Curriculum Questions Research Articles

Curriculum in early childhood education: critical questions about content, coherence, and control

ABSTRACTA continuing struggle over curriculum in early childhood education is evident in contemporary research and debate at national and international levels. This reflects the dominant influence of developmental psychology in international discourses, and in policy frameworks that determine approaches to curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment. Focusing on early childhood education, we argue that this struggle generates critical questions about three significant themes within curriculum theory: content, coherence, and control. We outline two positions from which these themes can be understood: Developmental and Educational Psychology and contemporary policy frameworks. We argue that within and between these positions, curriculum content, coherence, and control are viewed in different and sometimes oppositional ways. Following this analysis, we propose that a focus on ‘working theories’ as a third position offers possibilities for addressing some of these continuing struggles, by exploring different implications for how content, coherence, and control might be understood. We conclude that asking critical questions of curriculum in early childhood education is a necessary endeavour to develop alternative theoretical frameworks for understanding the ways in which curriculum can be considered alongside pedagogy, assessment, play, and learning.

Introduction to Section II: Dewey's Living Ideas

Introduction to Section II: Dewey's Living Ideas

‘Staying on Task’: What Constitutes Classwork in Peter Medway’s Finding a Language?

In Finding a Language, Peter Medway addresses questions of central importance to English teaching – questions of curriculum and of pedagogy. How he addresses these questions provides a sharp contrast to the current orthodoxies of a rigidly prescriptive national curriculum and a closely monitored regime of objective-led, skills-based teaching. Medway’s work reminds English teachers today of the importance of pedagogic relations based not on coercion but rather on a fundamental respect for students’ autonomy.

Educação em direitos humanos: o currículo entre o relativismo e o universalismo

<title>RESUMO:</title><p>O objetivo deste trabalho é apresentar uma reflexão acerca dos paradoxos que envolvem a ideia de universalidade e de particularidade tanto no campo dos Direitos Humanos quanto no campo curricular. Consequentemente, procuraremos esclarecer em que medida os embates entre os enfoques relativistas e universalistas do currículo e dos Direitos Humanos se colocam como impeditivos para a consolidação de uma Educação em Direitos Humanos. Para tanto, recuperaremos o debate em torno das questões da diversidade e do currículo que visa, sobretudo, contestar a racionalidade moderna e suas pretensões universalistas. E, ainda, recuperaremos as contradições que pautam a relação entre a universalidade dos Direitos Humanos e a diversidade dos sujeitos para os quais estes se direcionam.</p>

한국 치위생(학)과의 교육과정 개편 방향에 대한 요구도

Objectives: The purpose of the study was to examined the demand for the change in Korean dental hygiene curriculum. This study compared the dental hygiene curriculum of domestic and overseas university and tired to provide the basic data for the development of standard curriculum that meets the education policy changes. Methods: Data were obtained from a cross-sectional survey of 1,192 participants including dental hygiene professors, dental hygienists and students. Data were collected by mail, telephone call from the professors and research assistants, email, and direct visit from June 10 to August 10, 2013. The questionnaire consisted of 4 questions of general characteristics of the subjects and 13 questions of dental hygiene curriculum. Results: The professors answered the development of integrated dental hygiene curriculum as the first priority(48.9%) and dental hygienists(51.6%) and students(42.6%) chose the development of new dental hygiene curriculum(p<0.001). In the analysis of validity of dental hygiene curriculum, the professors gave 3.29 to the validity of evaluation for basic job performance, and the clinical dental hygienists and the students gave 3.05 and 3.26 points, respectively(p<0.001). In relation to the necessity of the change of the dental hygiene curriculums, the professors gave 4.17 points which implied that curriculum change is the most important and necessary thing to do. The clinical dental hygienists and the students gave 3.90 and 3.47 points, respectively(p<0.001). Conclusions: The above-mentioned findings suggest that the revision of the current Korean dental hygiene curriculums is required. Therefore organizations related to dental hygiene including professor association and Korean Dental Hygienists Association should carefully rebuild the curriculum to improve the competency of dental hygienists. They should take the initiative in the development of a standardized curriculum.

Toward a deliberative curriculum?

In this paper, I introduce a deliberative understanding of the formation of the curriculum and school subjects, going beyond a view of subjects as distinctive and prescribed purpose-built enterprises. The basic idea of a deliberative curriculum is developed in relation to curriculum theory and didactics (didaktik), and the disposition of the paper is as follows: I begin by presenting a short conceptual overview of curriculum history, based on Pinar's (1978) threefold categorization. I then present what I term ‘didactic typologies’, implying different interpretations concerning the formation of curriculum and the content of school subjects. I exemplify the need for a problematization of curriculum by analyzing a recent article by Zongyi Deng (2009) on how to deal with curriculum questions at different levels with reference to ‘liberal studies’, in which he claims ‘that a school subject is a distinctive purpose-built enterprise’. I then make an extended case for what I call, with reference to Null (2011), a ‘deliberative curriculum’, and try to analyze some of the characteristics and consequences of this perspective for curriculum making, teachers’ professionalism, and classroom activities. Finally, I link and exemplify these three areas to the recent Swedish educational and curriculum history.

The dialogic space offered by curriculum-making in the process of learning to teach, and the creation of a progressive knowledge-led curriculum

There is widespread system response to the perceived needs of education for twenty-first century, where learning-to-learn is privileged and schools are organised to prepare young people for work. One casualty of such skills-led teaching is deep thinking about curriculum questions and the knowledge contents of teaching in relation to the needs, motivations and experiential knowledge of students. In this paper we argue for greater conceptual clarity between curriculum and pedagogy, and between the worlds of children’s experience and disciplinary knowledge, in order to deepen teachers’ understanding of the practice of teaching. The paper shows how using the conceptual tools of curriculum making is key to becoming, and developing as a teacher. This paper supports subject specialism in teaching in a manner that respects the social and cultural capital of young people and their role in knowledge creation together with the emancipatory significance of gaining epistemic access to disciplinary knowledge.

Reflexive Graffiti Remixing: Curriculum, Corsican Language, and Critical Pedagogy

Corsica is an island covered in graffiti. These painted messages devastate/decorate the walls of cities, towns, schools and homes. They have also spread to natural sites that include rocks, trees and mountains. A number of curricular questions arise in regards to graffiti as literacy and in particular regarding the corsican endangered language: Is graffiti a performance of the aesthetics of vulnerability of a minority language? Could graffitied symbols represent a linguistic affirmation of Coriscan identity? And what could engaging with these graffiti bring to canadian curricular studies regarding minority languages? The following auto/ethno/graphy attemps to answer these curricular questions as it (de)constructs a bricolage of personal photographs taken of Corsican graffiti as well as my narrative as a Canadian doctoral candidate studying in Corsica. It begins by tracing the a/r/to- and auto/ethno- graphic research framework that shapes my research and analysis. Subsequently, this paper explores various methods of researching graffiti which include reading graffiti as praxis, marginalia and empowerment. I also discuss students’ possible roles in (re)reading graffiti as an opportunity to remix and as an opening for developing critical literacy skills. In order to share my ongoing reflexive process as a researcher, my personal narrative is included throughout the paper. I have chosen to relate this narrative in French – my mother tongue and one of two minoritized languages that are at the heart of my research. This paper therefore (re)mixes English, French and Corsican throughout with as little translation possible to engage readers in a plurilingual reading experience.

If Curriculum is the Answer, What is the Question?

A graduate student sitting across from me expresses an interest in researching curriculum. At this point in the conversation, I must admit to a moment of panic. Where do we begin with such an ungovernable topic? In his 2009 essay,The Questions of Curriculum, noted curriculum theorist J. T. Dillon concedes, Taken as an ensemble, the definitions and conceptions of curriculum are known to be incoherent, and by individual contrast to be divergent when not contradictory (p. 344). If this does not sound a discouraging note, it should at least give us pause. Striving to precipitate coherence in curriculum construction, Dillon tenders seven questions embodying his conception of the basic elements of curriculum. With these questions, Dillon queries who should teach; who should be taught; what knowledge is of most worth (a query Dillon terms hoary); what circumstances, conditions, and contexts prevail; what ends and aims matter; what actions, methods, and means are involved; and what results from all of these considerations. As useful as these seven questions are for overall guidance, I find the most compelling aspect of Dillon's essay to be his observation that it is our actions and practices that reveal the actual curriculum questions we implicitly ask. Dillon remarks, know what we are doing, then, is to know the questions we are answering in action...(p. 357). It is this perspective that frames my introduction to the collection that forms this issue of Studies. That is, what curriculum questions do the practices and actions of the five authors and commentators in this issue reveal?Cock Dieleman's investigation of the implementation of a mandatory interdisciplinary art course-Cultural and Artistic Education (Culturele en Kunstzinnige Vorming, or CKV)-in the Dutch secondary schools, for instance, reveals multiple curricular questions. Most broadly, Dieleman's study addresses a major curricular question regarding the aims and purposes of art education. As Dillon (2009) argues, although the surrounding context of curriculum is often neglected, it represents a powerful curricular factor. Dieleman expands on this, arguing that CKV was not only conceived from educational motivations, but also swayed by a political need to resolve the steep decline in Dutch cultural participation.Requiring the secondary students to attend four to eight cultural activities during the school year, the CKV course was intended to nurture a keen interest in arts participation. Dieleman, however, contends that the strategy for achieving these aims was ill conceived and responsible for the failure of the program to significantly affect student attitudes or noticeably raise levels of cultural participation. Dieleman maintains that rather than fostering personal rewards derived from engaging with challenging aesthetic experiences, CKV instead promoted the social benefits of cultural experiences, an objective Dieleman perceives as misdirected.Curricular questions of means and methods surface in Julia Marshall's examination of what it might mean to frame art education as a transdisciplinary field. Marshall considers signs of a shift in general education from rote reproductive learning toward the cultivation of conceptual and procedural abilities as an opportunity for art education. To demonstrate this potential, Marshall offers the engaging example of Jenna Huxley, a California International Baccalaureate art student who explores human-animal relationships through biological concepts, visits to the local zoo, considerations of Christian and Hindu beliefs and attitudes, and correspondence with scientists training chimpanzees to communicate with humans through an invented language. Conceiving Jenna's wide-ranging research process in terms of systems thinking, a combination of intuitive leaps and conscious logical analysis, Marshall's study posits possibilities of constructive curricula and pedagogical directions for art education.Pamela G. …

Art of Local Radiance: The Teacher’s Guide to the Toledo Museum of Art Glass Pavilion

Exploring the Glass City: The Teacher’s Guide to the Glass Pavilion, published in 2008 to celebrate the opening of the Toledo Museum of Art’s Glass Pavilion, exemplifies the museum’s multidisciplinary approach to public art museum education. This research narrative about the teacher’s guide unfolds in three levels. The first, autoethnography, relates aspects of personal history with the Toledo Museum of Art. The second level links four generations of family history to the social history of Toledo, Ohio. Curricular questions in the guide are used to rethink family history in relation to social movements, labor struggles, economic trends, and environmental change. The third level discusses ways of teaching art that allow students to make connections between self, family, place, and society through the study and creation of art. At every level, the narrative grapples with questions of how to bring the personal and political together in an embodied teaching practice. This task is complicated by an understanding of identity as produced through active networks of time, place, and matter.

Standpoint theory, realism and the search for objectivity in the sociology of education

This paper evaluates the contribution of ‘social realism’ in resolving questions of knowledge and curriculum in the sociology of education. Social realists argue that, in the interests of educational equality, all pupils should have access to ‘powerful’ knowledge produced by specialist intellectual communities. Social realism relies upon a critique of standpoint theory, taking it to be irrealist, relativist and ignorant of the post-empiricist revolution in the philosophy of science. This paper argues however, that social realists fail to appreciate the critical realist response to the post-empiricist revolution and thereby end up critiquing a caricatured version of standpoint theory. The paper concludes that if we are concerned with restoring objectivity, in a manner that avoids both relativism and cultural elitism in school curricula, a turn away from standpoint theory in the sociology of education is not warranted and may be obstructive.

Rethinking the Definition and Value of the Curriculum Concept: The Zimbabwe Experience

KEYWORDS Curriculum. Curriculum Studies. Principles. Culture. School. Socialization. Sociology. Zimbabwe ABSTRACT This paper interrogates the multifarious perceptions of the word curriculum from an educational viewpoint. In considering questions of curriculum one must go beyond the confines of the school to look at society. The study considers the values, traditions and beliefs of the whole culture of society. Curriculum decisions are not just about content and organising teaching/learning of subject matter but careful considerations of philosophical, psychological and sociological issues. Research shows that without a thorough consideration of these fundamental principles, the designed curriculum may fail to address the needs of the society. Using a desktop approach, this study explored and discussed some sociological principles and how these have been considered and represented in the Zimbabwean school curriculum as a case in point. Sociological principles are social forces that govern one's behaviour in a given society. The paper concludes by showing that sociological principles have been considered in the formulation and implementation of most school curriculum studies. The study implores curriculum planners to design curriculum studies that take cognisance of key sociological principles if society is to move forward by using education as a vehicle for development.

Neuroscience and Education: Issues and Challenges for Curriculum

The burgeoning knowledge of the human brain generated by the proliferation of new brain imaging technology from in recent decades has posed questions about the potential for this new knowledge of neural processing to be translated into “usable knowledge” that teachers can employ in their practical curriculum work. The application of the findings of neuroscience to education has met a mixed reception, with some questioning its relevance for educational practice. Simplistic generalizations about neuroscience’s application to education have been dubbed as neuromyths, and regarded as being at best irrelevant to or at worst counterproductive in bringing about good educational practice. In recent times, expansive literature generated in the area of educational neuroscience has drawn attention to a range of epistemological and conceptual issues pertinent to the attempt to translate neuroscientific research findings into usable knowledge that has the potential to improve curriculum practice. Issues involved in such a process include the place of neuroscience among the corpus of disciplines constituting the educational foundations; the conceptual framework required to translate knowledge between neuroscience and education; and, whether usable knowledge can be generated from neuroscientific information, so to be applied in curriculum work. These curriculum questions have direct bearing on curriculum work as the issue of usable knowledge relates directly to the teacher’s role in the curriculum process. This article will consider the expectations and constraints in relation to the contribution of neuroscience to the production of usable knowledge for curriculum work.

The Value of Operating Room Experience in Post Operative Pain Management

Since the removal of perioperative nursing from the core undergraduate curriculum questions have been raised regarding the acquisition of pre and postoperative surgical knowledge including patient education, pre and postoperative care, asepsis and pain management.

A Two-Year Experience of an Integrated Simulation Residency Curriculum

BackgroundHuman Patient Simulation (HPS) is increasingly used in medical education, but its role in Emergency Medicine (EM) residency education is uncertain. Study ObjectivesThe objective of this study was to evaluate the perceived effectiveness of HPS when fully integrated into an EM residency didactic curriculum. MethodsThe study design was a cross-sectional survey performed in 2006, 2 years after the implementation of an integrated simulation curriculum. Fifty-four residents (postgraduate year [PGY] 1–4) of a 4-year EM residency were surveyed with demographic and curricular questions on the perceived value of simulation relative to other teaching formats. Survey items were rated on a bipolar linear numeric scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 9 (strongly agree), with 5 being neutral. Data were analyzed using Student t-tests. ResultsForty residents responded to the survey (74% response rate). The perceived effectiveness of HPS was higher for junior residents than senior residents (8.0 vs. 6.2, respectively, p<0.001). There were no differences in perceived effectiveness of lectures (7.8 vs. 7.9, respectively, p=0.1), morbidity and mortality conference (8.5 vs. 8.7, respectively, p=0.3), and trauma conference (8.4 vs. 8.8, respectively, p=0.2) between junior and senior residents. Scores for perceptions of improvement in residency training (knowledge acquisition and clinical decision-making) after the integration of HPS into the curriculum were positive for all residents. ConclusionResidents’ perceptions of HPS integration into an EM residency curriculum are positive for both improving knowledge acquisition and learning clinical decision-making. HPS was rated as more effective during junior years than senior years, while the perceived efficacy of more traditional educational modalities remained constant throughout residency training.

Parental Agency in Educational Decision Making: A Mexican American Example

Background/Context This article explores the experiences of one Mexican American family as they make a key curriculum choice for their 9-year-old son. Relatively little attention has been paid to parents’ beliefs, attitudes, and, in particular, experiences as they actively engage in—and sometimes affect—their children's schooling. Parents’ agency in utilizing various kinds of educational strategizing, especially immigrant and urban working-class parents, has been overlooked. Deficit theories of low-income families have a long history in educational thought. Although more recent scholarship has debunked these theories, they remain pervasive across the country. Educators often do not recognize the many ways in which urban parents may be involved in their children's schooling. Voices of parents themselves speaking to their experiences with schools are just beginning to emerge. Purpose This article offers a rich example of the educational decision-making process of one Mexican American family. I take a phenomenological approach to examine human agency in specific familial decisions about this child's schooling that support the parents’ own vision of education. Here is a story of thoughtful, reflective decision-making that took place over a period of several years, when the parents finally decided to move their son from a transitional bilingual program at a public school to a parochial school taught in English. Research Design This is a narrative inquiry based on interviews and observations that took place with one family and one focal child through the course of a calendar year. It is situated within the frame of an ethnographic study on the educational life worlds of the family. The analysis draws on van Manen's use of phenomenology to examine how parents reflected upon experience to better understand a situation, resulting in “lived experience,” an understanding of the meanings a particular person finds in an event. Conclusions/Recommendations Immigrant and other urban parents may be actively engaged in their children's education, asking important and valid curriculum questions in ways that remain invisible to educators. I suggest alternatives to deficit theories that render parents’ perspectives invisible. Terms usually reserved for teachers can also be applied to parents: “knowledgeable observers” who make “pedagogically thoughtful” decisions about “curriculum.” This perspective would recommend that educational practice and policy use theoretical frameworks stressing parents’ roles as strong, positive, and active agents on behalf of their children and the need to develop dialogue based on respect. Further qualitative research in particular can provide needed depth in our understanding of parents’ struggles to negotiate the boundaries of culture, history and biography as they guide their children through the complex maze of school.

Fictionalising a future for a field: Engaging possibilities in curriculum research

Through the use of fictionalisation, a narrative inquiry tool that allows for the 'trying on' of future possibilities, I survey the state of the US curriculum field in the aftermath of Schwab's 'practical'. I note that the theory-practice binary, which Schwab explicated in the 1970s, morphed into a highly convoluted theory-practice-policy divide by the 2000s. I demonstrate the latter in the narrative exemplar of my teacher education practices I include. To end, I sketch seven research possibilities that would help to address the disarray that currently marks the curriculum field. These potential opportunities include: (1) studying how the same curriculum policy plays out in different sites; (2) inquiring into the interface between paradigmatic and narrative forms of knowledge in teaching and teacher education; (3) paying more attention to metaphorical ways of knowing; (4) examining the need for both fluid and stable forms of curriculum inquiry; (5) exploring the contributions that digital stories might make to the curriculum field; (6) unpacking cultural implications embedded in curriculum studies; and (7) discerning the curriculum questions that are most worthwhile to ask.

&lt;b&gt;A organização interdisciplinar na reforma curricular da formação docente&lt;/b&gt;

O texto focaliza o conceito de interdisciplinaridade presentificado nas Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais para a Formação dos Professores da Educação Básica. O objetivo é verificar qual lógica embasa as indicações legais que tomam a interdisciplinaridade como um dos eixos da reforma curricular da formação docente. As análises realizadas em documentos com assinatura oficial assinalam recontextualizações hibridizadas do conceito nas indicações professadas. No entanto, a ênfase nos aspectos metodológicos da atividade interdisciplinar demarca uma adoção predominantemente instrumental do termo, consoante concepções norte-americanas anglófonas, favorecendo a sua utilização pela lógica do racionalismo pragmático-utilitário. As conclusões a que se chega eviden-ciam, de um lado, a necessidade de ampliação do diálogo sobre os conceitos de interdisciplinaridade difundidos no meio educacional de modo a se evitarem banalizações na sua interpretação, e, de outro, a necessidade de aprofun-damento, a partir de perspectivas críticas e reflexivas, nos estudos sobre as políticas curriculares para a formação de professores da Educação Básica. Palavras-chave: Interdisciplinaridade. Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais. Formação dos Professores da Educação Básica.

Thinking like Grass, with Deleuze in Education?

The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze might not be well known yet to the Canadian education landscape. So in this paper, I begin with a close-reading of “On the Superiority of Anglo-American Literature”, a chapter in Deleuze’s collaborative works with his colleague Claire Parnet, appropriately titled Dialogue, where they exemplifies their own “deterritorialization” of thought across disciplines and geographical domains. I then give a sketch of his reflection on the major movements in Philosophy as an attempt to envision his own possible orientation of philosophizing that is close to life in its creative force. By introducing some of the important yet creative concepts as well as the fresh spirit of his philosophical movements in thinking, I intend to create a space of openness where we the educators could think anew on the some fundamental theoretical questions in curriculum studies, for instance: what does it mean to attempt to bring Deleuze’s work from the “outside” in the proximity of our educational realm, or rather, to extend our ignorance to the edge of the inter-disciplinary borders, to think about curriculum questions with his diverse philosophical thinking?

Radical Hope: Or, the Problem of Uncertainty in History Education

Curricular questions of what and how knowledge should matter take on particular urgency when the knowledge at stake refers to cultural devastation in history. Whereas narratives of progress and discourses of “protecting the child” continue to dominate the public imaginary, a number of curriculum theorists have begun to explore the multiple ways in which educators have and continue to represent such histories in the classroom. This emergent literature offers a theory of pedagogy not as a set of skills to apply, but a way of asking questions about the ethical obligations, ontological crises and anxieties at work in efforts to teach and learn from difficult histories. My article elaborates on the problem of uncertainty from the vantage of two psychoanalytic thinkers who are also interested in the work of introducing the child to a world that fails: D.W. Winnicott’s discussions with mothers on the problem of “disillusionment” and Jonathan Lear’s discussion of “radical hope.” In bringing together these examples, I offer a theory of education that articulates what is hopeful about the capacity to tolerate the disillusionment of both learning from and living in difficult times. At stake is a model of history education that can survive the disillusion of the promise of certainty and still dream of tomorrow.