Journal of Curriculum Theorizing
Not a member yet
455 research outputs found
Sort by
Project Based Learning and Invitations: A Comparison
No full textThispaper compares two instructional approaches: project based learning andinvitations. It begins with a discussion of the definitions of project basedlearning and invitations as well as their theoretical bases. Then these two approachesare compared in the following aspects: student choice, inquiry question, scopeof inquiry, purpose of inquiry, critical thinking versus critical literacy, andaction orientation. Although project based learning and invitations share somefeatures of inquiry-based learning, it is important to know their distinction thathas significant pedagogical implications. This paper aims to contribute to abetter understanding of project based learning and invitations, theirinterrelationships, and their applications in the classrooms
Avoiding Equivalence by Leveling: Challenging the Consensus-Driven Curriculum that Defines Students as “Average”
No full textFor both economic and political reasons, education policy makers and semi-regulatory organizations have initiated primarily two pseudo-events that they want the public to embrace as a means of perpetuating a consensus-driven curriculum: 1) social justice and equality is achieved by categorizing almost all students’ academic performance as “average”; and 2) high-stakes examinations and rubrics are valid substitutes for demonstrating equity and broad field knowledge. We begin by identifying the problems with attempting to categorize attributes associated with being “average.” This is explained by an educational strategy that we call “equivalence by leveling.” We then examine rubrics and standardized testing and how these assessment protocols adversely affect “average” students. In doing so, we investigate the groups that benefit from these policies, and how these groups cause collateral damage. We close by offering suggestions toward a more dialectic framework that includes dissensus, conversation, and dialectic interaction as prerequisite criteria for curriculum development
Race as the Benu: A Reborn Consciousness for Teachers of our Youngest Children
No full textInspired by the Egyptian mythology of the benu bird, a bird that lives for centuries until it builds itself a nest of cinnamon twigs and sets the nest and itself on fire to be reborn from its ashes, in this article, I name the racial death and rebirth that I believe whites must go through – guided by the efforts, experience, and knowledge of persons of color – in order to experience a new racial identity constructed from love. This discussion draws from theorizations derived from a nine-month long ethnographic study of race and racism in the home and community contexts of three young white children. Further application of my learning lead me to propose that such a rebirth must begin with early childhood teacher educators, classroom teachers, and pre-service teachers because of the impact their teaching has in the lives of young children. I argue for explicitly teaching about the social, political, and economic intentionality with which whiteness was designed and is perpetuated as a racist construct. In other words, that which was “socially constructed must be socially destroyed . . . [and socially reconstructed if we are] to achieve our humanity” (Boutte, personal communication, 2012)
Hey, I'm No Superman: The Teacher as Hero
No full textAlan Block’s Hey, I’m No Superman: The Teacher as Hero, is a engaging journey through teacher identity formation as it relates to current education reform efforts
Raising the House of Rousseau: Historical Consciousness in the Contemporary ECE Teacher Education Classroom
No full textIn an on-line graduate class, Current Issues in Early Childhood Education, we raised the specter of Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) as a way to re-image criticalhistorical and socio-cultural notions of childhood and child care in westerncurricular traditions and inheritances. Inviting Rousseau to discuss his treatise Emile or On Education (1979) within atechnological platform complicated the origins of modern child discourses andshowed how such concepts are not fixed and eternal but rather located, interpreted, contingent, and always partial (Caputo, 1987). Raising Rousseau allowed students to reflect on the significance of historical consciousness andinquiry as an approach to the interpretive study of curriculum while critiquing western traditional ideas on early childhood education. Against the backgroundof contemporary concerns around curriculum and praxis we envision are-awakening and stronger focus on the history of childhood and early childhood education both theoretically and pedagogically
Elementary Teachers’ Design of Arts Based Teaching: Investigating the Possibility of Developing Mathematics-Music Integrated Curriculum
No full textIn the current study we aimed to examine preservice and inservice teachers’ strategies in planning arts based interdisciplinary instructions. By focusing on teachers’ preparation for teaching mathematics lessons integrated with music-themed activities, we collected and analyzed 78 lessons plans, of which 37 lesson plans were developed by the preservice teachers and 41 lesson plans were developed by inservice teachers. The study examined and compared preservice and inservice teachers’ content foci and instructional processes in strategizing mathematics-music integrated pedagogy into their own original lesson plans. A total of 15 different ways to link music and mathematics content areas were identified from all the lesson plans. Differences in content selections and instructional processes coverage between preservice teacher and inservice teachers’ lesson plans were also explored
Internationalization, Internalization, and Intersectionality of Identity: A Critical Race Feminist Re-Images Curriculum
No full textThis poetry/paper article is a re-accounting, a poetic counterstory in curriculum, of the praxis of an African American female teacher-educator working against internalized notions of curriculum as standards by re-imagining curriculum through the lives of third grade students and her teacher education colleagues. Using critical race feminism (Berry, 2010; Berry & Mizelle, 2006; Wing, 2003) as her framework, the author will describe how she moves curriculum from internalized to connected, collective, and introspective. The author will provide her rationale for the necessity of such movements in curriculum and will conclude the paper with a discussion about the possibilities that exist in such re-imagination
Whole Learning: Student Affairs' Challenge to College Curriculums
No full textDiscussions and understandings of college curriculums are focused almost exclusively on the academic experience. Such framing of discourses on college curriculums began in the 17th century and continue through today’s increasing focus on strict academic disciplines and linear, hierarchical structuring of the university experience. The development of student affairs departments on American college campuses occurred as a challenge to rigidifying conceptions of curriculum and learning experiences in the college environment. Throughout the field’s history, student affairs has existed for the purposes of challenging colleges to think more expansively about the college curriculum, pedagogical practices, and student learning – beyond the academic or vocational to a “whole” education. This challenge has developed in the philosophical and guiding statements of the student affairs profession, as well as in the programs and initiatives that raise discussions or offer education not being examined in the traditional academic college curriculum.