Norm Friesen

Lesson Planning and Curriculum in Canada

Zweckrational handelt, wer sein Handeln nach Zweck, Mitteln und Nebenfolgen
orientiert, und dabei sowohl die Mittel gegen die Zwecke, wie die Zwecke gegen die
Nebenfolgen rational abwgt. (Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 1922)1
Oft stellt sich der Erfolg des Lehrens erst ein, wenn der Lehrer die Gunst des Augenblicks wahrnimmt und von einem vorgegebenen Wege abweicht, wenn er den Mut zu
pdagogisch taktvollem Handeln aufbringt. (Jakob Muth, Pdagogischer Takt, 1982)2

Curriculum is a term that does not easily translate into German. There is, of
course, the German cognate das Curriculum, but the English term Curriculum
can also be translated as die Bildungsinhalte (educational content) der Lehrplan (teaching or lesson plan) and der Studienablauf (course of study). Curriculum in the North American context can be seen to encompass many or all of these
meanings: It refers to the content that is selected and arranged in school classes
and in many university courses; it refers to an individual students path or course
of study that is followed through these courses; it also designates the techniques
and sequences that are a part of a specific lesson, meaning that it also brings into
play issues of effective instruction, or Didaktik.
In this chapter, I will describe curriculum, lesson plans and instructional theory
in Canada and the USA. Over the past 50 years, the theory associated with these
terms has become increasingly specific and prescriptive (rather than more critical
or reflective). This allows this chapter to follow a roughly chronological order. At
the same time it allows me to move from general to specific, or from the macro
through meso to micro levels of planning.
Any discussion of curriculum, lesson planning and didaktik in North America
would have to recognize the foundational contribution of Ralph W. Tyler and
his Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction. In this short text, the author
outlines what have since come to be known as the Tyler Rationale which consist
of four basic questions:
1 Action is zweckrational when the end, the means, and the secondary results are all rationally taken
into account and weighed. This involves rational consideration of alternative means to an end,
of the relations of the end to the secondary consequences, and finally of the relative importance of
different possible ends (Weber, Economy and Society, p. 26)
2 Success in teaching arises only if the teacher seizes the opportunity of the moment, and departs from a
predetermined path, when s/he finds the courage for pedagogically tactful action. (Authors translation)

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1. What educational purposes should the school seek to attain? (Zwecke)

2. How can learning experiences be selected which are likely to be useful in attaining these objectives? (Mittel)
3. How can learning experiences be organized for effective instruction? (Mittel)
4. How can the effectiveness of learning experiences be evaluated? (abwgen)
(Tyler 1969; John 2006, 484)
In keeping with the behaviorist paradigm dominant in mid-century America, Tyler
emphasizes that the teacher should work to manipulate[e] the environment in such a
way as to set up stimulating situations that will evoke the kind of behavior desired
(Tyler, 1969, p. 42; emphasis added). The teacher expected to control the environment in such a way as to meet predetermined curriculum ends, seen in terms of external behavior. Putting Tylers four questions into terms appropriate to the next level
of specificity in curriculum, is not difficult: This next level middle or meso level is
captured in the lesson plan. In the process of planning a lesson, objectives are defined;
materials, resources and planned activities are mobilized for their efficient attainment
of these objectives. Finally, the extent of their actual attainment is also measured.
A lesson plan has been characterized in English-speaking contexts as being a
rehearsal for delivering effective instruction (Causton-Theoharis et al 2008,
p. 383). As another source says, the lesson plan can also be defined as a systematic design for the development, implementation and evaluation of instruction,
provid[ing] the teacher the opportunity to anticipate instructional and learning
needs before stepping [in] front of the students (Chatel, p. 3).
Designs for lesson planning are generally expressed in the form of lesson plan templates. These are documents or outlines that allow student teachers to structure
the specifics of their planning. Whether they conform to dominant designs or reflect alternative approaches, these templates are seen as being used to help scaffold
pre-service teacher planning (Causton-Theoharis et al 2008, p. 385). There are
elements that are common to many template designs. These common elements are:
1. objectives,
2. materials (resources),
3. starter (preparation/anticipatory set),
4. activities (for pupil and/or teacher), and
5. assessment(evaluation).
Typically an education student or a teacher would identify one or more objectives
already prescribed in the curriculum of their local ministry or state department
of education. (In Canada and the US, this would be on the state, provincial or
territorial level; in the UK, at the time of writing, this would be the Federal Department for Education.) All other constituents of the lesson and its planning
(i.e., materials, activities, assessments) follow from these objectives, and must be

Lesson Planning and Curriculum in Canada

justifiable on their terms. The teacher or student-teacher is generally be allowed

to exercise some creativity and judgment in coming up with appropriate materials, activities and assessments, although suggestions or examples of these, too, are
likely to be provided by the governmental education authority.
As the examples considered further below illustrate, there are other elements that
can appear in addition to the five steps or elements listed here; but the instrumental, means-ends structure evident in the abbreviated listing is clear. This structure
is defined in terms of the specification of objectives (Zwecke) at the outset, and the
deployment of plans and other resources for their attainment (Mittel), and finally,
the assessment of their attainment at the end (abwgen).
This set of elements is expanded in the framework of cognitivism, an approach to
instruction which became prominent in the 1960s and remains important today,
particularly in North America. Cognitive science, which is based on the assumption that the human mind is comparable to a computer, looks beyond the focus of
behavioral approaches on external events focus on internal learning processes, as
Gagn puts it. These are the computer-like processes that underlie learning, teaching and other mental and physical engagement. Gagn introduces these events of
instruction by saying that a
theory of instruction should attempt to relate the external events of instruction to the
outcomes of learning by showing how these events lead to appropriate support or enhancement of internal learning processes (1985, p. 246)

These internal learning processes include selective perception, retrieval and

semantic encoding. By using these terms and others like them, Gagn augments
and revises the Tyler rationale by expanding it from four to seven steps. At the
same time, he subsumes the purposes, experiences and evaluations from Tylers
list by describing these elements in terms of the learners presumed cognitive activity or state: For example, there is expectancy while being informed of the objective; retrieval, selective perception, semantic encoding, as learning experiences,
and retrieval and reinforcement in evaluation.
Table 1: Internal Processes and Their Corresponding Instructional Events (from:
Gagn, 1985, 246)
Internal Process
Reception
Expectancy
Retrieval to Working Memory
Selective Perception
Semantic Encoding

Instructional Event
1. Gaining attention
2. Informing learners of the objective
3. Stimulating recall of prior learning
4. Presenting the stimulus
5. Providing learning guidance

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Internal Process
Responding
Reinforcement
Retrieval and Reinforcement
Retrieval and Generalization

Instructional Event
6. Eliciting performance
7. Providing feedback
8. Assessing performance
9. Enhancing retention and transfer

Tylers rationale can be applied on the level of an entire course, program or institutional mission; Gagns events, however, only apply on the level of a single instructional session, with many events corresponding to procedures and techniques
requiring only moments in time (e.g. gaining attention, informing students of the
objectives, etc.). Gagn, in effect, breaks down Tylers idea of manipulating the
environment to produce desired results to the level of instructional minutiae.
This places it on the meso level of instruction and curriculum planning.
Gagns framework has its origins in military training, a field to which he devoted
a large part of his professional life (SPECTOR, 2000), which is very well funded
in comparison to educational research generally, and which works with a relatively
uniform population of subjects or learners. This, in part, has lead research and
practice in instruction or didactics in North America to focus on ways of preparing uniform instruction in order produce learning effects across the broadest
population of learners.
This leads me to the next and final stage in the planning of instruction and curriculum in Canadian contexts. This takes place neither on the macro level of instructional purposes and means to their attainment, nor on the meso level of the events
of instruction as outlined in a lesson plan. Instead, and occurs on the micro level of
specific elements within Gagns events of learning, and in isolated parts of instructional content and of didactic efforts. This level of instructional planning is very
much concerned with the effects and the conditions of learning that can be said to
cause them, or at least to increase their probability of occurring. This is a listing
of instructional or learning principles which have been shown to increase the probability of learning among subjects, generally in a manner that is thought of as independent of content and of the learning situation. A recent listing of 25 Learning
Principles to Guide Pedagogy and the Design of Learning Environments includes
some of the following effects, a number of which betray a cognitive orientation:
Contiguity Effects: Ideas that need to be associated should be presented contiguously in space and time.
Dual Code and Multimedia Effects: Materials presented in verbal, visual, and
multimedia form richer representations than a single medium.
Exam Expectations: Students benefit more from repeated testing when they
expect a final exam.

Lesson Planning and Curriculum in Canada

Coherence Effect: Materials and multimedia should explicitly link related ideas
and minimize distracting irrelevant material.
Manageable Cognitive Load: The information presented to the learner should
not overload working memory. (Winne & Nesbit, 2010, p. 656)
The teacher and student are both seen as engaging, down to the number of ideas
presented and the order that they are offered, in a kind of rational processes of
arranging materials and events in optimal order and interrelationship, and of then
processing the same through coding, mnemonic and other procedures.
One of the most influential people to tie these levels together, specifically by focusing on the meso level of the lesson plan is Madeline Hunter. Her 1982 book
titled mastery teaching is the most widely adopted approach to lesson planning
in North American teacher training. Hunter frames teaching in terms of the many
minute decisions engaged in by teachers, day-to-day. She speaks of how these
decisions can be realized or implemented in a manner that is optimal for student learning. Hunter begins by invoking the rational decision-making processes
engaged in by a medical doctor in the course of treatment:
your own teaching decisions [as a teacher also] have a powerful impact. Consequently, teaching is now defined as a constant stream of professional decisions made
before, during and after interaction with the student: decisions which, when implemented, increase the probability of learning. (Hunter 1982, p. 3)

If it is possible to identify any specific understandings or presuppositions about

teaching and learning that are entailed in accounts of curriculum, from Tyler
through Gagne to contemporary listings of lesson planning and learning principles, it would have to be the instrumental-rationalist approach identified by
Weber, above. Purposes or goals are predefined, and the question then becomes
one of planning their attainment through the most efficient means. This means
can be anything from an entire course of study to the contiguity of two successive
moments in front of the class. As Gert Biesta (2006) writes, if education is thus
about meeting needs of the learner it suggests a framework in which the only
questions that can meaningfully be asked about education are technical questions,
that is questions about the efficiency and the effectiveness of the educational process (p. 22). On these terms, curriculum and education are largely reducible to
questions of the efficiency and effectiveness of prescribed educational processes,
undertaken in the service of predetermined educational outcomes. Questions of
what subjects to teach, how to present sensitive issues or address a students singularity, or even of why one might be teaching in the first place, can neither be asked
nor answered in these terms.
The elements of the German pedagogical and curricular traditions foregrounded
here offer a rather different set of possibilities. In his study on pedagogical

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tact, Jakob Muth examines the quality of teacher engagement and attunement,
rather than simply discussing the efficient attainment of teacher purposes and
goals. Describing these qualities in a manner diametrically opposed to Hunters
stream of rational professional decisions -occurring within the parameters of
a well-developed lesson-plan-- Muth specifically emphasizes the un-plan-ability
(Unplanbarkeit) of pedagogical tact. He identifies a number of ways in which a
teachers tact is expressed generally through natural action, the binding power of
language, and the maintenance of a kind of distance to protect the child. (He
also discusses four more forms of expression specific to instruction, situational
certainty, dramaturgical ability, improvisation, and free forms of action.) Describing the relationship of these characteristics to teacher planning, Muth asserts:
Tact is not subsumed to the willful plans of the teacher. Consequently, it cannot be
realized in a planned educational course of action, but instead it is always only in the
unforeseeable situation in which the teacher engages. (1962, p. 12)

Elements like improvisation, dramaturgical ability and the maintenance of a literal and relational distance between student and teacher are not things that are
best understood in terms of a sequence of rational decisions. Instead, quoting an
earlier pedagogical theorist, Georg Kerschensteiner, Muth speaks of the realization of these elements in the context of a thousand perceptions coming from the
margins of consciousness influence the shape and course of the lesson (as quoted
in Muth, 1962 p. 83). Together with Muths account of the qualities of pedagogical tact, this description suggests a kind of teacher disposition and awareness that
is not primarily rational and calculating, but as much embodied, emotional and
quasi-conscious as it is conscious and logical.
To understand the relation between the different approaches to thinking, awareness, planning and rationality outlined here, is to again helpful look to Weber
and after him, Habermas. Habermas explicitly acknowledges the importance of
Webers Zweckrationalitt and the Nebenfolgen (secondary consequences) that
follow from it. At the same time, according to Habermas, forms of human rationality also include Wertrationalitt (the consequences of affirming certain values),
and also include hermeneutic and emancipatory interests and knowledge. In many
cases, these forms of rationality, interest, awareness and action would lead away
from the instrumental prescriptions and purposes of curriculum, conventionally
conceived. Of course, the pedagogical lifeworld, as Jakob Muth has so perceptively
analyzed, includes the intersubjective, intercorporeal phenomenon of tact, which
as he describes, presents a form of action that by its very definition exceeds rational planning, decision-making and implementation. Despite its exclusion from the
realm of means, ends, and rational planning, I believe it is possible and important to
cultivate awareness of and a disposition toward tactful action in teacher education
although this possibility is often far from teaching theory and practice.

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References
Biesta, G. (2005). Against learning. Reclaiming a language for education in an age of learning. Nordisk Pedagogik, 25, 5466.
Causton-Theoharis, J.N., Theoharis, G.T., & Trezek, B.J., (2008): Teaching Pre-Service Teachers to
Design Inclusive Instruction: A Lesson Planning Template. In: International Journal of Inclusive
Education, 12(4), 381399.
Gagn, R.M., (1985). The Conditions of Learning and Theory of Instruction. New York: CBS College Publishing.
Hunter, M. (1984). Mastery Teaching. El Segundo, CA: TIP Publishers.
John, P.D. (2006). Lesson planning and the student teacher: re-thinking the dominant model. Journal
of Curriculum Studies 38 (4), 483498.
Muth, J. (1984). Pdagogischer Takt, Monographie einer aktuellen Form erzieherischen und didaktischen HandeIns. Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer.
Spector, J.M. (2000): Gagns Influence on Military Training Research/Development. In Legacy
of Robert M. Gagn. Richey, R.C. (Ed). http://www.ibstpi.org/Products/pdf/chapter_8.pdf
(20.02.10)
Tyler, R. (1969): Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction. Chicago: University of Chicago
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Weber, M (2002/1922). Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie. Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck.
Winne, P.H. & Nesbit, J.C. (2010). The psychology of academic achievement. Annual Review of
Psychology 61, 65378.

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