CHANGE AGENTS IN THE MAKING

In terms of teacher preparation, many of our finest universities and colleges have programs dedicated to the task. Recently, at least here in Florida, what were previously known as community colleges have included teacher preparation as part of their curriculum. My comments in this posting have to do with teacher preparation, but I will limit what I have to say to the traditional format, the four year college/university degree program or the graduate program, both leading to teacher certification. I am assuming that most young teachers today still get their necessary course work through one of these two options: a four year bachelor's degree program or a graduate program leading to a master's degree. It has been the case that both of these options lead to jobs basically demanding the same professional expectations. Master's degree teachers do receive higher pay, but what the system assigns them to do is no different from what is expected from a teacher with a bachelor's degree. I think that, especially at a time when most people see our school systems deficient in many ways, that we are bypassing an opportunity to productively differentiate the expectations between these two categories of teachers. We could have master's degree teachers take on special duties and roles to fill a needed function in our schools.

I believe that as part of its preparation programs, graduate instruction should include course work in the area of curriculum design and curriculum change. That is, these students should be taught how to become change agents in the schools where they eventually are assigned. This preparation would be useful to a school's administration as it attempts to institute changes. Even the most effective school should be about adapting to inevitable changes in the social landscape, not to mention changes in what are considered best practices in the educational field. As is the case for most schools, given the deficiencies that exist in the general conditions of education, having trained personnel in change theory and practices can ease any efforts to reform what goes on in those schools in terms of instruction and in the other roles those schools are expected to fill. We should modify the aim of teacher preparation programs at the graduate level to enhance the role of master's degree teachers in the planning and implementation of curricular plans. Remember that the term curriculum encompasses much of what goes on in schools. So curricular changes can be seen as central in improving educational efforts.

Curricular issues not only pervade all aspects of school operations, but also transcend the school setting and reflect pedagogic decisions at the district, state, and federal levels. In addition, teacher preparation instructors, those who complete doctoral degree programs, need to be conversant in general curricular concepts and curriculum design. This is so they can help prepare teachers to take on roles in curriculum decision-making. In turn, if successful, those teachers, as a result of instruction on curriculum and curricular issues, will be more fully engaged in the curricular deliberations of their schools and districts This content will include elements such as curricular concepts and theories and provide training in those skills associated with curricular studies and curriculum design. The history of most teacher preparation programs has been too centered on subject field defined instruction, such as in English education or in science education, and has not pursued instruction in the more general content field of curriculum studies.

My vision of instituting such a component in the graduate programs consists of a series of courses. Perhaps, given the other demands on graduate students, if a graduate student were required to take two courses in the broader area of curriculum studies, it would not only make students aware that the field exists, but also go a long way in providing the academic foundation for a masters' degree teacher to be well on the way to becoming an effective change agent in his or her school or district. Let me offer a list of courses from which a graduate student could pick two or more courses to satisfy the proposed requirement:

• Curriculum theory
• Teachers and curriculum development
• Curriculum Implementation: Teacher as change agent
• Teacher as curriculum evaluator
• Curriculum integration with instruction
• Politics of curriculum policy at the school site, the school district, the state, and the nation

Of this list of six courses, I would imagine that most higher education departments have a course addressing curriculum theory, but I would suspect, as indicated above, that it would be geared toward addressing curriculum from the perspective of specific subject fields and not from the perspective of a more general view of curriculum as a generic field of study.

To give you a more substantive sense of what would be expected of graduate students as they take these courses, let me share with you what I would designate as the terminal objectives for one of the six courses identified above. In terms of the course, Teacher and curriculum development, the following aims could be sought:

1. The student would be able to define appropriate and potential role(s) that master's degree teachers can assume in the curricular deliberations of an assigned school site or district. He or she can demonstrate this ability by expressing those roles in discussions, conversations, and written or other work products.
2. The student would be able to conduct a needs-assessment of a school's curricular offerings given the demographic, professional resource, and community factors facing that school.
3. The student will be conversant in key professional curricular terminology evidenced by appropriate use of those terms in course related work including verbal and written products.
4. The student will develop a curricular strategy for a given school setting that accounts for overall philosophy and rationale, goals and objectives, highlighted instructional approaches, media/material selection strategy, and evaluation strategy.
5. The student will be cognizant and account for both potential implementation problems and a utilized change strategy which is congruent with sought after curricular decisions judged viable by course determined criteria.
6. The student will demonstrate comprehension of the basic tenets of “action research” as that generic protocol can be applied to curricular design and implementation.
7. The student will be cognizant of general national trends, such as multiculturalism, and problem areas, such as sexism, lack of diversity, class-ism, in the field of curricular design, and apply such concerns to class discussion, deliberations, and verbal and written work products.

These objectives can be pursued through a series of units making up the course. They can be:

Week One – What is curriculum design? Its working concepts

Week Two – Schools and school districts as organizations with distinguishing cultural elements

Week Three – Curriculum design as an exercise in power

Week Four – General curriculum design as a change strategy

Week Five – Basic principles of curriculum design

Week Six – Planning a curriculum: A multi-dimensional process

Week Seven – Roles in designing curriculum, highlighting teachers

Week Eight – Curricular philosophies, approaches, and aims

Week Nine – Needs assessment at a school site and/or school district

Week Ten – Identifying and defining a set of curricular goals

Week Eleven – Implementation issues

Week Twelve – Instructional goals and objectives

Week Thirteen – Instruction strategies

Week Fourteen – Evaluation

Week Fifteen – School site research protocol

Week Sixteen – Review of research findings, lasting lessons

If you get the notion that this course would serve as an introduction to the rest of the proposed courses, I would agree if you also include the Curriculum theory course. The remaining courses would delve into several of the topics composing a number of items identified in the weekly units of study at a more in-depth level.

If the above sounds like a course syllabus, there is good reason. A lot of what is included above comes directly from a course proposal I submitted and received approval for at Florida State University. That course is now part of FSU's course offerings. Hopefully, the course is a vehicle by which future teachers, armed with master's degrees, can become active and effective contributors in their schools and/or districts when it comes time to consider their curricula and how to change them. Perhaps they might even become effective change agents and help usher in those reforms that will make the schools to which they are assigned better places for their students to learn and grow.

FRAMEWORK

As I write these words, it's Father's Day. While my son is a soccer fan and watched the World Cup, I watched the final round of the US Open Golf Championship, even though it was relatively boring. Martin Kaymer took a fairly safe lead and held on to it all afternoon. He is our new national champion. As I was watching, I remembered my own personal rule of thumb: if a player has a lead of more shots than the number of holes remaining, it's over. Does this rule hold up in every occasion? No, but often enough – as it did this afternoon – and so I felt fairly sure that my rule would hold true as I watched – out of loyalty – till the bitter end.

This rule is a heuristic. We hold heuristically derived beliefs as a way to handle complex realities around us. They are useful and even necessary when we are called upon to make quick decisions and we don't have the time to figure out how every factor affects that decision. They are usually formed from experience and, given the quality of those experiences, they tend to be reliably effective. When it comes to politics, heuristically derived principles go a long way in organizing how we think about politics.

Most people don't give politics a lot of thought, much less a lot of analysis and reflection. When presented with a political stimulus, it is our heuristically formed beliefs, more times than not, that determine how we will react to that stimulus. In terms of politics, it's not a matter of time restraints, but a lack of interest that engages our heuristic thinking. Most Americans find politics and governance bewildering and lacking in any entertaining qualities. Of course, there is a minority of folks who finds politics as a source of a lot of entertainment. I hope civics teachers fall into that category. But for most, politics is one of those periphery subjects that people organize in their minds according to mental shortcuts; that is, heuristic thinking. What do these shortcuts look like and how do they become consciously engaged?

In Paul Goren's new book, On Voter Competence, three heuristically derived general principles are identified: limited government, traditional morality, and defense/military. Martha Kropf would add a fourth: race/identity.¹ Goren applies these principles to the mental operations that citizens perform in choosing a president. But the basic mental process can be applied to any politically motivated thinking and I think that the specific principles identified by Goren and Kropf pertain to many of our policy issues involving the federal government. Let me cite how Goren describes these principles: “policy principles lie in that sweet spot of mass beliefs systems; neither too abstract, such as liberal-conservative worldviews, nor too concrete, such as particular issues, to elude all but the most-diligent citizens.”² This level of sophistication does not allow for serious reflection over involved political matters, such as what the government should do about the civil war in Syria, but it does give a basis for interpreting political messaging. The danger is it can expose the citizen to vulnerabilities of being swayed by certain language choices used by politicians and other political operators. Given this state of affairs, educators who are responsible to impart those beliefs, knowledge, and skills necessary for good citizenship should make the student aware of how citizens think or, stated more directly, how they will probably think about public policies in the future.

Chances are that those students will take up those thought processes as they leave school and go about leading their adult lives. After all, for most people, having a job, raising a family, and the other demands of adulthood are varied and taxing, leaving little inclination to contemplate political topics and little energy for the kind of effort many political and governmental issues entail. While the ideal is – an ideal a civics course should promote – that every citizen should dedicate meaningful time in meeting civic responsibilities, the reality is that such time and effort will not be forthcoming. One of the aims a civics course should have is to identify those principles that prevail among the populous and function as frameworks in which political messages are organized. By so doing, in effect, the educator warns the student that in the upcoming years, he or she will be subjected to accounts of what is happening politically that will exploit these heuristics and try to persuade him/her to particular policy choices. To engage the heuristics of the voter, these operatives will hit on one or more of those principles and contrive narratives that present the facts of relevant situations in ways that are persuasive of whatever policy choices operatives want to advance. So, in the Syrian situation, the offending practices of one of the belligerents – let's say, the Syrian government – offend our traditional moral sensitivities. The heuristic takes over, short circuits any perceived need to analyze further, and the citizen is more apt to agree with a particular message that reflects the targeted principle.

Another principle related to Syria and, now, Iraq is our defense/military principle. Apparently, according to the messaging of this last week, the recent events in Iraq pose a direct threat to our security. For example: “U.S. lawmakers said the Obama administration and other nations must move quickly to contain the resurgence of extremist violence in Iraq and prevent that country's government from falling, saying the situation is sowing the seeds for the next 9-11-type terrorist attack.”³ Of course, this messaging is being promoted by politicians who are advocating a more active military role for the US in preventing the overthrow of the Iraqi government. The purpose of an educator who analyzes such messaging is not to dissuade a student of a policy choice, but to make that student aware of how messaging can color the facts and make certain choices more acceptable if not preferred.

If students leave school with at least a guard against such politicized messaging – geared not at rational reflection and discussion but toward triggering unconscious reactive responses – then schools will be providing a useful service. For students who gain such a critical perspective, it will take more than timely slogans or truncated messaging aimed at their heuristic thinking before they accept advocated pleas. Perhaps more of such reluctance would have saved us from what most consider ghastly mistakes of the past such as our involvement in Vietnam and the second Iraq War.

1Kropf, M. (2013-14). On voter competence by Paul Goren. Political Science Quarterly, Winter-Spring, Book Review section, pp. 777-778.

2Ibid., p. 778.

3Nissenbaum, K. (2014). U. S. lawmakers urge rapid containment of extremist violence in Iraq. The Wall Street Journal, June 15, see http://online.wsj.com/articles/u-s-lawmakers-urge-rapid-containment-of-extremist-violence-in-iraq-1402849650 .