Class 9: March 10, 2008

Ornstein

The medical perspective Francis brought to Ornstein was revealing about medical school and was overall good food for thought. Last week, Francis told about the artificial bodies that will be used for medical education, citing them as simulacra. This week, he posed some very key questions about how to teach the "soft" skills of medicine: sympathy, empathy and response to sorrow.

Angela also mentioned last week that patients are now more reluctant to have medical students involved in their diagnosis and treatment, which consequently has led the medical profession to adopt the artificial patient as an education solution. Now, I commented tonight that sympathy, empathy and response to sorrow can't be taught, but come about by direct experience. Actually, as Angela called them tonight, "those unassessable skills", might be able to be taught through narratives, as Francis pointed out. In a large degree, however, I think those skills are learned through experiences as we mature, but the experiences we have that develop them need not be traumatic. The simple win/lose outcome of a hockey game can teach about sorrow, and enduring the frustration of a math problem with a friend can invoke sympathy. It is significant to note here that what is common to these situations is real people. Those soft skills are learned with other human beings, not with robots. How can upcoming doctors learn the soft skills if they are not interacting with human patients?

The design models discussed in the article have, of course, educational philosophies behind them. It seems that it was no coincidence that Denis had us look at Goodyear's work prior to class and then have us engage in a curriculum framework activity. Ornstein's article was all about framework.

The construct of a curriculum framework is abstract and leads to the idea of universality, something we talked about more when Brad presented the Chambers article. My play on universality is this: can there be a universal curriculum model sufficiently abstract to absorb all possible instances of specifically tailored curricula? In the computer science world, it is possible. Such an abstraction is called a class, in particular, an abstract class. These terms come from the world of object-oriented programming, which is a way to program computers so that data and procedure code are grouped together into "objects", which are nothing but instantiated classes which have been defined to do specific things. An example of such objects are textboxes and labels that are available for PowerPoint (or Visual Basic, if you are a programmer). Both can perform specific tasks and store basic data. One, however, is not able to receive input, while the other can. These specifically designed tools are built from a common abstract class, perhaps called DATA. To create the abstract class DATA, the designer would include a data area that would store the text input in a textbox or displayed via a label. And in the abstract class, that item could just be called TEXT. But now, what could be done with TEXT? It could be copied, cut, pasted, printed. These actions on the text could be, in the abstract class, defined by an item called ACTION, and multiple actions could be defined in a specifically defined class based on the abstract class, say a class called TEXTBOX. The textbox class would inherit all the properties of the abstract class, but redefine them to fit its specific purpose. Basically, what is written in Ornstein can be mapped to each level identified in Goodyear's framework, which is the same type of construction as an object-oriented abstract class. For example, Ornstein's Society as Source might be the Philosophy in Goodyear's framework. Broad Fields Design could be the High Level Pedagogy, and the Pedagogic Strategy could be a Thematic Unit. You can fill in for the Pedagogic Tactics.

So, where does postmodernism and the likes of the authors we've read thus far fit into a framework design? I suggest that Baudrillard's point-of-view would be influential in determining the philosophical dimension of a curriculum design. "What are the outcomes desired by those who engage the curriculum?" might be the guiding philosphical question, which is consistent with Tyler's first question, "What are the purposes of the school?" From here, the other layers of the design can be addressed, but interestingly, the design process probably wouldn't be linear. We all know what it is like to plan a unit or lesson. We go back and forth, from goal to activity and back, hashing and rehashing our ideas until we are satisfied that the students will get the best we have to offer them. We need to look at designs from the top down, but too from the bottom up.

Regarding a postmodern curriculum, it needs to be flexible to accomodate postmodern phenomena. Maybe a better term to describe such a curriculum is fluid. Assessment rules are currently being rewritten and will need to continue to be to realize fully postmodern curricula. The concept of PLAR (prior learning assessment and recognition) speaks to the idea of flexibility in assessment. My thoughts on reform in this direction include flexible deadlines for course completion, and my position on this has been strengthened by my experience teaching in a Hutterite community. The Hutterian culture sometimes requires that students miss classes and miss deadline dates for assignments. At the high school level at least, is there anything wrong with allowing a credit to be picked up on a student's own time, so long as the coursework is completed satisfactorily? Philosophically, such an idea is learner-centered, and should work. In fact, many high school courses in Manitoba are offered by distance delivery and WebCT, but the period of course completion from the date of registration is one year. That timeline seems reasonable, but why not make it negotiable? After all, postmodernism is about removing barriers, not maintaining or erecting them.