Ethic of Practicality Analysis of Successful Group Curriculum Planning by Teachers

Abstract

Regardless of the source of the curriculum, classroom teachers make the necessary and crucial, final decisions of specifically what and how to teach. This paper examines how three, fourth-grade teachers, who planned together voluntarily, decided what learning activities were “practical” for their students. In their seminal work, Doyle and Ponder (Interchange 8(3):1–12, 1977b) created a construct to describe how teachers decide if curriculum choices actually get implemented. They called their concept the Ethic of Practicality (EoP). Concisely, this concept is based on the premise that teachers use curricula that they find to be sensible and realistic. Doyle and Ponder devised this model to address the question of why some curriculum innovations get used and therefore succeed, while others fail. The EoP was adapted in this paper to examine the processes used in making curriculum choices by a teacher planning group who met voluntarily. The EoP’s original intent was as a model for understanding why teachers use some curriculum innovations while rejecting others. This article uses the EoP to explore the satisfaction expressed by three teachers in their team curriculum planning process. This discussion centers on the question, “Did the teachers continue their voluntary planning sessions because the resultant curriculum products were ‘practical?’” The teacher trio apparently regarded their planning sessions as highly practical and therefore continued to meet after school hours to plan their lessons. Examples demonstrate that the planning process satisfied the teachers in terms of the three components of the EoP: instrumentality, congruence, and cost.