Don’t ‘bikeshed’ in your 2023 curriculum planning

If you’re like most schools, you’re probably already in the embryonic stages of planning for 2023. How should we deliver our curriculum next year? Which tools should we use to help us deliver it? Which topics need to be freshened up? What new electives could we get off the ground?

Planning a new school year when you’re only halfway through the current one is tough. There’s not a lot of time for deep strategic thought amidst the maelstrom of classes, emails, marking, and report writing. And when we plan on the run, we often fall victim to the bicycle shed effect.

What’s the bicycle shed effect?

The bicycle shed effect (or bikeshedding) is also known as Parkinson’s law of triviality. It states that, when planning, people often give disproportionate weight to largely irrelevant or trivial issues. In the process, they ignore the more complex (but also more important) issues.

The canonical example is a committee whose job it is to approve the plans for a nuclear power plant. Let’s say that the power plant costs $300m to build. That’s an enormous sum, beyond the comprehension of most people. And the complexity of the plans is such that, again, it’s too hard for most people to quickly wrap their heads around. So the committee doesn’t spend much time discussing the finer details of the plan or how it will be implemented. It’s quickly approved.

The next item on the agenda is the construction of a bike shed so that people can ride to work and park their bikes securely. This topic really gets people going. Some weigh in on the importance of the bike shed in keeping with the company’s sustainability policy or in showing employees that they are cared for. Others argue against preferential treatment being given to bike riders – after all, there’s not even a nice undercover corporate carpark! And the Head of Finance says he rides to work every day and always leaves his bike uncovered and he’s never had any issues – so why do we need one at all?!

And if you thought the discussion about whether or not the bike shed should be built was heated, wait until it turns to the question of how much to spend on it or what it should look like. Suddenly, everyone has an opinion. People argue over whether it should be made from aluminium or wood. Others are outraged at a $10,000 price tag, believing that even $2000 is too much to spend. Marketing and HR can’t agree on whether the shed should be painted in neutral tones or the bright colours of the company’s logo. Eventually, the chairperson calls a truce. The bicycle shed issue is tabled for a final decision at next week’s meeting.

So what happened here? The most important and consequential issue – the building of the power plant – was largely ignored. But the longest and fiercest debate was reserved for completely trivial and inconsequential issues. Why? Because that’s what people could easily understand, and therefore what they could form strong opinions around.

This propensity to get stuck spending too much time on trivial issues and not enough time on the ones that matter is a great example of bikeshedding.

Bike shedding and Alan Tudge

We’ve seen bikeshedding at a national level when education enters the public discourse.

After a draft version of the new Australian Curriculum was released in late 2021, federal education minister Alan Tudge caused a controversy when he heavily criticised elements of the proposed History curriculum. In his view, the curriculum (which referenced the ‘contestability’ of the Australian ANZAC legend’) unacceptably promoted a ‘negative view’ of Australian military history and could lead students to developing a ‘hatred’ of Australia. His comments were criticised and/or dismissed publicly by academics and educators alike, but the debate rumbled on for months.

The funny thing about this controversy was that Tudge took umbrage with about three sentences within a single topic in a single year level of the proposed new History curriculum. In the scheme of the entire curriculum review, it was about as inconsequential a detail as he could have possibly picked.

Did he spend his time debating the merits of how History should be taught? Or whether the curriculum should focus more on teaching skills instead of content? Or even which topics should be covered in the first place?

All of these are much more important topics and far worthier of national debate. But they’re also hard, complex topics. So Tudge instead kicked up a storm in a teacup about something which probably accounts for two weeks of a 10-year curriculum. You’d be hard pressed to find a better example of bikeshedding.

Bike shedding in curriculum planning

You might recognise elements of bikeshedding in your school’s executive or faculty planning meetings. But in our experience, bikeshedding happens most prominently when schools and faculties start planning their curriculum delivery.

So often, curriculum planning focuses on the minor details. Should we swap out one practical experiment for another? Should we use a different online textbook to cover the content? Should we re-arrange the order in which we teach the topics slightly?

These questions aren’t entirely irrelevant, but they’re also not the most important. They’re not going to significantly move the needle on student engagement or academic achievement.

The bigger (and most important) question is how you’re going to deliver your curriculum. Is the way you approach teaching and learning most conducive to student engagement and deep learning? Do your classrooms resemble what you envisaged when you first developed a passion for teaching? And do you think the way you’re delivering your curriculum prepares students for more than just the test? Is that important?

These are all big questions. There’s no easy answer. And answering them takes time and introspection. But that doesn’t mean they should be put into the ‘too hard’ basket. Because they’re the hard questions, that’s why they should be answered first. Otherwise, we default to getting caught up in the trivial details. We solve symptoms of disengagement and low performance but never the root cause. And despite our best efforts, our best laid plans don’t move the needle as much as we hope or expect.

That’s the peril of bikeshedding. But forewarned is forearmed.

In this month’s feature article, Zanli Reyneke speaks of taking a step back and tackling the big question of how to make their curriculum delivery the right balance of academic rigour and skills-based learning. That’s a tough nut to crack, and their implementation hasn’t always been smooth sailing. But now they’re now reaping the rewards of higher engagement and better academic performance.

Zanli’s school sidestepped bikeshedding to focus on the most important question of how best to deliver the curriculum. If you can take a similar approach, we’re confident you’ll enjoy the same success.