will learn about biology and ecosystems. Culminating poster projects highlight images of wolf pups or baby seals. The most daring of these portray animal abuse or exploitation. The most thoughtful integrate key scientific concepts; too often, however, those key concepts are misunderstood or lost in the project development. Such activities may be relevant to young adolescent interests, but they fall short for lack of personal and social significance. A curriculum worthy of engaging the powerful mind of the emerging adolescent is not merely relevant but also significant.

Some assert that engaging young adolescents in learning requires their tackling challenging problems based in their interests and concerns (Beane, 1997). Seeking the real concerns of adolescents draws students and teachers into critical human inquiry, where simple answers are elusive, collaboration and humility are essential, and the facts and strategies of fields and disciplines are intellectual lifelines (Beane, 1993).

Such concerns are the life blood of human inquiry itself: to seek meaning and respond to the meanings we derive. Justice, freedom, and peace are meanings we have created, as are aesthetics, art, and story. Work, enterprise, and family are also meanings we hold dear, as are joy and play. The list is long and we turn to it when we ponder what life is about. It captures meanings we share with young adolescents more than we often acknowledge.

When asked what questions they have about themselves and the world, young adolescents ask questions that resonate with us all:

•&;&;How long will I live?

•&;&;Why do I fight with members of my family?

•&;&;Will I be like my parents?

•&;&;What will happen to the Earth in the future?

•&;&;Why do people hate each other?

•&;&;Will cures be found for cancer and AIDS?

•&;&;Why are there so many poor people?

(adapted from Beane 1997, pp. 51–52)

It is no wonder that these questions resonate with young people. As Beane argues, “personal and social concerns are quite literally the ‘stuff’ of life” (1997, p. 15). Each question has roots in the key competencies found in The New Zealand Curriculum. The Curriculum outlines a vision for young people that includes many aspects of socioemotional development, calling for schools to help students become positive in their own identity, motivated and reliable, and resilient (Ministry of Education, 2007a, p. 8). In fact, three of the five key competencies identified in The New Zealand Curriculum relate directly to socioemotional development: managing self, relating to others, and participating and contributing.

Supporting these key competencies, tapping into students’ concerns, and transforming these issues into effective learning experiences become the challenges of curriculum design and implementation. A curriculum of topics and activities designed by committees of adults and implemented without students’ voice is unlikely to accomplish this complex task. Accordingly, such a curriculum is unlikely to be engaging. Brazee (1995) reminds us that too often our curriculum fails to engage young adolescents because it “asks students to give answers to questions they do not ask” (p. 187). To grasp young adolescents’ interests and concerns, teachers need new strategies well suited to this task.

Negotiation: Inviting students into the dialogue

Negotiating curriculum helps teachers to understand students’ needs, interests, and concerns and to integrate that understanding into the experiences of young adolescents in their classrooms (Boomer, Lester, Onore, & Cook, 1992). Negotiation helps infuse classrooms with meaningful work. When students witness the animal being brutalised, the homeless person juxtaposed against their own middle-class affluence, or the local stream polluted by urban run-off, something clicks within them that leads them to want to understand and act. In these moments, students have been invited into democratic life. Such moments are rich with hope and possibility, calling upon the highest aspirations and intellectual traditions of the human experience, and transforming student attitudes and opportunities for action.

Negotiating aspects of the curriculum with students has long been held up as an essential component of effective middle-years reform in New Zealand and elsewhere (for example, National Middle School Association, 2003; Stewart & Nolan, 1992). Particular attention has been paid to “negotiating significant aspects of course content and process with the students; and designing integrated curriculum around themes that enable interdisciplinary approaches” (Smyth, McInerney, & Hattam, 2003, p. 190). However, many educators have acknowledged that inviting students to voice their needs and concerns in relation to learning is the exception rather than the norm (Cook-Sather, 2002). Hamilton (2006) observed that many schools view listening to the student voice as yet another thing to fit into an already crowded curriculum, resulting in tokenistic attempts to value the student perspective. Concerned that the student voice is rarely heard in relation to student learning because it is often overshadowed by attempts to change student behaviours, she asserts, “The key reason, however, for listening to student voice, is surely to improve student learning” (Hamilton, 2006, p. 135).

Eisner (1992) has argued that effective teachers do not follow the intended curriculum as script, and Smyth et al. (2003) agree:

The teacher-as-improviser knows the pre-formulated script well, but also actively seeks to bring students into the script-making … The teacher-as-improviser goes beyond mere transmission of scripted knowledge and values, to enacting a process in which the lives of students are brought into the script, are examined, and questioned. Instead of presenting a pre-scripted version of reality, a petrified version, the teacher-as-improviser provides opportunities for students to understand the significance of their lived experience. Such a pedagogy is not so much learning the voice of another, but rather of students finding their own voice. The act of teaching and learning becomes a co-authoring of a script through a dialogic process. (p. 190)

This co-authoring of script is where the teacher becomes essential. Negotiation does not render teachers obsolete; rather, students require caring adults with skilful strategies to help them arrive at learning of deep significance.

For many educators, inviting students into the educational dialogue in this way requires a significant and often frightening shift in power. It requires changing our “pedagogy in ways more resonant with, and respectful of, young lives” (Smyth et al., 2003). In order for curriculum to be attentive to adolescent experiences, concerns, and aspirations, we first must change our thinking about the nature of the teacher–student relationship so that sharing power over curriculum is viewed not only as possible but also as desirable (Onore, 1992). This means moving beyond the traditionally accepted student councils to more meaningful involvement in decision making about the very foundation of learning: the curriculum (Cook, 1992).

Although a number of curriculum negotiation strategies exist, most combine students’ own questions about themselves and about the world with teachers’ understandings of questions the world poses to students (Brodhagen, 1995). Some have noted the struggle inherent in carrying out such strategies. Smyth et al. (2003) quote a teacher participant in their research who explained their own challenge as follows:

A lot of kids who speak out in negotiating the curriculum are the vocal ones … the ones who call the shots … and many just go along with it … Are you engaging with the vocal and more socially adept group? The only way around the dominant group is to break groups up so all kids have a chance to be successful. (p. 188)

Although the negotiation processes require thoughtful planning, there is a simplicity and elegance to the questions that drive the work. In this way, curriculum is negotiated.

Integration: Responding to students’ interests and concerns

Inviting students into a negotiation that generates rich, relevant, and meaningful questions creates new challenges for how we organise knowledge. Young adolescents gravitate towards studies that transcend simple subject-area boundaries, requiring instead an interdisciplinary approach to learning, or an integrative curriculum (Beane, 1997). Curriculum integration is hardly new; it surfaced as a logical extension to the progressive era of Dewey and others (Hopkins, Alexander, Browne, & Buchanan, 1937). More recently, teachers have embraced it as a practical design for a relevant and negotiated curriculum. Many view it as a better match to our rapidly evolving understanding of how the brain functions and how young adolescents learn (Powell & Van Zandt Allen, 2001).

An integrative curriculum (for example, Beane, 1997; Brodhagen, 1995) seizes on the nonlinear development of knowledge typical of real-world, problem solving and participatory action. Information is learnt as knowledge-in-action as opposed to the knowledge-out-of-context found in most subject-centred designs (Applebee, 1996). Content is connected more than in interdisciplinary curriculum, wherein subject areas are often forced together around general themes (Powell & Van Zandt Allen, 2001, p. 119). Brazee (1995) argues that this type of curriculum integration is particularly well suited to meeting the developmental needs of young adolescents.

Implementing and sustaining curriculum integration is challenging. It places significant intellectual and time demands on teachers. Teachers often confront students who have come to expect a more passive role in a traditional subject-centred model, and a lack of support or outright opposition from administrators, colleagues, parents, and community can sap the motivation and energy of teachers trying to integrate (O’Steene, Cuper, Spires, Beal, & Pope, 2002). If energetic support is in place, however, curriculum integration can flourish. Schools may adopt curriculum integration throughout, sustaining a coherent vision of curriculum and instruction. This requires honing systems, expectations, and the curriculum itself to dramatically reduce the developmental burden too often placed on individual teachers or teaching teams (Brazee & Capelluti, 1995; Powell & Skoog, 2000). And a synergy exists between relevance, negotiation, and integration. Focusing on significant self and social issues is a lever for moving beyond a separate-subject approach to curriculum, as well as the bulwark for moving beyond activities that are little more than fun and exciting, towards an engaging and challenging curriculum.

Conclusion

An engaging middle-years curriculum—one focused on the real issues and concerns of young adolescents—exhibits important elements of a democratic learning environment (Apple & Beane, 1995). Practices such as place-based education and service learning are fruitful matches for an integrative, relevant, and negotiated curriculum because they exemplify the focus on real-world, community-based challenges and offer ample opportunity for collaboration and student-directed learning. Such practices have also developed a research base that suggests benefits to student engagement (Andrus, 1996; Schine, 1997).

Pursuing an engaging curriculum presents both challenges and opportunities. Internationally, middle-years reform has become a torch-bearer for student-centred, personalised learning and related assessment schemes. Renewed focus on the curriculum draws attention away from contentious and only marginally productive conversations about schooling structures. Instead, energy can be invested in developing a curriculum that honours young adolescents by responding to their needs and most inspiring interests and talents.

We are aware that the ideas presented here are not new. In fact, many of the works we cite are well established in the field of middle-years education. New Zealand’s timely opportunity, however, is new. Educationalists have the chance to revisit these principles and reinvent them in their own image. That The New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007a, p. 41) identifies the middle years as a unique learning pathway sharpens the focus on meeting the learning needs of each student and offers unprecedented design flexibility. With skilful leadership, Years 7–10 have the potential to leave relative invisibility behind and be brought to the forefront, exemplifying an effective and engaging curriculum.

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The authors

Penny Bishop is Associate Professor of Education at the University of Vermont, USA. During 2008 she has been a Sir Ian Axford Public Policy Fellow in Wellington, studying the intersection between teacher credentialing and the education of young adolescents in New Zealand. A former middle-years teacher, she is the co-author of several middle-schooling books, including Reaching and Teaching Middle School Learners: Asking Students to Show Us What Works, and The Power of Two: Partner Teams in Action. Her research has been published in numerous academic journals, including Middle Grades Research Journal, Middle School Journal, and Research in Middle Level Education.

Email: penny.bishop@uvm.edu

John Downes is a doctoral research fellow at the University of Vermont, USA, with a background in both education and international affairs. He has enjoyed numerous trips to New Zealand to visit schools and consult with educators. After more than a decade working in middle schools with teachers and students to integrate technology and students’ concerns into classroom curricula, he is currently project co-ordinator and primary researcher on two grants related to curriculum reform and engagement of young adolescents. His research interests include the role of student voice in teacher change, the interaction between curriculum and student efficacy, and how technology can promote middle-grades reform.

Email: john.downes@uvm.edu