Why different understandings of curriculum?: The curriculum

and its historical rootsECS 210 Curriculum as a cultural and social

practiceSeptember 16, 2014

This class invites you to critically think about:◦ Why are there different understandings (i.e.,

definitions and approaches) of curriculum? ◦ Why some understandings of curriculum are

better known than others? ◦ Identify the values, beliefs, goals and purposes of

education that different understandings of curriculum endorse.

◦ What understanding of curriculum you seem to endorse? How these understandings are likely to shape the teacher you want to be and the teacher you can be?

Objectives:

Curriculum The word curriculum has its roots in the Latin

word currere, which means a course to be run, referring to a formal course of study that the students follow.

The idea of curriculum has always existed; however, the idea of curriculum development (the careful planning of school learning) is relatively new.

Why different understandings of curriculum? Why some definitions

become common knowledge?

The founding of the curriculum field and the idea of curriculum development

Franklin Bobbitt (1876 – ?)Considered the father of the field of curriculum studies

1918

Professor of educational administration whose speciality was making systems more efficient.

Endorser of the efficiency movement, a school of thought that sought to identify and eliminate waste in all areas of the economy and society (and education was not the exception) through the development and implementation of best practices.

Bobbitt approached curriculum as a managerial system that if well-implemented would succeed in meeting societal needs.

Who is Franklin Bobbitt?

Are Bobbit’s ideas over?

Bradford L. SmithMicrosoft Executive Vice President

“The future of the economy depends on getting people with the right skills to match the next generation of jobs.”

Debating the purpose of schoolsWorld Economic Forum, Global Risks,

Switzerland, 2011

Curriculum development as a product

Ralph Tyler (1902-1994), behavioral psychologist

1949

Ralph Tyler and The Eight-Year Study

1. What educational purposes should the school seek to attain?

2. What educational experiences can be provided that are likely to attain these purposes?

3. How can educational experiences be effectively organized?

4. How can we determine whether these purposes are being attained? (Tyler, 1949, p.1).

Tyler’s rational

1949

Provided a scientific model to curriculum development. A rational, orderly, and systematic process that is value neutral, and therefore, it can be implemented across all subjects.

Curriculum development can rise above context (i.e., social, cultural, and historical difference) and therefore, it is divorced of thorny questions about the purpose, morality and ends of education.

Concerned primarily with final (product) evaluation.

Tyler’s lasting contributions to understandings of curriculum

development

Is Tyler’s conception of curriculum development a thing of the past?

Curriculum is “a programme of activities... designed so that pupils will attain so far as possible certain educational and other schooling ends or objectives”

(Shirley Grundy, 1987, p. 11).

Definitions of curriculum

Definitions of curriculum “The planned and guided learning

experiences and intended learning outcomes, formulated through the systematic reconstruction of knowledge and experiences, under the auspices of the school, for

the learners’ continuous and willful growth in personal and social competence” (Daniel Tanner, 1980)

Schools face test overhaul(Leader-Post, February 12, 2013).

“This new approach (province-wide standardized testing) will identify individual student achievement ... (and) drill down to know exactly what individual students are doing. ”

Russ Marchuk, Saskatchewan Education Minister (2012-2013)

Policy level

Lawrence Stenhouse (1926-1982): Curriculum as a process

“A curriculum is an attempt to communicate the essential principles and features of an educational proposal in such a form that it is open to critical scrutiny and capable of effective translation into practice” (1975, p. 4).

Curriculum is what actually happens in the classroom. It is grounded in practice.

Promoter of the “research-based teaching” approach. Saw teachers as active participants actively engaged in reflective curriculum deliberation.

Stenhouse’s contributions to understandings of school curriculum

Curriculum is committed action “Curriculum is everything learned and experienced

inside and outside the school” (Ayers, Quinn, Stoval, & Scheiern, 2008, p. 309). In other words, it is the intended, the taught, the learned, the tested, the null, the hidden, and the ____________ curriculum.

“A curriculum is an ongoing engagement, a ‘critical praxis’ that blends action, research and autobiographical inquiry in determining what knowledge and experiences are the most worthwhile” (Ayers, Quinn, Stoval, & Scheiern, 2008, p. 309).

Curriculum not only is contextually shaped, but it must be responsive to the students and the context in which they live.

Curriculum as Praxis