Students are starving for learning that meet their needs--that inspire curiosity, belonging, play, choice, relevant problem solving, and expression.
The lack of learner sensitive curriculum causes student boredom and burnout. This is a curriculum design problem that textbooks, worksheets, most classroom lectures that align with tests ignore.
This failure to implement our vision about young people’s capacities and reflects institutional history and our current top-down, shallowly academic, cognitive model that focuses schooling on orderly management at the expense of learner needs.
Because the curriculum is not learner- sensitive, most students must be motivated to swim against the tide of their own nature to pass their courses; thus, schools experience high drop-out rates and low student and teacher morale.
Educational publishing is standards & market focused. Development occurs in boardrooms and cubicles and moves to printing presses, warehouses, and UPS. Designers work outside of classrooms in cubicles rather than inside of classrooms, in-residence with students and teachers to design to meet felt and expressed needs.
