ED 502 Seminar in Curriculum Development and Design back to ED502
syllabus
Spring, 2003
Cultures of Curriculum:
“Neither the broad attacks on schooling (from social reformers or conservatives) nor the stultifying emphasis on outcomes and assessment allow educators or the public to have vigorous discourse about moral and social visions for education as a catalyst for the transformation of individuals or for social reforms; limited expectations and cynicism have displaced hope and idealism.” (Joseph, et al. p. 2)
Elliot Eisner:
Three curricula that all schools teach.
Explicit – obviously stated
Implicit – not official, often referred to as “hidden.”
Null – excluded, neglected, or not included
Larry Cuban:
Four kinds of curricula.
Official – found in curriculum guides, conforms with state-mandated assessment.
Taught – what individual teachers focus on and choose to emphasize.
Learned – what students learn, whether intended or not.
Tested – represents only part of what is taught or learned.
William Pinar:
Curriculum as text.
Multitude of discourses – curriculum workers need to study the “languages of the field.”
“Yes, the curriculum field is about what happens in schools, but in being about schools it employs and is comprised by the language which both reflects and determines what ‘being about school’ means.” (Pinar et al. p.7)
Each discourse creates a particular “reality” of phenomena. Each has a language, patterns of thought, norms about what is appropriate and valuable.
Historical
Political
Racial
Gender
Poststructuralist/deconstructionist/postmodern
Autobiographical/biographical
Aesthetic
Theological
Institutional
Joseph Schwab’s Commonplaces:
Subject matter – curriculum materials, disciplines, underlying systems of thought.
Learners – developmental abilities, unique qualities, aspirations and anxieties that may affect learning, probable future economic status and function.
Milieus – school & classroom – conditions, cultural climate of whole polity and social classes; values and attitudes of community and the culture surrounding the school.
Teachers – what do they know, how flexible and ready or likely to learn new materials and ways of teaching; possible biases, political stances, personalities, moods.
Curriculum making – specialist has the “big picture” and should guide the process.
This “science of curriculum planning” is supposed to help us to explore assumptions we make in each realm.
--Reveal metaphors we use/undergird belief systems.
Landon Beyer & Michael Apple:
Complex Questions.
Epistemological – what should count as knowledge? As knowing? Should knowledge be considered a process or separate divisions of cognitive, affective and psychomotor areas?
Political – Who shall control the selection and distribution of knowledge? Through what institutions?
Economic – How is the control of knowledge linked to the existing and unequal distribution of power, goods, and services in society?
Ideological – What knowledge is of most worth? Whose knowledge is it?
Technical – How shall curricular knowledge be made accessible to students?
Aesthetic – How do we link the curriculum knowledge to give personal meaning to students? How do we practice curriculum design and teaching in artful ways?
Ethical – How shall we treat others responsibly and justly within the realm of education? What ideas of moral action and community ground our stance toward students and teachers?
Historical – What traditions help us to understand curriculum and to answer the above questions?
Traditional way to organize discussion of curriculum and educational philosophy.
George Kneller:
Perrenialism. Belief in unchanging human nature and the need to teach knowledge of eternal truths.
Progressivism. Modifying education in the light of new knowledge and social conditions, a focus on interests of students, and learning in a democratic environment.
Essentialism. Focus on subject matter. Not necessarily eternal truths, but proponents believe there is a body of knowledge that learners must obtain.
Reconstructionism. School can and should lead society. For example, teaching about serious social and economic problems and to work toward developing a new social order of political and economic democracy.
Existentialism. Worldview emphasizes the choices individuals make, and individual responsibility; respect for students’ freedom yet urging them to recognize their freedom – to become actors in the drama of learners (not spectators).
Another common set of orientations:
Humanistic/Consummatory. Self-actualization. Strongly and deliberately value-saturated in order to support self-integration and self-actualization. Curriculum provides personally satisfying consummatory experiences and emotional encounters. Education fosters autonomy and personal liberation.
Social Reconstructionist. Emphasis on the role of education and curriculum content within a larger social context, stressing social needs. Social reform and responsibility for the future of society are primary. Clearly based on social values and political positions, the school responds to its role as a bridge between what is and what might be; school is the process through which society changes itself.
Curriculum as Technology. Curriculum is about the how, not about the what. Curriculum finds effiucient means to a set of predefined, nonproblematic ends. Concerned with the communication of knowledge rather than its content.
Academic rationalism. Enables young peole to acquire the accumulated tools for participation in Western cultural traditions, and with providing access to the greatest ideas and objects humans have created. Curriculum emphasizes traditional disciplines. Curriculum aims to exemplify intellectual activity at its best.
More contemporary cultures of curriculum:
Training for Work – to gain basic skills, habits, and attitudes necessary to function in the workplace, and to adapt to changing work needs.
Connecting to the Canon – to acquire core cultural knowledge, traditions, and values from the dominant culture’s exemplary moral, intellectual, spiritual, and artistic resources as guidelines for living.
Developing Self and Spirit – to learn according to self-directed interests in order to nurture individual potential, creativity, and knowledge of the emotional and spiritual self.
Constructing Understanding – to develop fluid, active, autonomous thinkers who know that they themselves can construct knowledge through their study of the environment and collaborative learning with others.
Deliberating Democracy – to learn and to actually experience the deliberative skills, knowledge, beliefs, and values necessary for participating in and sustaining a democratic society.
Confronting the Dominant Order – to examine and challenge oppressive social, political, and economic structures that limit self and others and to develop beliefs and skills that support activism for the reconstruction of society.
References:
Joseph, Pamela Bolotin, et al. (2000). Cultures of Curriculum. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Pinar, William, et al. (1995). Understanding Curriculum. NY: Peter Lang.