Curriculum Reform Process Research Articles

University of Chicago Division of the Biological Sciences Pritzker School of Medicine

University of Chicago Division of the Biological Sciences Pritzker School of Medicine

Multiple Aims in the Development of a Major Reform of the National Curriculum for Science in England

In the context of a major reform of the school science curriculum for 14–16‐year‐olds in England, we examine the aims ascribed to the reform, the stakeholders involved, and the roles of differing values and authority in its development. This reform includes an emphasis on socioscientific issues and the nature of science; curriculum trends of international relevance. Our analysis identifies largely ‘instrumental’ aims, with little emphasis on ‘intrinsic’ aims and associated values. We identify five broad categories of stakeholders focusing on different aims with, for example, a social, individual, political, or economic emphasis. We suggest that curriculum development projects reflecting largely social and individual aims were appropriated by other stakeholders to serve political and economic aims. We argue that a curriculum reform body representing all stakeholder interests is needed to ensure that multiple aims are considered throughout the curriculum reform process. Within such a body, the differentiated character of the science teaching community would need to be represented.

The Power of Partnerships: Changing People and Systems

Abstract This is a story of partnership, investing, and planned change. It is a story of tremendous learning and growth, anticipated outcomes, and a few surprises. The process of undergraduate curriculum reform at Pace University, in conjunction with grant preparation, led to the development of partnerships between and among individuals. As these partnerships evolved, organizations, people, and systems changed.

Brazilian Legal Education: Curricular Reform that Goes Further Without Going Beyond

Brazilian legal education is engaged since 1994 in a long and inconclusive process of curriculum reform in which the Brazilian Bar Association (Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil) has been one of its greatest players. The transformations undertaken in legal education in the last two decades, were buoyed by three things: (a) the redemocratization of the country, completed in 1988 with the promulgation of the new Constitution, (b) the expansion of higher education, which resulted in a amount of more than half of a million law students, and (c) the protection of interests of the lawyers’ corporation, even though it has been done under the argument of a genuine defense of a minimum level of quality for the Brazilian legal education. Interestingly, all this reform process is done without any trace of dialogue with the Bologna process and rarely integrating the challenges of a legal practice increasingly internationalized. This article proposes a critical review of the incomplete process of legal education reform, seeking to understand how, despite its original purposes, it has been imprisoned on the one hand, by the corporate share of the Brazilian Bar Association and on the other hand, by the reproduction of old practices in the teaching of Brazilian law. Finally, between the reproduction of the past and the uncertainty of the future, Brazilian legal education is facing a broad challenge that goes beyond the definition of its curriculum structure. In short, rethink the foundations of its access, the parameters of its offer and the importance of its social impact is undoubtedly a necessity to adequately speculate about the future of Brazilian legal education.

Reforming the Middle Years Curriculum in an International School: A Naturalistic Inquiry

This dissertation reports on the experiences of a small group of teachers and administrators as they endeavoured to reform the middle years curriculum of an international school in Japan. This single case study is based primarily upon the observations of the researcher, a middle school teacher at the school and a key participant in the reform process. This study is positioned in the naturalistic paradigm which allows for the accumulation of sufficient knowledge to lead to a holistic understanding of middle years curriculum reform within this context. Reforming the middle years of schooling has received renewed attention in recent years. A new paradigm is emerging about the nature of schooling in this significant stage of life that is now recognised as crucial to the formation of attitudes, values, and habits of mind that shape the individual‘s identity and development as an adult. Despite the growth and status of international schools, very little is known about the nature and processes of middle years curriculum reform in this context. The central aim of this study was to provide a detailed and authentic account of the process of curriculum reform that can validate, guide and extend the current body of knowledge on middle years curriculum reform and is meaningful and useful to educators in the international school context. Three dimensions of reform emerged in this study: the process of reform, identified as a multidimensional and interconnected process that ventured through six identifiable phases; the product of the reform, the Humankind Curriculum, was found to have its core features grounded in shared understandings of effective middle schooling; and the dynamics of change, which revealed a professional learning community as the catalyst for change, with the interplay of relational trust, leadership, interpersonal relationships and collaboration as empowering the capacity for reculturing the middle school. While the findings contribute to the current body of knowledge on middle school reform in the international school context, they also provide direction for further discussion, exploration and research.

Musculoskeletal Preclinical Medical School Education: Meeting an Underserved Need

Musculoskeletal problems including both rheumatologic and orthopaedic pathologies are the primary reason for physician office visits across the United States, with approximately 92.1 million encounters reported annually, according to the 2004 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey1. Despite the impact that musculoskeletal diseases have on society and the wide range of medical practitioners who treat these conditions, there is compelling evidence that undergraduate medical curricula do not adequately prepare physicians in musculoskeletal medicine2-5. In 2005, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) issued a Medical School Objectives Project Report on musculoskeletal medicine highlighting the need for medical schools to improve the education of future physicians in this area6. The report outlined educational guidelines to establish a more coherent undergraduate musculoskeletal curriculum. We conducted a study at our medical school during the 2005-2006 academic year that substantiated the need for improving the musculoskeletal curriculum. Students lacked cognitive mastery, demonstrated low clinical confidence, and were dissatisfied with the amount of time spent learning musculoskeletal medicine. Findings of the study suggested the need to improve the integration of musculoskeletal medicine into the curriculum3. Data from the 2005 Step-1 United States Medical Licensing Examination at our institution also revealed that performance on the musculoskeletal section was the lowest of all the subsections. Thus, both national as well as institutional concerns prompted us to lobby for, develop, and begin implementation of a four-year integrated musculoskeletal curriculum. We focused our initial reform endeavors on the preclinical (first and second-year) curriculum. The process of curriculum reform and development differs among various medical schools. As such, the purpose of this study was to provide a framework that may assist educators in achieving the adoption of an integrated musculoskeletal curriculum into the preclinical curriculum at their own school. We offer …

Evaluation of a national process of reforming curricula in postgraduate medical education

Context: A national reform of the postgraduate medical education in Denmark introduced (1) Outcome-based education, (2) The CanMEDS framework of competence related to seven roles of the doctor, and (3) In-training assessment.Objectives: The purpose of the study was to evaluate the process of developing new curricula for 38 specialist training programmes. The research question was: which conditions promote and which conditions impede the process?Methods: Evaluation of the process was conducted among 76 contact-persons, who were chairing the curriculum development process within the specialties. Quantitative and qualitative data from a questionnaire survey and telephone interviews were triangulated for data analysis.Results: The response rate of the questionnaire survey was 83% (63/76). Twenty-six telephone interviews were conducted. Identified promoting factors included positive attitude and motivation in faculty and support from written guidelines and seminars. Identified impeding factors included insufficient pedagogical support, poor introduction to the task, changing and inconsistent information from authorities, replacement of advisors, and stressful deadlines.Conclusions: This study identified promoting and impeding factors in a national postgraduate curriculum development process. Surprisingly the study indicates that pedagogical support provided throughout a process in some aspects might not be useful. General suggestions regarding curriculum reform processes are formulated.

Quality Management of Medical Education at the Carl Gustav Carus Faculty of Medicine, University of Technology Dresden, Germany

The Carl Gustav Carus Faculty of Medicine, University of Technology Dresden, Germany, was founded in 1993 after the reunification of Germany. In 1999, a reform process of medical education was started together with Harvard Medical International. The traditional teacher and discipline-centred curriculum was replaced by a student-centred, interdisciplinary and integrative curriculum which has been named DIPOL (Dresden Integrative Patient/Problem- Oriented Learning). The reform process was accompanied and supported by a parallel-ongoing Faculty Development Program. In 2004, a Quality Management Program in medical education was implemented, and in 2005 medical education received DIN EN ISO 9001:2000 certification. Quality Management Program and DIN EN ISO 9001:2000 certification were/are unique for the 34 medical schools in Germany. The students played a very important strategic role in all processes. They were/are members in all committees like the Faculty Board, the Board of Study Affairs (with equal representation) and the ongoing audits in the Quality Management Program. Students are the only ones who experience all years of the curriculum and are capable of detecting, for example gaps, overlaps, inconsistencies of the curriculum and assessments. Therefore, the in-depth knowledge of students about the medical school's curriculum is a very helpful and essential tool in curriculum reform processes and Quality Management Programs of medical education. The reform in medical education, the establishment of the Quality Management program and the certification resulted in an improvement of quality and output of medical education and medical research.

Building a sense of ownership to facilitate change: the new curriculum

Just as trends in medical education are changing continuously, so must curricula. To keep pace with such trends the School of Medicine Tec de Monterrey, Mexico, underwent a curriculum reform process with the goal of developing a new educational model and reducing resistance to change. The Curriculum Committee created seven subcommittees involving students, medical residents, teachers and directors in the entire process to build a sense of ownership and reduce resistance to change. Clinicians and basic scientists worked collaboratively during three phases: (1) in the process of curriculum revision; (2) in the preparation of an integrated timetable and the course syllabi; (3) in the definition of outcomes. Resistance to change was greatly decreased by involving all faculty members, students and directors throughout. The new curriculum is outcome based, integrated, student centred, community oriented and problem based, with early supervised clinical exposure, an emphasis on professionalism and a holistic, standardized assessment system. Building a sense of ownership by designing strategies and from the outset inviting those involved in the design and implementation of the new curriculum have immensely facilitated change.

CHARTING NEW COURSES: LEADERSHIP IN CURRICULUM REFORM

Law school curriculum reform raises the notion of leadership in two distinct ways. First, curriculum reform is an administrative process and so is well suited to ideas of leadership. Second, legal academics should strive, in the many facets of their career, both to behave as professionals and to model professionalism to others, and leadership is an element of that professionalism. Curriculum reform therefore presents an important, if underappreciated, opportunity for legal academics to take up a leadership role. Leading a process of curriculum reform can be difficult, but there are several ways in which legal academics can improve the chances of a successful outcome.

Fitting it all in: integration of 12 cross-cutting themes into a School of Medicine curriculum

Changing demographic, social, economic and technological trends have impacted the expectations of the Academic Health Center in preparing physicians to serve the needs of the American society, resulting in revisions to current curricula. In addition to the traditional basic sciences and clinical disciplines, accredited medical schools are required to provide curriculum exposure in behavioral health, communication skills, diversity and cultural awareness, ethics, evidence-based medicine, geriatrics, integrative medicine, pain management, palliative care, public health, socio-economic dynamics, and domestic violence. These themes are considered ‘cross-cutting’ since it is recognized these important curricular components apply across all years of medical school. In this article, the authors describe a strategic model developed at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine (UNMSOM) to integrate horizontally and vertically 12 cross-cutting themes as an evolving interdisciplinary curriculum reform process. These areas were defined through a combination of internal self-study, external requirements, and student and faculty interest. In the early stage of use of this model at UNMSOM, the authors describe the new cross-cutting themes that have been integrated. Minimal disruption and a spirit of cooperation and acceptance have characterized the curricular change that has been required. Preliminary assessment indicates that the program has been successful.Practice pointsCross-cutting themes have relevance and need emphasis throughout the medical curriculum.Cross-cutting themes are effectively taught through horizontal and vertical integration.Cross-cutting themes curricula should be designed by local experts with reference to the core competencies, to avoid duplication and facilitate acceptance.Modifications may be made to existing resources such as problem-based learning, lectures, panels, and student performance assessment.Ongoing institutional support is essential and is maintained by proving evidence through assessment of curricular content, student performance and satisfaction.

Building on the Life-Span Perspective

Summary The growth in the older adult population and the demand for better trained geriatric social workers challenge the existing curricula of social work programs. The Geriatric Enrichment Grant funded by the John A. Hartford foundation has provided financial support for curricular reform. Curriculum reform is a challenging undertaking at any level. Each program and educational institution experiences the process of curriculum reform in unique ways. This paper describes one program's experience of curriculum reform for the purpose of infusing geriatric content.

Estudio sobre la introducción del Sistema de Transferencia de Créditos Europeo en Pediatría y modificaciones de la metodología docente

Spanish medical faculties have initiated the new curriculum reform process within the framework of the European Higher Education Area and are required to incorporate the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) to new syllabi before 2010. To test the introduction of the ECTS in pediatrics and modify the teaching methodology. The theoretical and practical programs were adapted; academic objectives and a student evaluation system were established. Students were surveyed on starting the second term of the 2004-05 academic year before the theory examination and again on terminating the academic year: a 5-point Likert-type scale was used for responses. Priorities for generic and specific competencies selected by students were compared with those selected by the National Deans Conference (NDC). The results were analyzed using non-parametric tests. Fifteen credits became 11 ECTS, with 297 student working hours. The theory program was reduced from 80 to 52 lessons. The students prepared 14 tutor-supervised case presentations. The teaching staff considered that learning of theory was similar to previous years (66 %) and that practical learning improved (73.3 %). The students thought the program should continue (73.2 %) but 98.8 % considered the workload excessive. The students believed that their practical training and their ability to prepare and make case presentations significantly improved during the semester. Academic performance was significantly higher than that in students of the previous year. Students agreed with NDC priorities for 9/9 general and 4/17 specific competencies. Estimation of workload by students was significantly higher than that by staff, and 73.3 % of the students believed that workload should be reduced and the examination system improved. Introducing the ECTS improved academic performance, practical training, and self-directed learning. The project was satisfactory for staff and students. Student workload was underestimated.

MEETING DYNAMIC IS MARKET DEMANDS: LEVERAGING CONSULTING PRACTICES TO GUIDE CURRICULUM REFORM

The dot com bust and fears of outsourcing have lead to declining IS enrollments nationwide. IS faculty have not been successful at adapting their curricula to changing market pressures. We maintain that it requires a different skill set to adapt to market forces. When businesses are not able to adapt, they often bring in consultants. Consultants typically employ a methodology to change the business while ensuring buy in and success. We were fortunate to have consultants on our staff that leveraged a change methodology to guide us through the curriculum reform process. This paper presents an account of that process and lessons learned from it.

Parents: support or obstacle for curriculum innovation?

Although systemic reform seems to be a broadly accepted framework for educational change, concrete reform projects still face the uncertainty of how to meet the necessary requirements. This paper considers the case of a curriculum reform process in primary mathematics education that has a focus on the involvement and influence of parents. The data consists of a short address to the parents of first‐graders printed in the teacher’s version of a textbook. In this address, the parents are introduced to the new concept of active‐explorative learning and allocated a specific role within the process of change. By means of discourse analysis and the sociological ideas of exclusion/inclusion, autonomy, and expert/non‐technical discourse, the long‐term consequences of the social role assigned to parents in the programme is discussed.

Review of: Bio2010: transforming undergraduate education for future research biologists, by the National Research Council. Bio2010: read it!

Review of: Bio2010: transforming undergraduate education for future research biologists, by the National Research Council. Bio2010: read it!

O ensino médico no Brasil e na Argentina: uma abordagem comparativa

This thesis is compound by three articles, the introduction and a conclusion which describes by means of a comparative approach the curriculum reform process of the Medical Course both of Federal Fluminense University (UFF) and University of Buenos Aires (UBA), in the last two decades. In the 1st article, “The biomedical model and the reformulation of the medical curriculum of Federal Fluminense University”, we discuss the construction of the biomedical model. The identified criticism in the curriculum reform model of the Medicine Course of UFF and the analysis of this curricular reform process. In the 2nd article, “The Curriculum Reform Process of UBA”, we present a report of the various curriculum reform attempts in the UBA Medicine Course since the 80’s, the historical and cultural antecedents of the Argentinean and the universitary model interfaces. The 3rd article, “The curriculum reform process of the medical course in Brazil and Argentine: a comparative approach” compares both curriculum reform process, the ones of UFF and UBA, in the educational reform context that both countries have been undergoing and the attempts to adjust the internal needs in Health and Educational areas with the international finance agencies demands.

Contemplating Criteria for Science Education Reform: The Case of the Olympia School District

Proposals for current reform in science education elaborate national standards and a plethora of state‐level interpretations commonly labeled as curriculum or learning frameworks. The purpose of this case study was to examine the dynamics of the science curriculum reform process in one of the first school districts to use the Georgia Framework for Learning Mathematics and Science as a basis for their reform initiative. The paper describes the ways in which members of the Olympia School District's Science Curriculum Committee participated in the science curriculum reform process, as well as their personal beliefs about the criteria needed for reform to take place. The results highlight the nature of metaphors guiding reform efforts; the influence of social, historical, economic, and political forces on the reform process; the use of local and professional languages as discourses for communicating about reform; and the complex power relations that influence the micropolitics of reform in the Olympia School District. This study has important implications for other teachers and school districts engaged in standards‐based science curriculum reform. It points to the need for reform to include reflection and analysis of the role of teachers in the reform process and consideration of the purpose of science education reform in society.

The politics of curriculum reform in New Zealand

This article addresses the impact of neoliberal thought on curriculum reform in New Zealand. A new rhetoric of neutrality and fairness, grounded in a view of the market as a ‘level playing field’ for maximizing student choice, is identified. Particular attention is paid to allegations by a powerful lobby group, the New Zealand Business Roundtable (NZBR), of political correctness in The New Zealand Curriculum Framework. While NZBR critics have portrayed the curriculum reform process as a victory for the politically correct Left, the paper suggests that those on the Right have been far more influential in shaping the overall direction of education policy in New Zealand. It is argued that although some members of the NZBR advance a number of legitimate criticisms against The New Zealand Curriculum Framework, the Roundtable systematically ignores the political correctness inherent in its own view of the world.

What should biomedical sciences education in dental schools achieve?

Education for the first professional degree in dentistry is intended to produce graduates capable of offering a wide range of high quality dental services to the general public. More than that, it is expected that graduates will be firmly grounded in the scientific basis for their professional practices and be equipped to evaluate critically and integrate selectively new scientific findings that emerge during their professional lifetimes. In addition, they are expected to be able to work effectively with diverse patient populations and to conduct their practices with a high level of sensitivity to the ethical and psychosocial dimensions of patient care. Indiana University School of Dentistry has undergone a process of curriculum reform that has yielded a new first professional degree program. Its hallmarks are large, multidisciplinary courses (seven courses in the first two years) that are taught using a variety of strategies including problem-based learning in small groups as well as lectures. The biomedical sciences curriculum is concept-based. Students will demonstrate their understanding of science concepts and methods by applying them to the solution of research and health care problems. Biomedical sciences will be taught at a level that will provide a comprehensive understanding of the functioning of the human body in health and disease, allow students to assimilate the coming revolution in molecular medicine, and selectively use new diagnostics, preventives, and therapeutics that evolve as molecular biological technologies yield solutions to current medical and dental problems. Using the biomedical sciences curriculum as a vehicle, we will also achieve the goal of training dentists as critical thinkers, problem solvers, lifelong learners, and ethical practitioners, skillful in peer and self-evaluation, and cognizant of the psychosocial as well as biomedical perspective of health and disease.