Exploration of Factors Document

The factors that influence the Curriculum Mapping Process will be unique for each educational activity that a curriculum is developed for. Context components are explored to help educators understand the factors that influence and restrict curriculum structure. It is important to consider a breadth of factors, and as a result, it is difficult to identify discrete points to be documented that would be valid for all educational activities in all situations. What may be helpful is to provide some guided questions around specific areas of focus to explore, discover, and narrow down the influencing factors. The following questions have been adapted from a framework recommended by Joseph (2011).

Joseph (2011) suggests applying three questions to a variety of curricular foci. The three questions are:

1. What are the existing beliefs and norms in classrooms and institutions?
2. What are your (the educators) beliefs?
3. How can views beliefs be reflected in practice?

The seven areas of focus that these questions will be applied to are:

With each Area of Focus addressed by each question, the nature around the factors that both influence and restrict curriculum become more evident. From here it is important that the educators working with the curriculum assess their findings for gaps, missing information, or discipline related areas of focus that have not been addressed. Suggestions made in this resource are not comprehensive and other questions or areas of focus that should be addressed maybe identified by the Curriculum Team.  This information is provided to represent a starting point for Curriculum Teams, and educators implementing a curriculum to begin exploring their factors of influence.  It is worth noting that this is one of many possible frameworks for influence exploration. Other similarly broad frameworks exist as do frameworks specific to careers (Ghaith et al), discipline, and institution.  The Curriculum Team should discuss and choose a framework that works best for their educational activity.

As context questions are answered, the Development Teams may find that in addition to identifying factors that provide influence on the curriculum, some of these areas also provide an imposition directly on the curriculum.

Factors that provide an influence are those that contribute to the environment or the decision-making process but do not direct or structure the decision-making process. These factors refer to the things that influence the curriculum team’s decision, but do not remove the accountability for the decision from the Curriculum Team.  For example, accessibility may be an influencing factor on the curriculum. With this influence, the Curriculum Team may make specific choices that are intended to contribute to accessibility for learners participating in the educational activity.  There is not, however, an imposed learning outcome at the program, course, or lesson level that demonstrates the achievement of accessibility. 

Requirements from these three areas can be varied. Looking at our examples, the departmental requirements are imposing a specific set of courses on the content of a curriculum.  It is an easy task for the Curriculum Team to leave enough room to integrate this into the curriculum. The example of a Qualitative/Analytical (Q/A) course is more challenging as there will need to be some exploration of what constitutes a Q/A course, proposal, and approval of Q/A courses, and then determination of how to integrate a selection like this into the curriculum content. Finally, the government requirement of 75% self reported skill demonstration requires more coordination beyond the role of the Curriculum Committee.  It is clear that these required factors need to be addressed with a variety of approaches. The most common approaches are:

1. The institution addresses the Imposed Factor through formal policy or practice. This moves the requirement from one of external imposition to one of institutional imposition.  For example, if the provincial government states that 75% of graduates must self-report being able to demonstrate a particular set of skills, an educational institution may establish a policy detailing that all students graduating from the institution must demonstrate a series of skills. In this case, an external imposed factor is met through an Institutional imposed factor.
   
   
2. The Curriculum Development Team structures the content of the educational activity to require demonstrated achievement of the imposed factor. As an example, if the College of Nurses and Midwives require that all graduates from a Nursing Practitioner program demonstrate a level of competency in spoken and written English consistent with the successful completion of six credits of university-level English, then the Curriculum Team may choose to formally include six specific credits of ENGL courses into the Nursing Practitioner program.
   
   
3. The Curriculum Development team structures the content of the educational activity to allow for the achievement of the imposed factor, should the learner choose to do so. Using the above example, if the College of Nurses and Midwives require that all graduates from a Nursing Practitioner program demonstrate a level of competency in spoken and written English consistent with the successful completion of six credits of university-level English, then the Curriculum Team may choose to leave six credits of course work open as electives.  This would allow their learners to achieve this requirement within the scope of the program, and allow the learners the option of taking other courses and graduating without the ENGL courses.  This may allow for more flexibility to the learner if they are planning to:
   
   a. move to an area not covered by the provincial College of Nurses and Midwives,
   b. move into a graduate program immediately, or
   c. seek nursing employment in an area outside that overseen by the provincial College of Nursing and Midwives.
   
   
4. The Curriculum Team excludes the imposed factor from the structured content of the educational activity. In this instance, the curriculum team will purposely leave no space in the curriculum content. This could be due to the program not having the space to include the requirement; it could be that the requirement is seen as detrimental or obsolete, and it could be a political choice to exclude an unpopular requirement.

It is important that the Curriculum Team identify and discuss these imposed factors, and determine the best way to address them.  This may involve engaging with the department or institution to address the broader requirements.

With the factors of influence around the educational activity’s curriculum explored and identified, it needs to be documented. This is not the formal Curriculum Content Matrix, or the formal Context Document, rather this is a document that details the Curriculum Team’s journey up to this point. This document records the paths explored, the discussions held and the results agreed to that yielded the influence factors, and the required factors identified above.  As described so far, Curriculum and Curriculum Development is incredibly complex.  The team will consider many topics over many months, and it can be challenging to keep all these discussions, topics, and agreed outcomes in memory.  Documenting and sharing this material with Curriculum Team members will guide the process moving forward, and can also reground the Curriculum Team when previously explored discussions are revisited.  Rather than re-exploring and possibly drawing different conclusions, the Curriculum Team can review this document and be reminded of the points and agreements from their previous discussions. This practice will focus the Team’s direction, and save significant time when questions are inevitably revisited over the course of the Curriculum Mapping Process.  This document is also indispensable for guiding the completion of the Content Matrix Map and the accompanying Context Document.

For Curriculum Maps to be accurate, they need to be flexible. This is why this Exploration of Factors Document is so important. It allows for the documentation of extenuating factors that will shape the way the following Curriculum Content Matrix will appear.