Cycle Four: How should curriculum be created?

After this week’s readings, my first response to this question is to look at how it should not be created- by people who know nothing about curriculum and education, as the example with the Texas State Board of Education illustrates. Reading that article sparked my interest in the makeup of the North Carolina State Board of Education. I remember wondering when researching candidates before the elections this past November why so many people with no experience in education would want positions on the school board, or as superintendent (and, for that matter, why given a choice of a former teacher or an entrepreneur with a degree in political science anyone would not vote for the teacher.) What I found is that the current North Carolina board of education is made up of six former educators and six non-educators who, “set(s) policy and general procedures for public school systems across the state, including teacher pay and qualifications, course content, testing requirements, and manages state education funds.” Although Tyler warns that subject specialists can be “too technical, too specialized” in their ideas about curriculum, I would much rather have too specialized than not at all specialized. Perhaps having variety (school board members who lack experience in education, but are parents, for example) lends a needed balance to the mix, but I think one of the most important things in curriculum development is that it should be created by experts in the field. I have been shocked over and over again at the people who have no knowledge of curriculum who influence policy. I realize my lack of experience and limitations as far as business goes, and I would never try to influence business policy. I don’t understand, then, why others would try to do the same in my field!

I realize the point was not who should create curriculum, but how, but I think the who is an important basis to have established, since it’s apparently not as obvious as one would think. However, curriculum initiatives such as South Korea’s recent move to make English as a Foreign Language instruction more communicative, (which experts in the field support) without taking into consideration the resources available (low number of native speaking or highly proficient teachers), don’t have the hoped-for results either. This is why Tyler’s emphasis on “study” is so important. He reminds curriculum developers to study first what students need and consider what the curriculum can do about providing that, but to extend that study to the school and community as well. Such a study in South Korea would have revealed the discrepancies in the new curriculum and perhaps led them to find a more practical, feasible way to implement best practices as suggested by experts. Nancy J. Mooney and Ann T. Mausbach, in their book Align the Design encourage curriculum developers to “learn, then do.” I think that’s essential advice for any type of curriculum development.

A final aspect of curriculum development that I’d like to comment on is the evaluation stage. I think this can be the trickiest to implement, especially at present with new accountability modes and teachers being held responsible for (and maybe paid based on) student performance on evaluations. Tyler discusses evaluating “how far the learning experiences as developed and organized are actually producing the desired results,” identifying, “the results of the plans” (105). This idea of evaluating the curriculum instead of only the students is something that I think is often overlooked. A new curriculum will be presented and implemented, and no changes are made to it until the next completely new curriculum comes out ten years later. Evaluating the curriculum and not only what the students are able to recall on a standardized test about the curriculum is an important stage.

Tyler also discusses taking samples of student work to get a snapshot of what the student has learned and how he/she has improved throughout the course. This portfolio take on evaluation is very different from the state mandated standardized tests our students prepare for at the end of a course (and make up 25% of their grades in North Carolina!) I like the possibilities technological advances like the Khan Academy can offer us in terms of evaluation, tracking every aspect of what students are learning and struggling with in a way most teachers don’t have the time for. This also facilitates the connection of curriculum from year to year, as teachers can see a student’s progress through previous courses as well to see where gaps of knowledge might be. I would love to have a snapshot of each student available to me at the beginning of a new year to get a sense of the student’s academic strengths and weaknesses. As it is by the time we realize there seems to be an issue and get in touch with the previous teacher to find out if it’s something that he/she noticed as well, and how he/she found best to deal with it, much valuable time has been lost. (Not to mention the time it would take to contact each student’s past teachers as well as carry on conversations about all of your previous students!)