Terms Of Curriculum Research Articles

Technological Knowledge, Curriculum and Occupational Role Potential

This paper examines technological curricula in terms of their potential to be realized in occupational roles. The more the curriculum is oriented towards roles (as opposed to skills or pure knowledge), the greater the probability that it will be articulated in the labour market and the greater its efficacy and legitimacy. The concept of role has been analytically divided into six components: value commitment, normative, communicative, interactive, role intelligence and proficiency components. Theoretically, the more components are present in a given curriculum, the higher the probability that a given occupational role will be effectively articulated. However, their presence is a necessary but insufficient condition for effective role performance; their integration is of equal, if not greater importance, and the latter is meaningful only when the social context of the articulation is taken into account. It was found that the role components do not appear in a balanced manner in technological curricula investigated in Israel, and some hardly receive any attention. Those that are present are weakly linked to actual economic contexts. Thus, it appears that students in technological education, are socialized to minimal role articulation; ie, they are more likely to implement decontextualized tasks than to assume integral occupational roles.

The Way Ahead: problems and opportunities in the future education of teachers

ABSTRACT Society is in the process of changing drastically. Effective programmes of teacher education depend upon establishing criteria of relevance, a difficult task against the swiftly changing background of events. Imaginative insight of a high order will be needed to make such education innovative. The change from mechanistic to organistic modes of operation, the justification of school curricula in terms of future relevance, and the need to ask questions about thestatus quo, are three desirable aims. In an advanced technological ambiance the school can no longer mirror a dying society. Survival generally will depend on more efficient learning methods. Problems also arise from many teachers’ mismatched perceptions of their career patterns, mismatched, that is, with both their employers’ ideas and with actual or possible course providers. Despite the death of ‘social and literary romanticism’ in teacher education the values dimension is still important.

Evaluating the Impact of a National Curriculum on Content‐Free Cognitive Outcomes

Summaries English This paper elucidates some of the conceptual, measurement and methodological problems associated with evaluating science curricula in terms of their impact upon students’ content‐free cognitive outcomes. In particular, a report is given of an investigation of the effects of incorporating ASEP (Australian Science Education Project) materials into the science programmes of a large sample of seventh‐grade students in Tasmania. In this investigation, the content‐free outcomes were assessed at the beginning and end of a school year by means of three measures of understanding of the nature of science and four measures of enquiry skills. It was found that a significant relationship emerged between the curriculum variables and one learning outcome, between sex and six learning outcomes, between socio‐economic status and one learning outcome, and between school type and all seven learning outcomes. All together, the curriculum shows a continuous influence on the general cognitive‐learning results...

Three Innovative Programs: Comparisons and Conclusions

ABSTRACT During the latter part of the 1960's, a number of schools drew national attention for their attempts to counteract problems that had been plaguing foreign language instruction for years. New programs were being established to attract students of varying interests and abilities as well as to stem the tide of decreasing enrollments. ‘Three such programs were those of West Bend, Wisconsin; Oxon Hill, Maryland: and the McChier High School, Ferguson‐Florissant School District, Missouri. Oxon Hill's program was one of multi‐level grouping, whereas those of West Bend and McCluer were individualized. In order to determine the success of these innovative curricula in terms of student/teacher satisfaction, a survey was conducted using the Jakobovits “Foreign Language Attitude Questionnaire” and a series of in‐depth interviews with members of the instructional staff and randomly selected, second‐level students from each program. The results of the survey show that while strong foreign language students reacted well to multi‐level grouping, the individualized programs of West Bend and McCluer succeeded to a greater extent in providing satisfactory learning experiences to students of varying levels of ability.