Curriculum — Mia Hood

Curriculum Design Approach

I design curriculum for all sorts of learners: elementary, middle, and high school students, as well as adult students in teacher ed programs. I design curriculum with careful attention to the principles of backward design, taking extra care to ensure that curriculum moves learners toward clearly defined, worthy learning goals rather than toward success on individual assessments.

But more than anything, I believe there’s no “I” in curriculum design (never mind the two literal is!). Curriculum design isn’t a process of sitting by oneself, typing smart words into a computer. Curriculum must emerge from deep and ongoing collaboration with the communities it’s meant to serve. I work with teams to engage in cycles of liberatory design (following the principles set forth by the National Equity Project), researching what’s happening in a learning space, posing questions and articulating goals, prototyping and trying out curricular solutions, and co-researching their effects and outcomes.

Curriculum Design Philosophy

First, I ground my work in what I call the first lesson of curriculum design: curriculum is not what happens on the page but what happens in the learning space, whether physical or digital. This grounding has helped me design with a focus on the real human beings who actually do the teaching and learning. It also helps me remember that no one creates a curriculum alone and that it is never created once and for all. Curriculum is co-created in communities, and it evolves through ongoing communication and collaboration. In other words, it’s a process first; a product second. The stuff of the curriculum—the plans, the slide decks, the packets, the videos, the texts—are tools that facilitate learning, rather than an end unto themselves.
Second, I prioritize designing curriculum that supports and provisions for evidence-informed teaching practices. As I design, I work to draw from the fullest possible body of rigorous cross-disciplinary, peer-reviewed research on teaching and learning. I also believe that community members must themselves hold a research orientation and mindset. Curricula should be based on promising evidence-informed practices and rich content from the beginning, but it’s up to us to collect and evaluate evidence of effectiveness and work together to evolve curricula based on that evaluation.
Finally, I prioritize designing curricula that support culturally sustaining practices. I believe in teaching from young people’s strengths and in enriching and extending, rather than replacing, the knowledge and capacities they bring with them to the classroom. I believe that all children have a right to see themselves joyfully represented and included in curricular materials, as well as a right to see and come to understand the world around them, in its fullness, through their engagement in a curriculum. A focus on diversity must always be complemented by a critical focus on the structures that have foregrounded particular histories, narratives, identities, and experiences in schools and society.