JUDGING THE NATURAL RIGHTS VIEW, XXI

 

An advocate of natural rights continues his/her presentation[1] …

Before moving on with this blog’s treatment of the commonplaces of curriculum development – as an advocate of the natural rights perspective would treat them – this posting completes its account of the commonplace, the students.[2]  The last posting ended with a restatement about the relevancy of students’ pedagogical interests and that they lie with the preparations of those students for the competitive environment they will encounter as adults.

          The pedagogic interests of students are further met by adopting a systems approach to the development of curricular instruction.  As a representative model of the systems approach, Walter Dick and Lou Carey provide an example that could be used for such development.[3]  That model identifies the following progression of functions: 

 

·      identify the instructional problem and state the terminal objectives,

·      conduct a task analysis,

·      describe entry behaviors of students,

·      state sub-objectives in behavioral terms,

·      develop evaluation instruments,

·      determine instructional sequence,

·      select appropriate media and instructional procedures,

·      develop instructional materials, and

·      conduct formative and summative evaluations

 

While these functions are performed in roughly the order presented, the developer can skip around as necessary, especially given the information derived from conducting formative evaluations (evaluations performed during the development and implementation of the curricular instructional plan and materials).

This approach is considered by its advocates to be beneficial to students since it is a logical system.  How?  It identifies and functionally deals with the factors that allow success to take place in the instructional effort.  It places its emphasis on the resulting behaviors that curricular planners expect to see performed by students.

It also very carefully analyzes and arranges the component parts of materials so that it is presented in a viably logical sequence, taking into account where students are cognitively and emotionally situated in relation to the presented content.  In doing so, developers are maximizing their chances of being successful and students’ pedagogic interests are being reasonably addressed.

This approach is not promoting some social, idealistic visions of the future – such as radical equality or some other futuristic utopian state.  Instead, it defines students’ interests in the “here-and-now” realities.  They include the realities pertaining to a pluralistic student population and the social / political / economic realities the students will face.  It stands for “getting real” when it comes to the future of the students whom the schools serve.

And now, it’s time for a look at the role teachers play in shaping curriculum.  This posting will now provide a short introduction to that commonplace.

The Teacher

The teacher is the next curricular commonplace to be analyzed in the development of this antithesis argument.  That would be a review of the factors concerning teachers as they relate to the proposed curricular change of implementing a natural rights construct to the teaching of American government and civics at the secondary level.  Specifically, this posting, and the one to follow, will address these questions:

 

·      What claims of competency can interested parties make for the effectiveness of teachers?  And,

·      How appropriate is the knowledge base of teachers regarding the subject matter – in this case, civics?

 

Teachers play a very important role through their obligations in classrooms.  This quote captures this role:  “The teacher is the one who is most directly responsible for the academic, as well as the motivational successes and failures, accomplishments and limitations of the classroom experiences throughout the year.”[4]  Despite this role being recognized for many years, it is one of those factors deserving ongoing concern. 

But a few words to further introduce this next concern is helpful.  As one reads what follows, one might experience a bit of confusion in that it will overlap a good deal of student or subject matter concerns – the commonplaces already reviewed.  The reason for the overlap is the obvious fact that how effective or competent teachers happen to be is highly reliant on the students and content with which they are dealing.

So, as the next posting will demonstrate, the subject matter and how it is conceptualized or arranged can highly affect, according to systems theory, how effective teachers are likely to be.  The same can be said about how teachers perceive the sophistication of their students.  These factors should be kept in mind as readers consider what the next posting has to offer.  That will be a focused review of teacher effectiveness and teacher knowledge.

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[1] This presentation continues with this posting.  The reader is informed that the claims made in this posting do not necessarily reflect the beliefs or knowledge of this blogger.  Instead, the posting is a representation of what an advocate of the natural rights view might present.  This is done to present a dialectic position of that construct.  This series of postings begins with “Judging Natural Rights View, I,” August 2, 2022.

[2] Joseph Schwab presents his conception of the commonplaces of curriculum development – they are subject matter, students, teachers, and milieu.  See William H. Schubert, Curriculum:  Perspective, Paradigm, and Possibility (New York, NY:  MacMillan Publishing Company, 1986).

[3] See Dan Le, “Instructional Design Models, Theories & Methodology:  The Dick and Carey Systems Approach Model,” Learning Technologies (n.d.), accessed October 9, 2022, https://k3hamilton.com/LTech/dick.html AND Hee-Sun Lee and Soo-Young Lee, “Dick and Carey Model,” University of Michigan Publication (n.d.), accessed October 9, 2022, http://websites.umich.edu/~ed626/Dick_Carey/dc.html.  One can trace such models to the pioneering work of Ralph Tyler.  See Ralph W. Tyler, Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1949).

[4] Pete Reilly, “Teacher Gatekeepers,” The Teacher’s Path (April 16, 2007), accessed October 9, 2022, https://preilly.wordpress.com/2007/04/16/teacher-gatekeepers/.