There are many different perspectives to what curriculum entails. I believe that curriculum is made of several different components. Curriculum is the set of guidelines that define what a course of study will be. Curriculum could also include textbooks or materials used in the class as well as the content to be covered. It may also be the set of objectives or what the learning outcomes should be at the conclusion of the course of study.
Now that I have explained my definition of curriculum, who should design it? I believe this is a job for the education professionals. This means that the teachers, supervisors and administrators should be actively involved in the process of curriculum development. I do not believe that a textbook should define the curriculum for the course, but rather a curriculum should define the textbook. I think it would also be a great idea for the parents and students to be a part of the curriculum development. While teachers have great insight as to what may work well in the classroom, students can be very helpful critics. After all, it is the students that are responsible for their own learning.
So, who should control it? Well I know who does control it, but I feel that the same people who create the curriculum should have the control. After reading and discussing about mission statements, it is imperative that the teachers, administrators, and students are actively involved in the mission statement process. Otherwise the mission statement becomes just another piece of paper that schools can check off of their big checklist of things to complete for the year. I feel that the same is true for curriculum. If curriculum is made for courses of study with little or no input from the teachers involved, the curriculum becomes just another piece of paper to check off of the checklist. Curriculum needs to be a document where all stakeholders are involved in creating it so they will be more likely to follow it. I can relate this to a classroom example. If a teacher gives rules to the students and says that this is the way we will do things this year, the students may follow it or they may resist it. However, if the teacher works with the students to develop a list of rules as a class the students will be more likely to follow it and to remember the rules, simply because they are actively involved in the process.
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2 comments:
I tend to disagree with you that the parents and the students should be involved in the curriculum writing. It's a nice idea in theory, but I believe that the curriculum needs to be designed by professional educators. Those educators will undoubtedly pull from experiences that they have had with students and use that to help create meaningful activities to reach thier desired end, but I don't know that the students should actually be involved in the process. As for the parents, I'm not sure that the work would get done in an effecient manner on a curriculum committee because they are not knowledgeable about curriculum writing or the content.
Kate, you bring up a valid point. I do not feel that the parents and students should be the only members of a curriculum committee, however, I do feel that their input could be helpful. I am also more concerned with choosing texts to go along with the curriculum, than with the actual written document used to guide teaching. Often times schools choose texts and find out later that the students have difficulty reading them or that parents have difficulty reading them. This can be challenging, especially when the parent community is actively involved in helping their children succeed academically. This makes me recall conversations I have had with other educators about the issue of standardized tests. We discussed how the "test makers" are not necessarily teachers. Although they may pull from their own experiences to create test questions, how educated are they in the particular subject area and do they have enough knowledge to create test questions for the various grade levels? Since they are not teachers, are they capable of creating valid questions?
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