Cycle One: What is Curriculum? What is its Purpose? What is the relationship between student and curriculum?”

What is Curriculum? What is its Purpose? What is the relationship between student and curriculum?” At my school, we use a curriculum provided by Cambridge International Examinations. While this is our “curriculum” I like to think of it as more of a framework; the social behaviorist in Schubert’s (1996) text would call this the what. Teachers at my campus still have a great deal of freedom regarding how to enact this curricular framework. For example, I develop my own “curriculum map,” but really all I am doing is determining the scope and sequence of learning objectives within thematic units. In other words, the “aims” as Noddings would say are provided for us, but teachers determine more specific learning objectives. Yet still, the individual student(s) play a large role in what is actually learned or taken away from the lesson.

Throughout the readings and this week’s discussion surrounding curriculum, I kept thinking of Donovan’s story and how Donovan would interact at a school like mine. The truth is, he wouldn’t. Donovan would not be receiving an education of any sort at my school. I feel a great deal of emotion while reading about Donovan. While everyone involved in his education seems to have his best interest at heart, so much is still lacking in terms of growth and progress for this young man. Donovan’s mother wants practical things for him such as physical therapy and help in overcoming his self-abuse; while the principal wants variety in Donovan’s (and every other disabled child’s) day through switching classes. Teachers want Donovan to achieve the goals written into his IEP while also providing him with some minutia of the content for their academic course. So who knows what’s best for Donovan? While this question is an immensely difficult one to answer, it seems as though Mr. Adams, Donovan’s former one-on-one aide, is the only person who has truly gotten to know Donovan on a level that would allow for him to notice progress.

While Donovan’s mother indeed loves her son very much, she notices that his IEP goals may be unachievable and that time might better be spent elsewhere. However, Mr. Adams has come to learn Donovan’s language; he knows certain physical messages that allow him to communicate with Donovan on a level no one else seems to have grasped. Donovan’s story reminds me very much of a student I know from my hometown; let’s call him Rick. My mother, a long time instructional aide, has known Rick since he was a first grade student in the classroom she worked in. Fast-forward to now; Rick is a senior at the local high school and still lives down the street from my parents. For the last few years, my mother has helped Rick’s family out by picking him up from the bus stop, spending time with him in the afternoons, and driving his sisters to ballet before his parents get home from work. During this after school time, my mother has spent time working on Rick’s homework with him. I have had numerous conversations with my mother about Rick in which she complains that his current homework is at a lower level than what he was doing in FIRST GRADE when she worked with him closely in the classroom. She feels sad that his current schooling does not seem to push him academically the way he was pushed in elementary school. I’m not quite sure why this is, but I definitely see a connection between my mother and Mr. Adams—these two educators took the time to really get to know the diverse students they worked with and ended up seeing results.

While Donovan and Rick have unique needs, many other students have needs and interests spanning various other disciplines, interests, and skills. Corbett (2010) struck me a great deal when she said; “All this goes back to the debate over what constitutes “21st-century skills.” How do schools manage to teach new media without letting go of old media?” This resonates with me on many levels because as an English teacher in a traditional classroom, even I can see the use for technology to enhance student learning. Yet, my school has a strict no device policy in the classroom (one that I often break and then ask for forgiveness later). At the same time, our campus also has an impeccably stocked “Smart Lab” room with many of the same types of technology discussed in the Quest to Learn Article. Furthermore, when students attend this “specials” class on a quarterly basis, they learn about game theory, game design, robotics, slight simulation, etc. Many of these skills have direct real-world applications to the types of 21^st Century careers our students will eventually pursue.

This article gives perspective to, not only, the idea of 21^st Century skills, but also the reality that many of our young people are falling behind in the area of basic skills (especially in math) and that we should reevaluate our current practices.  Noddings mentions that “First, the standards/testing movement is driven primarily by an aim that speaks to the welfare of the nation.” (p. 429). However, if that were truly the case, would our students continually be falling behind (in comparison to other nations) as they currently are? Since this is our reality, perhaps a non-traditional schooling method like the one described at Quest is a viable option? To me, this connects very closely with something Dewey (1902) mentioned regarding genuine problems and conflicting elements, “Solution comes only by getting away from the meaning of terms that is already fixed upon and coming to see the conditions from another point of view, and hence in a fresh light.” (p. 104). It seems as though the genuine problems surrounding curriculum need to be looked at in a different way if we would like to facilitate different results.

Yet, Schubert’s (1996) article has a questioner ask the Experientialist the following question, “If students pursue whatever they want to pursue, how do all of the necessary skills and bodies of knowledge get covered?” The Experientialist goes on to answer by saying that the learning process can be more important than the content learned; he also questions whose decision is should be to determine what is necessary to cover. As an educator, I too, feel conflicted regarding whose decision that is. Schubert’s (1996) conclusion helped me to answer this question by saying that all parties involved play a role in these decisions and that, “Good answers lie in continuously asking what knowledge and experiences are most worthwhile now, and now, and now…” (p. 8). So who gets to determine what is worthwhile?

To me, this idea links very closely with both the Quest to Learn article and the article about Donovan. Considering the fact that the students in both articles have very different needs means that the “worthwhile” knowledge for each is very different. It is only when all stakeholders involved in the child’s education (parents, teachers, students, administration, etc.) all come together that this “worthwhile” knowledge can truly be determined. However, this can be incredible difficult to determine at times when all parties are not on the same page. For instance, Donovan’s mother thinks it is more worthwhile for her son to have physical therapy to help alleviate his self-harming habits; yet, the principal wants Donovan to circulate through a series of core classes learning about fruit and seeds. These two stakeholders have very different perceptions of what should be Donovan’s “worthwhile” knowledge.  Even more so, the current reality of education revolves around copious standardized tests created by outside parties who can sometimes be far-removed from current classrooms. Thus, more often than not, an outside party determines what “worthwhile” knowledge students should receive. This chapter from google books outlines potential answers to five discussion questions surrounding teachers, their role in curriculum development, and what influences curriculum development. The book centers around New Zealand specifically; however, much of what is discussed could be applied to American schools nonetheless (perhaps with the exception of public policy, of course).

I always thought I had a lot of freedom in developing the curriculum in my classroom, In fact, in the past, as an educator, I have felt a great deal of pressure when making “curricular” choices for my middle schoolers in terms of which texts to choose, which writing assignments to give, and how to assess student learning. The truth is, though, none of these items really matter if I am enacting the Cambridge curriculum my school has chosen. Almost any text could be read to master the learning objectives provided by Cambridge (and also the Common Core for that matter). So are the decisions I make really that impactful, or have the impactful decisions already been made for me? I would argue that the aims have been set for me and I have the freedom to achieve those aims by the means I see necessary for the students in my classroom. At the core, educators (most that I know, anyway) have the freedom to make choices directly related to student learning and achievement. They might not choose the standards, aims, or state assessments, but they do have the freedom to create lessons surrounding a high-interest, Young Adult Lit. book over canonical texts or a real-world math application activity with probability and the NCAA tournament.