Curriculum in an Era of Standards and Accountability

1. Curriculum in an Era of Standards and Accountability ED 1010

2. Different Definitions of Curriculum • The subject matter taught to students • A course of study, or a systematic arrangement of courses • The planned educational experiences offered by a school • The experiences students have under the guidance of the school • The process teachers go through in selecting and organizing learning experiences for their students

3. Different Dimensions of the Curriculum • The explicit curriculum • The implicit, or “hidden,” curriculum • The null curriculum • Extracurriculum

4. The Explicit Curriculum at Different Grade Levels • The current elementary curriculum emphasizes language arts and math, and de-emphasizes science, social studies, art, and music. • Middle schools attempt to integrate the curriculum, combining and relating concepts and skills from different disciplines. • The junior high and high school curriculum focuses on specialized and separate content courses.

5. Where do teachers find information about the Explicit Curriculum? • http://schools.utah.gov/curr/core/ • http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/courses/descriptions/index.html • http://www.nctm.org/ • http://www.ncte.org/ • http://www.davis.k12.ut.us/district/curric/desk.html

6. The Implicit Curriculum • Includes the types of learning children acquire from the nature and organization of the classroom as well as the attitudes and actions of the teacher. • Influences the attitudes and values students take away from school. • Teachers and their actions exert the strongest influence on the implicit curriculum.

7. Brainstorm • What are some things you have learned in school that were part of the Implicit Curriculum?

8. What is NOT taught? The Null Curriculum • Includes topics left out of the explicit curriculum • Often includes controversial topics or ones that teachers don’t know about or feel uncomfortable teaching • Currently is strongly influenced by standards and their corresponding high-stakes tests

9. Brainstorm • What has been the effect of the Null Curriculum on your education?

10. The Extracurriculum • Consists of learning experiences that extend beyond the core of students’ formal studies • Includes clubs, sports, school plays, and other activities that don’t earn academic credit • Low-ability students, members of cultural minorities, and students placed at-risk are less likely to participate in extracurricular activities.

11. The Extracurriculum (continued) • Students who participate in extracurricular activities have: • higher academic performance and attainment • reduced dropout rates • lower rates of substance abuse • less sexual activity among girls • better psychological adjustment, including higher self-esteem and reduced feelings of social isolation • reduced rates of delinquent behavior

12. Percentage of public school seniors reporting selected indicators of school success by participation and nonparticipation in extracurricular activities, 1992 Indicators Participants Non-participants No unexcused absences 50.4 36.2 Never skipped classes 50.7 42.3 Have a GPA of 3.0 or above 30.6 10.8 Highest quartile on a composite math and reading assessment 29.8 14.2 Expect to earn a bachelor's degree or higher 68.2 48.2 http://nces.ed.gov/pubs95/web/95741.asp

13. Extracurriculum Discussion • What extracurricular activities were/are you involved in and how did/does it impact your education?

14. Make a Graphic Organizer • At your table, make a graphic organizer depicting your experiences with the various parts of the curriculum in your educational experiences.

15. Forces That Influence the Curriculum • Standards and accountability • NCLB • U-PASS • Professional organizations • The federal government • Textbooks • The professional teacher—perhaps more than any of the others

18. Teacher Influences • How does the classroom teacher influence curriculum?

19. A National Curriculum • Common in Europe and other industrialized countries • UK • Japan • Why not the U.S.? • Runs counter to state and local control of education

20. A National Curriculum (continued) • Advocates claim a national curriculum would: • Provide coherence and stability across states • Create uniform standards across states • Opponents claim a national curriculum would: • Create a massive and unwieldy federal bureaucracy • Not be responsive to local needs and student diversity

21. Curriculum Controversies:Sex Education • The need for sex education is suggested by national statistics on teenage sexuality. • The majority of parents and the population at large favor some type of sex education. • A small minority of parents favor abstinence-only sex education. • Research suggests that abstinence-only sex education programs do not increase the likelihood of teenage sex.

22. Curriculum Controversies: Moral and Character Education • Character education stresses, teaches, and rewards moral values and positive character traits such as honesty and citizenship. • Moral education emphasizes student decision making and moral reasoning.

23. Moral and Character Education (continued) • There is general public consensus about the teaching of these values: • Honesty • Democracy • Acceptance of diverse peoples • Caring for friends and family members • These is less national consensus about the following: • Homosexuality • Abortions

24. Service Learning – a part of character education • Combines service to the community with content-learning objectives to promote ethical and moral development • Becoming more popular, with 25% of high school students participating • Courts have upheld the legality of required service learning courses.

25. Curriculum Controversies: Intelligent Design • A theory suggesting that our universe is the product of an intelligent cause or being versus random, undirected causes such as natural selection. • Opponents of intelligent design argue that it is little more than creationism, a religious view that the universe was created by God as described in the Bible. • The courts have held that formally teaching intelligent design as an alternative to evolution violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution.

26. Curriculum Controversies: Censorship • The following books have been banned from the public school curriculum at various times: • Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck • The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank • The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain • To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee • Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman • Courts have generally sided against censorship as a parental right, ruling that schools and teachers have a right to expose students to different ideas and points of view.

27. Women and Minorities in the Curriculum • Critics contend the explicit curriculum over-emphasizes the contributions of white males and has ignored or failed to adequately represent the contributions of women and cultural minorities. • Critics of a white, Eurocentric emphasis in the curriculum contend that it sends the wrong message to minority and female students about their capabilities as humans. • Efforts are being made to include more literary works by women and cultural minorities in the curriculum as well as their contributions to history. Postmodernism