I am listening to a CBC program asking "Is classical music obsolete today?" What strikes me as interesting is its relation to school curriculum. If I was to ask the members of this class: Name 5 pieces of classical music you have studied in your school years. Or, for that matter, Name 5 works of art you have studied. -- how would you respond. Probably "nothing"? Yet we can all name the works of literature we studies, or the periods of Canadian history, or the topics of Math and Science that we took.
The arts have indeed been almost eliminated. And when they are taught, I wonder if the focus becomes production: choir, band, performance. Similarly in art or drama.
Indeed, I wonder if in my own field of technology we focus on the production side, the skill side -- wikis, i-Movies, blogs, etc. but not the culture side.
As I think back to this course, we can safely say that we did study works of art and music and cinema. Perhaps inadertently, but we did it nevertheless.
A case in point was last class analyses of Norman Rockwell's "The connoisseur" and Colville's "horse and train".
Both are fascinating works, which I would argue, thinking hypertextually, can be considered an integral component of how we think about curriculum, or at least as "texts" with "curriculum potential". What a wonderful term that one has turned out to be.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Monday April 7: Last Class
Final thoughts
April 7, 2008
First, I would like to remind you of some of the major course themes:
1. Curriculum is messy. There is no one way; there is no correct model.
2. The three major modes of curriculum, Aoki suggests, are technical/practical/critical. The technical needs standards and absolute clarity. The practical focuses on stakeholders. The critical attempts to delve into root interests.
3. The multiple readings were chosen to guide you into different curriculum explorations. What are some of the critical terms I hope you will take away with you?
5. Is there a model for curriculum development? Yes, but not just one. The moment you choose a model for curriculum development, you are limiting yourself. You are closing the doors. You are closing down the conversation. Some contributions from this course towards a curriculum development model might be the following:
a. Tyler’s four questions, even though posed in 1949 still provide one of the most useful frameworks of all:
c. Schubert’s over-riding comment: "What knowledge is most worthwhile? Why is it worthwhile? How is it acquired or created? These are three of the most basic curriculum questions. "
d. Applebee’s structure, not often used, asks us to examine whether a curriculum has quality, quantity, relatedness (context) and manner.
e. I like Aoki, because he provides focusing questions for technical practical and critical models. If you are developing or evaluating a technical curriculum, he asks you to look for efficiency, goals, objectives, and congruencies. If you are developing a program with “practical” (situational interpretive) focus, you are directed to examine the role of parents, teachers, administrators, content experts, etc. If from a critical perspective, then you look for root interests, root assumptions, unintended and intended biases, gaps, and world views.
Two corollaries:
1. When you move into a master’s program, you become a scholar. You are no longer looking only to become a skilled administrator or teacher. That happens from a combination of things … from practice, from professional workshops, from on-the-job experience. Here, you step outside, even if only briefly, and you become a scholar. Being a scholar is not better than being a teacher or an administrator; it is different. If you are a student in an academic university program, you have selected a particular direction towards not just practice, but you become a scholar. When you go back to what you do on a daily basis, if this course has any value to you at all, then Applebee’s question, “Is this course geared to help you enter into the curricular conversation?” is critical.
2. So what happens now when you go into your own curriculum meetings? My hope is that you will be able to ask questions that perhaps you never thought of asking. My hope is that you will not immediately fall into the technical model, but examine all sides, all possibilities.
...
And then there was Marshall McLuhan. McLuhan’s Wake did several things. First, it re-focused attention on the contemporary world – a world of all-at-once happenings. A world turned upside down by information overload. McLuhan presents the contemporary world via Edgar Allan Poe’s Descent into the Maelstrom. Technology is not the only contributor to our technological society, but it is an important one. The nature of knowledge is changing. Today there are new ways of knowing. The internet really does change everything. Twenty-first century curriculum is still an unknown quantity. We … you … need to be a part of that determination.
.....
There is an interesting book by Lord Kenneth Clarke published in 1969 called CIVILIZATION. It was simultaneously a TV mini-series, one of the first of its kind. Ten programs, examining ten aspects of “civilization.” In the first chapter he writes
And then, Kenneth Clark does something else. He says cannot define his subject; he recognizes it. So then he adds a subtitle to his book: Civilization: A personal view. This course is like that too. In retrospect, I would like to call it: Theory and Practice of Curriculum design and development: A personal view. It is very much a personal view.
Over the past years, I have kept track of some of the more interesting comments from your colleagues, other students who have taken this course. Here are some of your thoughts, showing an interaction with the content:
April 7, 2008
First, I would like to remind you of some of the major course themes:
1. Curriculum is messy. There is no one way; there is no correct model.
2. The three major modes of curriculum, Aoki suggests, are technical/practical/critical. The technical needs standards and absolute clarity. The practical focuses on stakeholders. The critical attempts to delve into root interests.
3. The multiple readings were chosen to guide you into different curriculum explorations. What are some of the critical terms I hope you will take away with you?
- Curriculum potential from Ben Peretz;
- The map is not the territory from Baurillard.
- Curriculum as conversation from Applebee
- Mode of address from Ellsworth. Who does this curriculum think you are?
- There is a unique Canadian discourse on curriculum (Chambers)
- Postmodernism. From everybody.
- Laws of media: McLuhan’s insistence that we look at impact from the four foci of enhancement, obsolescence, retrieval, reversal.
- Deconstruction as a way to read a text critically and analytically.
Note that this list of critical terms (and these are only a selected few) are unique to this course. I have not ignored mainstream terminology, but consciously tried to present concepts that you may not have heard in other courses and that may not be a part of your common vocabulary.4. Curriculum today is postmodern, and that means that it is full of contradictions. Slattery and Baudrillard push us in those directions.
5. Is there a model for curriculum development? Yes, but not just one. The moment you choose a model for curriculum development, you are limiting yourself. You are closing the doors. You are closing down the conversation. Some contributions from this course towards a curriculum development model might be the following:
a. Tyler’s four questions, even though posed in 1949 still provide one of the most useful frameworks of all:
- i. What educational purposes should schools seek to attain?
- ii. What educational experiences can be provided?
- iii. How can these experiences be organized?
- iv. How can we determine whether these experiences are being met? (evaluation)
c. Schubert’s over-riding comment: "What knowledge is most worthwhile? Why is it worthwhile? How is it acquired or created? These are three of the most basic curriculum questions. "
d. Applebee’s structure, not often used, asks us to examine whether a curriculum has quality, quantity, relatedness (context) and manner.
e. I like Aoki, because he provides focusing questions for technical practical and critical models. If you are developing or evaluating a technical curriculum, he asks you to look for efficiency, goals, objectives, and congruencies. If you are developing a program with “practical” (situational interpretive) focus, you are directed to examine the role of parents, teachers, administrators, content experts, etc. If from a critical perspective, then you look for root interests, root assumptions, unintended and intended biases, gaps, and world views.
Two corollaries:
1. When you move into a master’s program, you become a scholar. You are no longer looking only to become a skilled administrator or teacher. That happens from a combination of things … from practice, from professional workshops, from on-the-job experience. Here, you step outside, even if only briefly, and you become a scholar. Being a scholar is not better than being a teacher or an administrator; it is different. If you are a student in an academic university program, you have selected a particular direction towards not just practice, but you become a scholar. When you go back to what you do on a daily basis, if this course has any value to you at all, then Applebee’s question, “Is this course geared to help you enter into the curricular conversation?” is critical.
2. So what happens now when you go into your own curriculum meetings? My hope is that you will be able to ask questions that perhaps you never thought of asking. My hope is that you will not immediately fall into the technical model, but examine all sides, all possibilities.
...
And then there was Marshall McLuhan. McLuhan’s Wake did several things. First, it re-focused attention on the contemporary world – a world of all-at-once happenings. A world turned upside down by information overload. McLuhan presents the contemporary world via Edgar Allan Poe’s Descent into the Maelstrom. Technology is not the only contributor to our technological society, but it is an important one. The nature of knowledge is changing. Today there are new ways of knowing. The internet really does change everything. Twenty-first century curriculum is still an unknown quantity. We … you … need to be a part of that determination.
.....
There is an interesting book by Lord Kenneth Clarke published in 1969 called CIVILIZATION. It was simultaneously a TV mini-series, one of the first of its kind. Ten programs, examining ten aspects of “civilization.” In the first chapter he writes
What is civilization? I don’t know. I can’t define it in abstract terms – yet. But I think I can recognize it when I see it.Think about that. He can’t define it, but he can recognize it. I want to say the same about curriculum. Thirteen of you gave me thirteen definitions. There were some commonalities, but there were some significant differences. Narrow, value-laden, broad. You were intrigued that we could come up with thirteen variants.
And then, Kenneth Clark does something else. He says cannot define his subject; he recognizes it. So then he adds a subtitle to his book: Civilization: A personal view. This course is like that too. In retrospect, I would like to call it: Theory and Practice of Curriculum design and development: A personal view. It is very much a personal view.
Over the past years, I have kept track of some of the more interesting comments from your colleagues, other students who have taken this course. Here are some of your thoughts, showing an interaction with the content:
- “Thinking is messy.”
- “Schools train students to be employees and consumers, I want then to be leaders and adventurers.”
- “As I was reading this article, I felt very small, insignificant and even a little “dumb”
- “I came home from class that evening and truly felt like I “exercised my brain”. I was not able to sleep a wink. This feeling, of stretching what we know, what we think we know, and extrapolating to new uncharted ways of thinking is so exciting. I have learned that it is incredibly easy to accept ideas for what they are without thinking about them critically.”
- “It struck me as odd that Considering the strong push across the province towards an outcome based evaluation of student performance, how many of the class members had a more post-modern view of leaning, in regards to curriculum, perhaps without even knowing it.”
- “It does seem though that everything we do in this class makes me revisit and rethink the way I look at things. Which I’m sure is one of your major outcomes for the course!”
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