Understanding Curriculum

The Rich Contexts of Teaching and Learning

September 15, 2009

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poemand hold it up to the lightlike a color slideor press an ear against its hive.I say drop a mouse into a poemand watch him probe his way out,or walk inside the poem's roomand feel the walls for a light switch.I want them to waterskiacross the surface of a poemwaving at the author's name on the shore.But all they want to dois tie the poem to a chair with ropeand torture a confession out of it.They begin beating it with a hoseto find out what it really means.

Billy Collins (http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/001.html)

What is basic to education is neither the system that surrounds us nor the situation of each individual’s lived experience. What is basic to education is the relationbetween the two.

-Madeleine Grumet

Two Tasks

• Discuss what Grumet’s understanding of “basics” means.

• Using your reflections of teachers, how do they fit (or not fit) Grumet’s notion of “basics.” What relationship do you see between the teachers and Grumet’s ideas?

(20 Minutes)

CurriculumEtymology

(Latin)

currere—running of the course

SocratesEducation is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.

Albert EinsteinIt is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.

WHAT IS CURRICULUM THEORY?

Concerned with questions of teaching and learning: What do schools teach? What should they teach? Who should decide? How do students learn?

Curriculum Theory 19th and 20th C

What were the perspectives?

PENNSYLVANIA SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS--1869

The due classification and grading of schools is but the application to the educational cause of the same division of labor that prevails in well-regulated business establishments, whether mechanical, commercial, or otherwise.

Ellwood P. Cubberly--1916Our schools are, in a sense, factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned into products to meet the various demands of life. . . . This demands good tools, specialized machinery, continuous measurement of production to see if it works according to specifications . . .

Franklin Bobbitt—1912Education is a shaping process as much as the manufacture of steel rails.

-FRANKLIN BOBBITT

Teachers cannot be permitted to follow caprice in method. When a method which is clearly superior to all other methods has been discovered, it alone can be employed.

George W. Bush

I am a big believer in basic education, and it starts with making sure every child learns to read. And, therefore, we need to focus on the science of reading, not on what may feel good or sound good when it comes to teaching children to read.

John Dewey (1859-1952)“Education is life itself”

Dewey believed that learning was active and that children came to school to do things and live in a community which gave them real, guided experiences which fostered their capacity to contribute to society. The child’s experience formed the basis of the curriculum

Tensions in Curriculum

• Importance of procedure and method

• Teacher as deliverer of curriculum

• Importance of measurable outcomes

• School is to prepare students to be productive citizens

• Importance of children and experience

• Teacher as shaper of curriculum

• Importance of complex learning experiences that cannot be measured

• Schools develop healthy individuals

Classrooms are Complex PlacesInfluences: individual students; environment; external demands from parents, ministries, the public, media; available resources; experience of the teacher; weather; the time of year; social interactions

HIDDEN CURRICULUM

The lessons that are learned but are not openly intended.

Summer Heights High

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdtsJlZG1Ss

Genres

Novel

• Extended work of fiction written largely in prose

• The variety of genres within novels indicate further qualities. E.g. historical novels take their setting and issues from history; magic realism interweaves realistic sequences with fantastic or dream-like elements

Movie

• a form of entertainment that enacts a story by sound and a sequence of images giving the illusion of continuous movement

• As with novels there are genres such as westerns, comedy, drama, etc.

WORKING IDEA

Genres are vague categories with no fixed boundaries, they are formed by sets of conventions, and many works cross into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions.

The Strands

Grades 1-8

• Oral communication

• Reading

• Writing

• Media literacy

Grades 9-12

• Oral communication

• Reading and Literature Studies

• Writing

• Media studies

Eagle Rock

ReadWriteThink

http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view_printer_friendly.asp?id=116