Ed232b Syllabus

One of the important lessons to be learned in the study of education is that the school is never insulated from the society in which it resides. Changes in the social order emanating from political developments, economic needs, the introduction of new technologies, changes in attitudes towards gender, race, and class, all influence what people believe schools should be about, what teachers should teach, and how students should be evaluated and rewarded.

The materials that will be read and discussed in the first section of Education 232B are some of the major, primary resource documents that represent significant markers in the history of American education from shortly before the turn of the last century through the 1960s. These are not mere historical relics. The values these documents display and the issues they represent are echoed in current debates about the strength and weaknesses of American schools, the goals to which they should aspire, and the means through which their effectiveness should be determined. Understanding these markers and the conditions and issues they represent is a way of restoring or creating a context through which current practices can be viewed more insightfully.

Many of the new reformers function as "new Columbuses," discovering for what they believe to be the first time a new promised land. Historical perspective provides a salutary view of the potential strengths and weaknesses of current efforts at improving curriculum, teaching and evaluation.

Readings (dates indicated are the dates we will discuss the readings, please have them ready)

(October 1) National Education Association of the United States, Committee of Ten on Secondary School Studies. Report of the Committee [of Ten] on Secondary School Studies, 1892.

(October 3) National Education Association of the United States, Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education: A report of the Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education. . (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office), 1918.

(October 8) Franklin Bobbitt, How to Make a Curriculum. (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co.), 1924. Chapters 1, 2, and 3.

(October 10) Edward Thorndike, “Curriculum Research,” School and Society, Vol 28, No. 724, Nov. 10, 1928, pp. 569-576.

(October 15) George S. Counts, Dare the Schools Change the Social Order? (New York: The John Day Co.), 1932.

(October 22)*John Dewey, Experience and Education. (New York: The Macmillan Co.), 1951.

(October 22)*Jerome Bruner, The Process of Education. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), 1960.

The field of curriculum, like other fields, has a language through which theoreticians and practitioners view and do their work. This language itself rests upon certain kinds of values and assumptions about how content and aims should be conceived. Terms such as reform, standards, objectives, sequence, continuity, integration, formative and summative evaluation, hidden curriculum, scaffolding, and deliberation are all employed in framing the processes involved in designing educational programs. Each of them carries special meanings built up over decades of curriculum change and analysis.

The terminology described not only has utilities it also has constraints. Concepts that call our attention to an aspect of the educational world not only provide us with a useful focus, they also limit what we can see. Concepts are windows, but windows require walls in order for the world viewed to be framed. Thus, the language of curriculum both facilitates and constrains the educational process. We will be acquiring and discussing the language of curriculum and trying to understand how it functions in our deliberations.

(October 24) *Ralph Tyler, Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press), 1994.

(October 24) Herbert Kliebard, "The Tyler Rationale," School Review, Vol. 78, No. 2, February 1970, pp 259-272.

(October 29) Joseph Schwab, "The Practical: A Language for Curriculum," School Review, Vol. 78, No. 5, 1969, pp 1-24.

(October 31) *Elliot Eisner, Cognition and Curriculum Reconsidered. (New York: Teachers College Press), 1993. Chapters 2, 3 and 4.

(November 12) Maxine Greene, “Curriculum and Consciousness,” in The Curriculum Studies Reader. David Flinders and Stephen Thornton (eds.), (New York: Routledge), 1997.

(November 12) Noddings, Nel, “An Ethic of Caring and Its Implications for Instructional Arrangements,” Lynda Stone (ed.), The Education Feminism Reader. (New York: Routledge), 1994.

(November 12) Eleanor Duckworth, “The Having of Wonderful Ideas, “The Having of Wonderful Ideas” & Other Essays on Teaching & Learning Second Edition (New York: Teachers College Press), 1996.

The current scene in America regarding the status and conditions of our schools is characterized by debate about their status, the quality of their programs, and perhaps even more about the conditions and directions that need to be taken for their improvement. Some scholars regard American schools as conveying politically naive messages to unsuspecting students, or messages having profound political implications but that go unrecognized as such by virtue of the way in which they are taught. For others, American schools need to return to an emphasis on what they can teach well; namely, the basic skills of reading, writing, and reckoning all done in a context that is both rigorous and disciplined.

For others, the schools’ primary task is to prepare students for the world of work in the 21^st Century, a world that cannot be dismissed in what has become a global economy, driven to a large degree by the recent explosion of information technology. Still other scholars argue about the need to develop fully the wide range of cognitive capacities that all but the congenitally impaired possess. The human mind is a rich resource and its potentialities are not to be neglected.

At the same time, there is broad recognition among others that schools are extraordinarily robust institutions that more often than not change the message coming in more than the message coming in changes the schools. How to bring about significant change in American education and the direction that those changes should take are represented in the materials to be read and discussed in this section.

(November 14) Henry Giroux, "Teachers, Public Life and Curriculum Reform," Peabody Journal of Education, Vol. 69, No. 3, Spring 1994, pp 35 - 47.

(November 14) Diane Ravitch, “Forgetting the Questions: The Problem of Educational Reform,” in The Curriculum Studies Reader. David Flinders and Stephen Thornton (eds.), (New York: Routledge), 1997.

(November 19) William J. Bennett, “Moral Literacy and the Formation of Character,” in Moral, Character, and Civic Education. (New York: Teachers College Press), 1991.

(November 21-with special guest star J. Myron Atkin!) J. Myron Atkin, "Developing World-Class Education Standards: Some Conceptual and Political Dilemmas," in Nina Cobb (ed), The Future of Education: Perspectives on National Standards in America. (New York: College Board Publications), 1994, pp 61 - 84.

(November 21) J. Myron Atkin and Paul Black, “Policy Perils of International Comparisons: The TIMSS Case,” Phi Delta KAPPAN, Vol. 78, September 1997.

Mary Kiely will also be speaking about curriculum frameworks on November 21st.

Most schools organize their educational programs according to the various subjects: reading, the language arts, mathematics, science, the social studies, the arts, foreign languages, and the like. In fact, many states prepare curriculum standards and curriculum frameworks that are intended to serve as guidelines for the development of educational programs and the acquisition of curriculum materials designed to enable teachers to provide substantive content to their students. The control over the ways in which that content is presented in the classroom and tested has become a new battleground among powerful groups that exert political power over the educational system within a state. Curriculum standards and frameworks themselves reflect certain values and assumptions about teaching and learning.

The material in section IV of Education 232B is intended to provide you with an opportunity to read and discuss some recent efforts at curriculum reform in five important subject areas: the social studies, language arts, math, science, and the visual and performing arts. In addition, special attention will be paid to the ways in which standards are conceived of in these fields and the functions that they are intended to serve.

(November 28) Readings for this portion of the course will be geared to participants¹ specific interests. Some will focus on arts, some on social studies, some on mathematics, etc. Material will be selected from the Worldwide Web, and from documents like the California curriculum frameworks in science, history and social studies, visual and performing arts, and English-language arts.

V. Curriculum Research and Evaluation, including Comparative Studies

Curriculum is an important focus for educational research and evaluation. Much curriculum research is normative. By normative we mean research of a philosophic nature that conceptualizes what schools should be about and more specifically the understandings that should be accorded priority in the various subject-matter fields. The goals or aims of a particular subject field are not solely a function of the subject itself. Science can be taught in many ways for very different kinds of reasons and directed to very different ends. What should science education be in the 21st century? What sorts of educational goals can be accomplished through the arts and which are appropriate now and for whom? Should the social studies be geared to preparing citizens who can fit into the existing social order, or should it be designed to prepare people who have both the skill and motivation to change the existing social order so that it is more equitable to more people?

Curriculum research often has a historical cast as well as a theoretical one. On the historical level, examinations of how curricula have changed over the years, the factors associated with those changes, and the lessons to be learned from past practice also can contribute to better curriculum deliberation and decision making.

One particularly useful approach that is examined in the course is the use of comparative studies. Different countries perceive their curriculum challenges differently. Comparing approaches to curriculum reform in different countries can illuminate the connections between culture and educational change, and thus contribute to wiser decisions about what is desirable and feasible in a given setting.

One way to gauge the worth of a curriculum is straightforwardly to evaluate it. But how? Is it best to compare it to another curriculum? Or determine how well it meets its own objectives? Is it sufficient to ascertain what has been learned at the end of the course? Or are long-term effects also of interest? Evaluation raises a host of questions about how one makes decisions about the worth of a curriculum. Several of the readings in this section of the course open up some of the issues.

Readings

(November 26) George Madaus and Thomas Kellaghan, “Models, Metaphors, and Definitions in Evaluation”, Evaluation Models: Viewpoints on Educational and Human Services Evaluation, Daniel Stufflebeam, George Madaus, and Thomas Kellaghan (eds). Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000, pp. 19-32.

(November 26) David McClelland, “Testing for Competence Rather than for ‘Intelligence’”. American Psychologist. January, 1973, pp. 1-14.

(December 3) Elliot Eisner, “What Does it Mean to Say a School is Doing Well?” Kappan vol. 82, no. 5, January, 2001.

(December 5) Papers due, wrap-up, goodbyes...

I. Historical Markers * II. Language of Curriculum * III. Contemporary Reform * IV. Changing the Subjects * V. Research and Evaluation