Equality Curriculum

1. Equality Curriculum Dr. Mohamed Nur-Awaleh EAF 228, Fall 2001

2. Agenda • The Findings of the Coleman Report (1966) • Explanations of Educational Inequality • Student Centered • School Centered • Sociology of Curriculum • Four types of curriculum • Social Efficiency Curriculum • Humanistic Curriculum • Developmentalist Curriculum • Social Meliorist Curriculum Dr. Mohamed Nur-Awaleh

3. The Findings of the Coleman Report (1966) • Most African-American students and White students attended different schools. • According to “measurable characteristics (e.g., physical facilities, curricula, material resources, and teachers) these schools were quite similar • The measured differences in school resources seemed to have little or no effect on the difference in students’ performance on standardized tests Dr. Mohamed Nur-Awaleh

4. The Findings of the Coleman Report (1966)(cont.) • Measured student difference on standardized tests showed considerable differences, with white students well ahead of African-American students in test results. • The only variable which seemed to affect educational achievement (outcomes) was quality of peers Dr. Mohamed Nur-Awaleh

5. The Findings of the Coleman Report (1966)(cont.) • Minority children, especially African-Americans, Latinos, and Native-Am. Entered schools with lower achievement scores and this gap increased throughout their stay in school. Dr. Mohamed Nur-Awaleh

6. Explanations of Educational Inequality • For policy makers, teachers, citizens, and scholars of Functionalist orientations, inequality in educational attainment is troublesome because it challenges what they take to be education’s function of providing equality of opportunity and social mobility. • From conflict perspective, they are also bothered but not surprised, by the impact of family background on educational success. Dr. Mohamed Nur-Awaleh

7. Explanations of Educational Inequality(cont.) • Student Centered They emphasize the impact on student learning not of what schools do but of what students bring to school. Dr. Mohamed Nur-Awaleh

8. Student Centered (cont.) • Coleman Report (1966) 1. Genetic or Biological explanation- they trace lower educational attainment of working class, poor and minorities largely due to a lack of genes contributing to intelligence Arthur Jensen (1969) “How Much Can We Boast IQ”Charles Murray, (1994) The Bell Curve Dr. Mohamed Nur-Awaleh

9. Student Centered (cont.) 2.Cultural Deprivation (deficit or disadvantaged) they argue that working class and minorities perform poorly because their families do not raise them in such a fashion as to develop the skills and attitudes that contribute to school success. • Disadvantaged children without adequate skills in using English language. Dr. Mohamed Nur-Awaleh

10. Student Centered (cont.) • “ Have low educational and occupational aspirations, poor sense of time, and less ability to work without immediate reward. These deficiencies in skill and attitude are rooted in parents’ poor socialization practices, the absence of the father, teenage pregnancy, family’s frequent poverty and unemployment” • “Cultural deprivation theory was in large part responsible for the development of compensatory Education programs. Schools were called upon to break the cycle of poverty” (Martin Deutsch, The Disadvantaged Child, Lewis Oscar (1965). The Culture of Poverty) Dr. Mohamed Nur-Awaleh

11. Student Centered (cont.) 3. Cultural Difference Theories they acknowledge that arguments that working class and minority students arrive at school lacking the attitudes and skills that schools expect, but it rejects the claim that this lack is due to any deficiency on the part of working class/minority students or their parents. Dr. Mohamed Nur-Awaleh

12. Student Centered (cont.) • Cultural Difference (cont.) • School failure is a result of difference between the culturally derived white-middle-class communication patterns of the school and those students’ home culture • They argue that the problem lies in students’ refusal to participate in the schooling process. (Paul wiles, 1981, Baratz and Baratz, 1970, Asante, 1990). Dr. Mohamed Nur-Awaleh

13. Student Centered (cont.) • A micro level or societal views of minority students is central work of Professor John Ogbu. A core element in his theory is student perception of their chances in the labor market. He argues that the schools performance of minority students is rooted in the connection they see between schooling and how successful they will be in the job market. • He argues that minority students may engage in “Cultural inversion” or resistance to the cultural behaviors and language forms of the dominant culture. They adopt cultural behaviors that specifically differentiate them from the dominant group. • Getting good grades, speaking standard English and listening to “white” music may be constructed by their peers as “acting white” Dr. Mohamed Nur-Awaleh

14. Student Centered (cont.) • John Ogbu, (1978) Minority Education and Caste: The American System in cross-cultural Perspective. • Ogbu and Fordham (1986). Black Students: Copying with the Burden of ‘acting white’. The Urban Review. Vol. 18 (3): 176-206, • Ogbu (1983). Minority Status and Schooling in Plural Societies. Comparative Education Review. Vol. 27. No. 2:168-190. • Fordham, S. (1991). Peer-Proofing academic competition among Black adolescents: “Acting White” Black American style. • In C. Sleeter (Ed) empowering through multicultural Education (pp. 69-93). New York: SUNY Press. Dr. Mohamed Nur-Awaleh

15. Explanations of Educational Inequality II • School Centered Explanations: • Factors within the school such as teachers, curriculum, resources, quality of schools, curriculum grouping --School Financing: J. Kozol (1991). Savage Inequalities • Academic Learning Time: the idea is how much time you spend learning determines how much you learn. • Effective School: how school organization and climate contribute to the effective education. -- Ron Edmonds (1982) Program for School improvement: An overview: Educational Leadership (40) (3), 4-12. -- Shoemaker, J. (1986). Developing Effectiveness in School district, and the classroom. Equity and Choice, 2: 1-8 Dr. Mohamed Nur-Awaleh

16. School Centered (cont.) • Definitions and characteristics of effective schools include the following • A safe and orderly environment that is not oppressive and is conductive to teaching and learning; • A clear school mission through which the staff shares a commitment to instructional goals, priorities, assessment procedures, and accountability; • Instructional leadership by a principle who understands and applies the characteristics of instructional effectiveness; Dr. Mohamed Nur-Awaleh

17. School Centered (cont.) • Definitions and characteristics of effective schools include the following (cont.) • A climate of high expectations in which the class demonstrates that all students can obtain mastery of the basic skills; • High time-on-task brought when a high percentage of students’ time is spent engaged in planned activities to master basic skills; • Frequent monitoring of student progress using the results to improve individual performance and also to improve the instructional program. Dr. Mohamed Nur-Awaleh

18. Sociology of Curriculum • Sociology of Curriculum is specifically concerned with school knowledge and relationships among the curriculum, schools, and dominant groups in society • What is Curriculum? • A course of study or a plan for what is be taught in any given school or education institution Dr. Mohamed Nur-Awaleh

19. Sociology of Curriculum (cont.) • What is Curriculum? (cont.) • What happens to the students in school? • The total school experience provided to the students • Curriculum is seen as socially constructed knowledge organized into formal educational system to achieve the social, political and economic functions of schooling. Dr. Mohamed Nur-Awaleh

20. Sociology of Curriculum (cont.) • In his work, The Structuring of Pedagogic Discourse, Basil Bernstein (1990) identified three components of curriculum: • The knowledge that the educational system considers valid and worthy of transmission. • The instructional methods of teachers- the way in which they convey such information to students. • The assessments of such educational efforts by administrative functionaries. Dr. Mohamed Nur-Awaleh

21. Sociology of Curriculum (cont.) • These three components of educational training are part of what Bernstein calls message systems, which transmit the academic educational knowledge that has been identified as valid by schools and society Dr. Mohamed Nur-Awaleh

22. Sociology of Curriculum (cont.) • He distinguished between traditional curriculum and integrated curriculum • Traditional curriculum (collection-oriented model)- fact-stuffing types of curriculum that seek to cram information, values, and skills to the minds of the students. How a given body of facts, concepts, and understanding can be transferred effectively and efficiently from teachers to learners. For example, colleges of education have curriculum specialist who train pre-service teachers and graduate students in science of curriculum design. Dr. Mohamed Nur-Awaleh

23. Sociology of Curriculum (cont.) • He distinguished between traditional curriculum and integrated curriculum (cont.) • Models for the development of curriculum are produced by these specialist who view knowledge as something to be managed by state departments of education, school boards, administrators, and teachers and to given to students usually in the form of prepackaged designs, kits, formulas, approaches, materials and/or list of skills and objectives. Educators categorize and manage knowledge, and students are required to master it. Dr. Mohamed Nur-Awaleh

24. Sociology of Curriculum (cont.) • He distinguished between traditional curriculum and integrated curriculum (cont.) • Collection-oriented curriculum practices appears most often in the lower grades, where differences between academic discipline were less important or where one teacher is asked to teach many subjects • Limited teacher autonomy and isolation are widespread in these traditional setting Dr. Mohamed Nur-Awaleh

25. Sociology of Curriculum (cont.) • Reconceptualist Model • is more student centered • is marked by a more unifying approach and presents information as part of a social entity • it examines how different types of knowledge are provided for different types of students and how curriculum is organized and stratified • It views curriculum within the social context of schools and as reflection of interest groups within the broader society Dr. Mohamed Nur-Awaleh

26. Sociology of Curriculum (cont.) • Reconceptualist Model (cont.) They ask the following questions: • How do schools group children for instruction? • How much and what kinds of knowledge are presented by the teachers in these groups? • How do teacher-student interactions differ from one level group to another? • How are different people in the society represented in school texts? • Are there differences in the amount of information and types of content provided in the curriculum according to ethnicity, social class and gender categories of students? Dr. Mohamed Nur-Awaleh

27. Four types of curriculum • Richard Kliebard (1986) The Struggle for The American Curriculum, outlines four types of curriculum in the twentieth century: • Social Efficiency Curriculum: a philosophically pragmatic approach developed in the early 20th century as response to the development of mass public secondary education. The basic assumption of the social efficiency curriculum is that different groups of students should receive different curricula as measured by standardized testing Dr. Mohamed Nur-Awaleh

28. Four types of curriculum (cont)1. Social Efficiency Curriculum • Social Efficiency Curriculum (cont.) • It stresses the relationship between schooling & the activities of adults within society • The school curriculum is tailored to prepare students for diverse places in society; thus the result is that the students often receive very different curricula based on their race, class, and gender. • The development of the social efficiency curriculum in the 20th century was related to the scientific management of the schools • Advocates of social efficiency believe that applying techniques of industry to the management of schools will make them efficient, smooth running machines for transforming students into workers well equipped for a well-run economy. Dr. Mohamed Nur-Awaleh

29. Four types of curriculum (cont)2. Humanistic Curriculum • Humanistic Curriculum: reflects the idealist philosophy that knowledge of the traditional liberal arts is the cornerstone of an educated citizenry and that the purpose of education is to present to students the best of what has been thought and written Dr. Mohamed Nur-Awaleh

30. Four types of curriculum (cont)2. Humanistic Curriculum • Humanistic Curriculum (cont.) • This curriculum focuses on the Western heritage as the basis for intellectual development • From a functionalist perspective, the purpose of schooling is to transmit a common body of knowledge in order to reproduce cultural heritage • The K-12 curriculum in the “ traditional liberal arts” approach would increase students’ reasoning power through traditional academic subject Dr. Mohamed Nur-Awaleh

31. Four types of curriculum (cont)3. Developmentalist Curriculum • Developmentalist Curriculum: is related to the needs and the interests of the student rather than the needs of the Society. • This curriculum emanated from the aspects of Dewey’s writings related to the relationship between the child and the curriculum. • It is student-centered philosophy • It has been the least influential on American public school curricula. Dr. Mohamed Nur-Awaleh

32. Four types of curriculum (cont)4. Social Meliorist Curriculum • Social Meliorist Curriculum: was philosophically social Reconstructionist (the radical wing of progressive education), developed in the 1930s. • Two of the most influential of the social Meliorist was: George Counts, Dare the schools Build a New Social Order, and Harold Rugg. Both of these authors argued that the school curriculum should teach students to think and help solve societal problems, if not to change the society itself. • The role of the curriculum is to stress that students became aware of social problems and to became active in changing the world Dr. Mohamed Nur-Awaleh

33. Politics of the Curriculum • The central question in the politics of the curriculum is: Who shapes the curriculum? • From functionalist perspective, the pluralist model applies to this question. • From Conflict perspective the elite model apples to this question. Dr. Mohamed Nur-Awaleh

34. Questions and Comments Thank you!