What This Session Is About
This workbook connects two important frameworks for your development as an educator. Phil Race's chapter on Designing the Curriculum for Learning offers practical principles for how to design teaching that genuinely makes learning happen. The PSF 2023 Area of Activity 1 (A1) asks you to demonstrate that you can design and plan learning activities and/or programmes effectively.
The goal is not to summarise either text — it's to help you reflect on your own practice through both lenses, and to generate thinking that could feed into your PSF portfolio.
PSF 2023 Dimensions in focus today:
Work through each section at your own pace. Your reflections auto-save in this session and can be exported at the end.
Before engaging with Race or the PSF, ground yourself in your own experience as a designer of learning.
Race argues that effective learning rests on seven interconnected factors — his "ripples on a pond" model. These aren't sequential stages; they continuously influence each other. The question for curriculum design is: does your design activate these factors?
The Seven Factors
1. Wanting to learn · 2. Needing to learn · 3. Learning by doing · 4. Learning through feedback · 5. Making sense of things · 6. Deepening learning through explaining, coaching, teaching · 7. Deepening through assessing — making informed judgements
Go back to the successful design from Section 1. Which of Race's factors were present? Check those you can identify, then reflect below.
- ✓Wanting to learn — Did your design create genuine curiosity or motivation?
- ✓Needing to learn — Were students clear about why this mattered for them?
- ✓Learning by doing — Did students actively practise, apply, or create?
- ✓Learning through feedback — Did they receive timely feedback on their attempts?
- ✓Making sense — Was there space for students to process and understand?
- ✓Explaining to others — Did students teach, coach, or articulate their learning?
- ✓Making judgements — Did students evaluate work (their own or others')?
Race's Chapter 3 builds on the concept of constructive alignment: learning outcomes, teaching and learning activities, and assessment should connect fluidly so that students can see the thread. The question isn't just "do these align on paper?" but "can students experience the alignment?"
Race's Challenge
Design backwards from the evidence of achievement students will produce, not forwards from the content you want to deliver.
PSF A1 Connection
A1 asks you to demonstrate that you design for learning, not just for teaching. Combined with V2, this means all students have equitable access to understanding what's expected.
Choose one module or session you teach. Populate the grid below. Then ask yourself: if a student saw this grid, would they see a clear line from outcome → activity → assessment?
| Learning Outcome | Learning Activity | Assessment Method |
|---|---|---|
Race challenges us to write outcomes that genuinely describe evidence of achievement rather than content coverage. The test: could a student demonstrate this outcome? Or does it just describe what the teacher will cover?
Everything you've reflected on in this session is the kind of evidence the PSF is looking for. The PSF 2023 emphasises effectiveness and impact — every time you describe a design decision and its effect on learners, you're generating potential evidence for A1.
The PSF Language Pattern
Try framing your examples as: "I designed [activity/approach] because I know that learners [insight from K1/Race], and this enabled [outcome for students, linking to V1/V2]."
Export creates a text summary of all your reflections that you can save, share with your mentor, or use as raw material for your PSF application.