A living curricula: Conversations about learning and teaching

Abstract

Unitec New Zealand’s ‘Living Curricula’ is both an Academic Strategy and an aspiration for a unique institutional culture. The Department of Performing and Screen Arts has developed course curriculum that crosses discipline boundaries and exploits collaborative opportunity to leverage economical solutions to ever-growing sector and system constrains. A living curriculum is defined not as the information content of a program, but rather as the programs’ learning experience (Unitec, 2010). Living curricula learning experiences emphasize the links and application of theory/knowledge and work experience/practice. Knowledge is both applied in practice and drawn from practice. Therefore the process of developing a living curricula involves ‘conversations’ about enquiry, knowledge, practice, learning and teaching approaches which focus on engagement between and among learners, teachers, practitioners, communities, scholars, and with self and texts. Embedded within a ‘living curricula’ is the concept of Ako, a Maori word which means to learn, study, instruct, teach or advise. Ako describes a teaching and learning relationship where the educator is also learning from the student and where educators’ practices are informed by the latest research and are both deliberate and reflective.