This blog is going to, with this posting, take a bit of a
turn. I am going to place more emphasis
on the notion of change. I have already
addressed this general concern quite a bit.
My aim is to share what I know about instituting change at a school site
or any organizational setting. My reason
for this shift is that I hope my promotion of federalist theory might motivate
some out there to seek a change in their local schools toward this approach in
civics education. Another reason is that
what I know about change overlaps, a great deal, with federalist thought. So by writing about change theory, I am
addressing two issues at once. I have
delved into change theory and have posted a significant amount of
material. I even offered a model of what
a change agent might encounter in terms of the individuals he or she encounters
in a change effort. This posting will begin
to address the target of a relevant change project; that is, this posting will
look at curriculum, per se. After all, my overall aim is to have federalist
theory be the construct that guides curriculum developers and curriculum
workers – from teachers to national curriculum professionals – in selecting the
content for government and civics courses of study at the secondary level.
In my general comments concerning curriculum, let me identify
my main source of general curricular information. There are a number of books that provide
introductions to the topic of curriculum and curricular theory. I will be primarily using Curriculum:
Foundations, Principles, and Issues by Allan C. Ornstein and Francis
P. Hunkins. This introduction is in its
seventh edition. As for my treatment of
curriculum, I will not be about making you a curriculum expert. My more modest endeavor is to share with you
those aspects of curriculum that help a parent or some other interested citizen
in instituting a change in the curricular offerings at a local school. I might also include the average teacher as a
potential audience for this “instruction.”
Teacher preparation programs do not expend a lot of effort in teaching their
students about curricular theory. The
idea is that the average teacher is charged with implementing the existing curriculum,
not with questioning or meddling in what the curriculum is, either in its
entirety or in part. As I have pointed
out in this blog, for the average teacher, the curriculum consists of taking
the provided textbook and “teaching it” from cover to cover. That teacher does not question or even think
to question why the particular textbook was chosen or if the subject matter
could be taught in a different way or for different aims and goals.
In this blog, I have already addressed other aspects of
curriculum. I have, for example,
distinguished curriculum from instructional plans. The former is more the strategic aspect of
planning and instructional plans the more logistical application of the
curriculum. I have critiqued what I view
characterizes most curricular efforts in our nation’s schools, particularly
curricula that are in place concerning civics education. I find it appalling how little effort is made
to make sure curricular decisions by the state or the school district are made
to ensure that regular teachers are either understanding of, loyal to, or
abiding by those decisions. Most
teachers are out there with little direction about what options are available
or are engaged in little discussion as to curricular issues. Please, don’t interpret this as my belief
that we have a teacher corps that can be described as a bunch of mavericks. As I just pointed out, most teachers simply
follow the textbook that is chosen by a school’s administration from a limited
number of approved titles. Teachers
might have a say in which text will actually be chosen, but the options
available pretty much mirror each other in content and organizational
structure.
I also addressed the different curricular philosophies – I
called them educational philosophies – that exist. They are perennialism, essentialism,
progressivism, and reconstructionalism.
This description is a good lead into what I want to next address,
curricular approaches. Most treatments
of this material begin with the curricular approaches that are out there and
later describe the different prominent philosophies. I feel it is best to reverse that order. Philosophies get at motivation and, for me,
that is always helpful to know before getting into the more specific aspects of
what people are doing. Therefore, initially
getting a grasp of curricular philosophies provides useful foundational
information. If it is helpful, let me
point out the postings that looked at the different philosophical traditions. The titles and dates of these postings are A Socratic Interlude (2/19/16), No Nonsense Education (2/23/16), Live and Learn (2/26/16), The Ideological Leftists (3/1/16), and The Heroic Self (3/4/16). If you did not catch these postings, they are
available; just click the archives feature of this blog. Those postings are arranged so as to describe
the range of philosophies from the most conservative to the most liberal. With that view of motivational orientations,
one can look more confidently at the different approaches that curriculum
developers utilize.
I will point out that the field of curriculum, as Ornstein
and Hunkins describe it, is a quarrelsome field. This level of disagreement ranges from
definitional issues to developmental issues to issues of implementation. That’s right; the professionals in this field
can’t even agree on what it is they are doing or what their responsibilities
are. But be calm; this debate is in
academia. For the rest of us, the field
is about what is taught in our schools in terms of subject matter and its
structural elements.
I noticed on TV that there is a commercial college, one that
specializes in the field of management and employs an experiential instruction
strategy. This choice reflects a
curricular issue and, in turn, a curricular or educational philosophy. So if you are not satisfied with merely putting
a degree on the wall, but want to bust the walls down, that’s the place for you
– so I’m told.
So, my next efforts will be to convey the different
approaches to curriculum. Ornstein and
Hunkins inform me that there are two basic types of approaches, the
technical/scientific and the nontechnical/nonscientific types. Under the technical/scientific there is the
behavioral approach, the managerial approach, and the systems approach. The academic approach and the
reconceptionalist approach comprise the nontechnical/nonscientific type.
If most schools are immune to the issues all these options
represent and if most teachers just follow a textbook, why take the time to
deal with these issues? Because, one, being
introduced to this material will provide context for what is going on in the
school with which you are concerned; two, being knowledgeable of the material
can be a source of ideas for what is possible or desirable in terms of
curricular choices; and three, being aware of the material provides you with a
language by which to discuss and, if need be, argue the related issues that
curricular change entails.
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