Curriculum
Overview
The curriculum is personalised, taking into account the individual interests, aptitudes and needs of our young people and embedding therapeutic approaches for learning and wellbeing.
The curriculum framework intentionally links with an aligned autonomy approach aimed to sustainably enhance Reeve’s (2002) social nutrients and cultural conditions that enhance self-determination, thus engagement, whilst being mindful of the biological factors of individual learners. This curriculum was developed to increase five key components that theoretically underpin the approach drawn from Positive Psychology and Self Determination Theory (SDT) (Deci and Ryan, 2000):
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Autonomy
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Competence
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Relatedness
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Meaning
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Mastery.
Self-determination Theory (Ryan & Deci, 2017)
The curriculum framework provides structural prompts as opposed to prescribed content means that it provides an opportunity for teachers and learners to autonomously plot their volitional action and their individual and collective agentic actions that the curriculum structure and chosen qualifications asks of them, seeking to increase their self-determination (Shogren et al., 2015; Chang, Adams, & Little, 2017). Having to design and negotiate this together supports stakeholder autonomy and relatedness, whilst forming project group identity and ownership of the agentic action (though project group collaboration is common). The collaboration leads to relatedness between learners, peers and teachers investing trust into the relationships enhanced by shared responsibility in decisions and actions (Brockett & Hiemstra, 2012).
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Adolescence is known to be a key period for development and the curriculum provides the opportunity to integrate the system within their sense of self, critiquing its role as opposed to rejecting it. Such responsibility is supported by the well-being component of the curriculum in that it enhances learners’ ability to respond appropriately, through understanding communication, self-awareness and self-regulation and their respective techniques (Chene, 1983). Purposeful increase in autonomy in target setting and sessions learners wish to attend impact on engagement and outcomes.