Curriculum Framework

Centre learners in the process of thinking, reflection, and response to feedback to ensure transparency, reliability, and equity in reporting

Learning is an ongoing process that must be practised and developed. Research indicates that learners benefit most when assessment is regular and ongoing (Black & Wiliam, 2009; Stiggins, 2008). Providing learners with the tools to reflect on their own thinking empowers them to become competent and increasingly independent learners. Educator and peer feedback are valuable parts of this process, as is learner self-assessment (Feldman, 2024). Centering these processes allows for richer and more reliable assessment and evaluation.

The Holistic Curriculum empowers learners to be active participants in their learning. Involving learners in the evaluation process begins with trusting relationships and connections and continues to strengthen learners’ sense of belonging and agency. Compassionate educators hold each learner in the highest regard and involve learners in the decision-making process that will best serve them along their educational journeys. This ensures transparency, reliability, and equity in reporting.

Wabanaki Principles of Learning connection:

• Learning is holistic, reflexive, reflective, experiential, and relational.
• Learning involves actualizing one’s passions through identity exploration.

Enacted in Practice

Educators act as guides to understand learners’ strengths, progress, and next steps for learning. They walk alongside learners and help them to navigate and reflect on the learning process to accurately determine their level of achievement.

Learners take responsibility for their learning, working with educators to set learning goals and to determine how success can be measured and why it matters. Learners express how they are best able to demonstrate their achievement and are active participants in learning and assessment.

Educators take the lead in breaking down complex tasks into a series of manageable pieces. They provide timely guidance and feedback on learners’ work, ensuring that foundational skills and knowledge are successfully attained before moving on to more advanced learning (Chappuis & Stiggins, 2020).

Learners are active participants in their own learning and the learning of their peers. They continually monitor their own progress and are encouraged to identify trends or patterns in their learning (Chappuis & Stiggins, 2020). Learners value feedback from educators and peers and regularly revise their work.

Learners benefit from assessment that is predictable and ongoing. Educators provide timely and specific feedback that focuses on how learners can improve their understanding and skills. Through continued involvement, learners are empowered to reflect on their learning and communicate their depth of understanding and level of competence. Multiple assessment opportunities are provided, including formative assessment, summative assessment, and diagnostics, providing feedback on progress, achievement, and areas of improvement (Chappuis, Stiggins, Chappuis, & Arter, 2012). Utilizing technology can improve assessment by providing immediate feedback, analytics, choice in demonstrating learning, and as a tool to support all learners (Bates, 2015).

Educators and learners value the Global Competencies of Collaboration, Critical Thinking and Problem Solving, Self-Awareness and Self-Management, and Innovation, Creativity and Entrepreneurship as part of the feedback process. Learners reflect, revise, and extend their work based on instruction and guidance as their learning progresses.

Together, learners and educators make decisions that consider learners’ individual abilities, goals, and journeys. Learners provide a collection of evidence that makes visible the thinking involved in the development of a final product or performance.

Through feedback cycles, educators use transparent and predictable assessment practices so that learners can maintain awareness of their current level of achievement.

In practice, this:

• looks like annotated documents that depict feedback and learner responses to feedback; journaling and self-assessment; instructional practices such as Direct Instruction and Play and Inquiry-Based Learning that foster critical thinking; learning goals visible in lessons; conferencing between learners and educators.
• sounds like feedback conversations; using the vocabulary of Self-Awareness and Self-Management; co-construction of learning goals; discussions about curriculum terminology and expectations; creative and constructive discussion.
• feels like shared success, trust, safety; strong relationships; active collaboration; honest reflection; evidence-based reporting.