Speaker
Abstract section 2: Contribution/research questions
This presentation introduces Living Curriculum Architecture (LCA), a complex systems model rooted in Deweyan experience-centered pedagogy, as an analytical tool that operates across scales, dissolving the need for that divide. The central research question is: What does Living Curriculum Architecture make visible about the relationship between curriculum structure and classroom interaction that conventional frameworks obscure?
Abstract section 4: Outcomes/results
Applying LCA surfaces dimensions of teaching and learning that conventional frameworks do not. At the macro level, thirty years of university English curriculum development shows competing directions, unresolved tensions around values, and implicit assumptions that accumulate invisibly without a framework capable of naming them. At the micro level, LCA illuminates — in video data from a year of one-on-one teaching — the choices, awareness, and trust, or their absence, that animate or undermine authentic human experience in education. Frameworks that are unable to operate across the scales at which education is lived are largely responsible for the theory-practice divide.
Abstract section 1: Relevance
Every language teacher knows the theory-practice divide, not from the literature but from experience. It persists because it is built into the frameworks we use, frameworks that address either curriculum design or classroom interaction, but not both. Efforts such as Exploratory Practice (Allwright & Hanks, 2009) have reframed teachers as researchers, but stopped short of providing a framework that operates across scales. Living Curriculum Architecture, rooted in Dewey's conception of experience as the foundation of learning, addresses this gap (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008; MacIntyre, Gregersen & Mercer, 2019).
Abstract section 5: References
Allwright, D., & Hanks, J. (2009). The developing language learner: An introduction to exploratory practice. Palgrave Macmillan.
Bateson, G. (1979). Mind and nature: A necessary unity. Dutton.
Davis, B., & Sumara, D. (2006). Complexity and education: Inquiries into learning, teaching, and research. Lawrence Erlbaum.
Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. Macmillan.
Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. Kappa Delta Pi.
Gallwey, W. T. (2000). The inner game of work. Random House.
Larsen-Freeman, D., & Cameron, L. (2008). Complex systems and applied linguistics. Oxford University Press.
MacIntyre, P. D., Gregersen, T., & Mercer, S. (2019). Setting an agenda for positive psychology in SLA: Theory, practice and research. The Modern Language Journal, 103(1), 262–274.
Stevick, E. W. (1998). Working with teaching methods: What's at stake. Heinle & Heinle.
Abstract section 3: Content/method
The presentation introduces the LCA diagram and its core components — including Coherent Direction, Dignity, and the Awareness/Choice/Trust triad — as analytical tools operating at two scales. At the macro level, LCA is applied to thirty years of university English curriculum development. At the micro level, it is applied to video data from a year-long one-on-one teaching context with a secondary school student. Sub-components are introduced to signal the architecture's deeper analytical potential.
| Title | Living Curriculum Architecture for Learning as Life |
|---|---|
| Teaching Context | General |