Feb 24. Picking up the pieces after the break...

Hello, everyone. We are almost back. We only missed one class...both midterm break and Louis Riel, but it is quite amazing how the momentum that we had built up tends to dry up. I notice that most have not gotten back to entering reflections on the blogs re private schools and McNeil, though both of those topics stimulated serious discussion. (Brad, you were having trouble with your UM account. Is that cleared up yet?)

This Monday, we have three presentations. That should take us 30 minutes each (counting discussion) and some time for me to refocus.

The major issue will be putting together a final paper.

For those who are still mulling around ideas, I did present you via email and on nicenet a possibility to explore "curriculum in the 21st century." What I wrote then was the following:

I have just been told that this fall I am potentially assigned to teach a graduate course titled "Curriculum in the 21st century." It struck me that that might be an excellent topic for several of you, especially if you are still looking for a topic and have not yet settled in.

What is a 21st century curriculum? Does it have explicit characteristics already developed as we come to the end of the first decade of the century? Is the 21st century merely an extension of the 20th century curriculum? Does the concept "21st century curriculum" really mean a technology based curriculum? Or, on the other hand, since we are already in the 21st century, is not the 21st century curriculum nothing more than the curriculum we are currently teaching?

It would be fascinating for me to collect some data for this course from the real experts: YOU. You both are teaching and will teach a 21st century curriculum. Perhaps the term is not a useful one. Or perhaps it does suggest certain parameters, ideas and directions.

Anyone interested in traveling this road? growing into the concept? putting the basic elements onto the assembly line to see the final product?

Of course, just because I have a technology orientation, that does not mean that an exploration in this direction needs to be about technology. On the contrary, there is more to future and present curriculum that technology. Regardless of how anyone might want to tackle this issue, there is ample room for exploration.

As we move into a postmodern mindset, traditional ways of doing things become more unsettling. I have tried to "explode" the definition of curriculum design from its normal and traditional view. There is no doubt that we think of curriculum design as some variant of Tyler's four questions. Some of the papers we are exploring expand upon Tyler, but others start to take a different trajectory. A case in point is today's discussion of Vallance. (Remember you will have to download this from JSTOR. Elizabeth Vallance ( a student and colleague of Elliot Eisner is interested in applying an aesthetic dimension to the evaluation component of curriculum design. You will quickly see that this is not normally how we evaluate curriculum. In fact, Valance argues that in fact this is really curriculum description, something we don't do enough of.