WIT 2003

Advanced ideas in passion curriculum design

If you wish to extend your use of the passion curriculum module beyond the design of single units, consider the following:

Apprenticeship sequencing
Classroom community
[more to be added as this work develops]

If you decide to use any of the ideas on this page, please contact Diana Joseph for additional support, to provide feedback, and/or to join the passion curriculum research project.

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Design of apprenticeship sequencing

In passion curricula, learners progress through levels of responsibility and challenge, based on demonstrations of increasing skill as recorded in certifications. Novices entering the system begin with an introductory project (for example, the Video Crew core students were asked to make an autobiographical video in April of 1997). In a fully staged passion curriculum, novices would work with a mentor, shadowing the mentor during his or her own project and certification work, working on somewhat structured novice productions (for example, Video Crew novices might create adaptations of fiction), attending technical lessons in the domain of the theme (for example, in camera operation), and addressing certification skills.

Upon demonstration of an appropriate set of skills (some number of certifications, or some number of certification tasks), novices become apprentices. Apprentices create projects of their own, and work under directors. Mentors do similar kinds of work, and in addition, teach and direct novices. Producers operate with full creative control, and can assign roles to junior members.

The apprenticeship structure in any particular passion curriculum operates as a formal aspect of the professional strand of community life. Most professions operate with an implicit or explicit hierarchy based on (supposed) skill and experience, and most professions support some form of on-the-job teaching and learning. Passion curriculum design capitalizes on these existing structures to provide sensible sequencing of student challenge and responsibility.
The terms in this approach are loosely based on terms from traditional guild apprenticeship (novice, apprentice, mentor, director; instead of apprentice, journeyman, master). The use of these terms came about through wondering about possible extensions of the cognitive apprenticeship model (Collins, Brown & Newman). By taking cognitive apprenticeship a bit more literally than the framers of that model intended, the apprenticeship sequencing structure allows passion curricula to sequence learner challenges and responsibilities over an extended period of time.

Apprenticeship sequencing (idealized)

Novice Stage	Students engage first with an introduction project, and then with several simple but complete works in the domain. In addition, novices may shadow their mentors as the mentors model their own work.
Apprentice Stage	Apprentices work under directors in specialized roles in projects, while they build their skills.
Mentor Stage	Mentors train novices and work on their own projects.
Director Stage	Directors operate with full creative control. They may help to determine overall directions for the community, they help to assign roles to apprentices and novices, and they direct major projects.

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Classroom community in passion curricula

In order to ensure that students have opportunities to learn social life-skills in an authentic way, the community life in a passion curriculum turns over control of some aspects of classroom social activity to students. This student control need not be absolute or comprehensive. Instead, it might pertain to only a few aspects of classroom life, and control might pass from adults to youngsters over a long period of time (that is, adults might model social behavior, scaffold student decision-making in that arena, and fade the scaffolding over time). Elements of classroom life that might be turned over to student governance include conflict resolution, helping new students get used to the classroom, communications with administration staff (for example, around fieldtrip planning), determining rules or norms of conduct, event planning, and many others.