My notes from reading chapter 1:
Loose Definition: whatever means are deliberately undertaken to achieve desirable ends, such as spefic goals or standards
Difficult to define in schools: everyone seems to know what schools should teach, but never complete agreement.
"precision in planning, flexibility in execution"
Making decisions about curriculum is understood better as an exercise in exploring and understanding alternative possibilities, rather than an an exercise in reaching consensus by excluding alternatives.
Three questions:
1. What knowledge is of most worth?
2. How should the curriculum be developed?
3. How should the curriculum be experienced?
The overall process of planning and developing the curriculum is usually best undertaken cooperatively by those people who have a perceived stake in the outcome, from educational officials to students and parents, to members of the community, but that the person most interested and best equipped to do so are the professionals closest to classrooms: the teachers.
No two students necessarily experience the same curriculum in precisely the same way.
Defining Curriculum
Definition 1: Curriculum is such "permanent" subjects as grammar, reading, logic, rhetoric, mathematics, and the greatest books of the Western would that best embody essential knowledge.
Problem: limited to only a few academic subjects
Definition 2: Curriculum is those subjects that are most useful for living in contemporary society.
Problem: what is contemporary has more value than what is long lasting
Definition 3: Curriculum is all planned learnings for which the school is responsible
Problem: assumes that what is studied is what is learned.
Definition 4: Curriculum is all the experiences learners have under the guidance of the school.
Problem: No basis for differentiating desirable and undesirable experiences.
Definition 5: Curriculum is the totality of learning experiences provided to students so that they can attain general skills and knowledge at a variety of learning sites.
Problem: leads to narrow technical-funcationalist approach to curriculum.
Definition 6: Curriculum is what the student constructs from working with the computer and its various networks, such as the internet.
Problem: technology is not a neutral tool
Definition 7: Curriculum is the questioning of authority and the searching for complex views of humans situations.
Problem: Postmodernism reduced simply to the process of questioning may not be helpful in identifying in practice how students should spend their time and energy.
Definition 8: Curriculum is all the experiences that learners have in the course of living.
Problem: makes no difference between what happens in school and what happens in life generally.
Three Distinctions
1. The term curriculum subsumes the terms syllabus and course of studies.
2. A curriculum necessarily involves some conscious planning, and this in turn will be reflected in what students actually learn.
3. It is unnecessary and undesirable to separate curriculum from instruction.
Hidden curriculum: what is not taught but is learned ie Character development.
The books definition: An interrelated set of plans and experiences that a student undertakes under the guidance of the school.
Hold an organic, holistic view of curriculum and instruction consistent with many recent trends that encourages teachers to be directly involved in making decisions about both curriculum and teaching by constantly monitoring and adjusting ends and means within unfolding classroom situations. The view of curriculum and instruction in which the two merge....
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