PED 09 - The Teacher and the School Curriculum PDF

PED 09 – The Teacher and the School Curriculum 1 Southern Luzon State University College of Teacher Education PED 09 – The Teacher and the School Curriculum Introduction to Curriculum...

PED 09 – The Teacher and the School Curriculum 1 Southern Luzon State University College of Teacher Education PED 09 – The Teacher and the School Curriculum Introduction to Curriculum Module 1 - Curriculum in School and the Teacher as a Curricularist Overview Module 1 is all about school curricula and the teacher. This introductory module identifies the different types of curricula that exist in the teacher’s classroom and school. Further, it 1 describes the important roles of the teacher as a curricularist who engages in different facets of curriculum development in any educational level. Objectives At the end of this module, the students are expected to: 1. Discuss the different curricula that exist in schools. 2. Explain the role of the teacher as a curricularist in the classroom and school. 3. Analyze the significance of curriculum and the curriculum development. Knowledge Urn Have you read “The Sabre- Tooth Curriculum by Harold Benjamin (1939)?” Take some time to read it and find out what curriculum is all about during those times. Start here and enjoy reading. A man by the name of New- First- Hammer- Maker knew how to do things his community needed to have done, and he had the energy and the will to go ahead and do them. By virtue of these characteristics, he was an educated man. New –First was also a thinker. Then as now, there were few lengths to which men would not go to avoid the lab our and pain of thought…. New-First got to the point where he became strongly dissatisfied with the accustomed ways of his tribe. He began to catch glimpses of ways in which life might be made better for himself, his family and his group. By virtue of this development. He became a dangerous man…. New-First thought about how he could harness the children’s play to better the life of the community. He considered what adults do for survival and introduced these activities to children in a deliberate and formal way. These included catching fish with bare hands, clubbing little woolly horses, and chasing away- sabre-toothed-tigers-with-fire. These then became the curriculum and the community began to prosper-with plenty of food, hides for attire and protection from threat. “It is supposed that all would have gone well forever with this good educational system, if conditions of life in that community remained forever the same.” But conditions changed. The glacier began to melt and the community could no longer see the fish to catch with their bare hands, and only the most agile and clever fish remained which hid from the people. The woolly horses were ambitious and decided to leave the region. The tigers got pneumonia and most died. The few remaining tigers left. In their place, fierce bears arrived who would not be chased by fire. The community was in trouble. One day, in desperation, someone made a net from willow twigs and found a new way to catch fish- and the supply was even more plentiful than before. The community also devised a system of traps on the path to snare the bears. Attempts to change education system to include these new techniques however encountered “stern opposition”. These are also activities we need to know. Why can’t the schools teach them? But most of the tribe particularly the wise old men who controlled the school, smiled indulgently at this suggestions. “That wouldn’t be education…it would be mere training”. We don’t teach fish grabbing to catch fish, we teach it to develop a generalized agility which can never be duplicated by mere training… and so on. “If you had any education yourself, you would know that the essence of true education is timelessness. It is something that endures through changing conditions like a solid rock standing squarely and firmly in the middle of a ranging torrent.” Prepared by Prof. Simeona S. Abraham, Dr. Luis Miguel P. Saludez, Prof. Joy Therese L. Villon  PED 09 – The Teacher and the School Curriculum 2 Southern Luzon State University College of Teacher Education PED 09 – The Teacher and the School Curriculum The story was written in 1939. Curriculum then, was seen as a tradition of organized knowledge taught in schools of the 19th century. Two centuries later, the concept of a curriculum has broadened to include several modes of thoughts or experiences. No formal, non-formal or informal education exists without a curriculum. Classrooms will be empty with no curriculum. Teachers will have nothing to do, if there is no curriculum. Curriculum is at the heart of the teaching professions. Every teacher is guided by some sort of curriculum in the classroom and in schools. In the current Philippine educational system, different schools are established in varied educational levels which have corresponding recommended curricula. The educational levels are: 1. Basic Education. These level includes Kindergarten, Grade 1 to Grade 6 for elementary, and for secondary, Grade 7 to Grade 10, for the Junior High School and Grade 11 and 12 and for the Senior High School. Each of the levels has its specific recommended curriculum. The new basic education levels are provided in the K to 12 Enhanced Curriculum of 2013 of the Department of Education. 2. Technical Vocational Education. This is post-secondary technical vocational educational and training taken care of by Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA). For the TechVoc track in SHS of DepEd, DepEd and TESDA work in close coordination. 3. Higher Education. It includes the Baccalaureate or Bachelor Degrees and the Graduate Degrees (Master’s and Doctorate) which are under the regulation of commission on Higher Education (CHED) In whatever levels of schooling and in various types of learning environment, several curricula exist, Let us find out how Allan Glatthorn (2000) as mentioned in Bilbao, et al (2008) classified these: Types of Curricula in Schools 1. Recommended Curriculum. Almost all curricula found in our schools are recommended. For Basic Education, these are recommended by the Department of Education (DepEd), for Higher Education, by the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and for vocational education by TESDA. These three government agencies oversee and regulate Philippine education. The recommendations come in the form of memoranda, policies, standards and/or guidelines. Other professional organizations or international bodies like UNESCO also recommend curricula schools. Recommended curricula are typically formulated at a high level of generality; they are most presented as policy recommendations, list of goals, suggested graduation requirements, and general recommendations about the content and sequence of a field of study, such as social sciences. 2. Written Curriculum. This includes documents based on the recommended curriculum. They come in the form of course of study, syllabi, modules, books or instructional guides among others. A packet of this written curriculum is the teacher’s lesson plan. The most recent written curriculum is the K to 12 for Philippine Basic Education. This is intended primarily to ensure that educational goals of the system are being accomplished; it is a curriculum of control. Typically, the written curriculum is much more specific and comprehensive than the recommended, indicating a rationale that supports the curriculum, the general goals to be accomplished, the specific objectives to be mastered, the sequence in which those objectives should be studied, and the kinds of learning activities that should be used. Note, however that Glatthorn (1980) questioned such comprehensiveness and recommended that scope-and-sequence-and-chart, a review of the research, a list of course objectives, and a brief list of materials to be used. This simpler format, he believed, would make the written curriculum more likely to be used. 3. Taught Curriculum. From what has been written or planned, the curriculum has to be implemented or taught. The teacher and the learners will put life to the written curriculum. The skill of the teacher to facilitate learning based on the written curriculum with the aid of instructional materials and facilities will be necessary. The taught curriculum will depend largely on the teaching style of the teacher and the learning style of the learners. Prepared by Prof. Simeona S. Abraham, Dr. Luis Miguel P. Saludez, Prof. Joy Therese L. Villon  PED 09 – The Teacher and the School Curriculum 3 Southern Luzon State University College of Teacher Education PED 09 – The Teacher and the School Curriculum 4. Supported Curriculum. This is described as support materials that the teacher needs to make learning and teaching meaningful. These include print materials like books, charts, posters, worksheets, or non- print materials like Power Point presentation, movies, slides, models, relias, mock-ups and other electronics illustrations. Supported curriculum also includes facilities where learning occurs outside or inside the four-walled building. These include the playground, science laboratory, audio-visual rooms, zoo, museum, market or the plaza. These are the places where authentic learning through direct experiences occur. 5. Assesses Curriculum. Taught and supported curricula have to be evaluated to find out if the teacher has succeeded or not in facilitating learning. In the process of teaching and at the end of every lesson or teaching episode, an assessment is made. It can be either be assessment for learning, assessment as learning or assessment of learning. If the process is to find the progress of learning, then he assessed curriculum is for learning, but if it is to find out how much has been learned or mastered, then it is assessment of learning. Either way, such curriculum is the assessed curriculum. 6. Learned Curriculum. How to do we know if the student has learned? We always believe that if a student changed behavior, he/she has learned. For example, from a non-reader to a reader or from not knowing to knowing or from being disobedient to being obedient. The positive outcome of teaching is an indicator of learning. These are measured by tools in assessment, which can indicate the cognitive, affective and psychomotor outcomes. Learned curriculum will also demonstrate higher order and critical thinking and lifelong skills. 7. Hidden/Implicit Curriculum. This curriculum is not deliberately planned, but has a great impact on the behavior of the learner. Peer influences, school environment, media, parental pressures, societal changes, cultural practices, natural calamities, are some factors that create the hidden curriculum. Teachers should be sensitive and aware of his hidden curriculum. Teachers must have good foresight to include these in the written curriculum, in order to bring to the surface what are hidden. In every teacher’s classroom, not all these curricula may be present at one time. Many of them are deliberately planned, like the recommended, written, taught, supported, assessed, and learned curricula. However, a hidden curriculum is implied, and a teacher may or may not be able to predict its influence on learning. All of these have significant role on the life of the teachers as a facilitator of learning and have direct implication to the life of the learners. Now that you are fully aware that there are seven types of curricula operating in every teacher’s classroom, it is then every necessary to learn deeper and broader about the role of the teacher in relation to the school curriculum. The Teacher as a Curricularist The word curricularist is described as a professional who is a curriculum specialist (Hayes, 1991; Ornstein & Hunkins, 2004; Hewitt, 2006). A person who is involved in curriculum knowing, writing, planning, implementing, evaluating, innovating, and initiating may be designated as curricularist. A TEACHER’S role is broader and inclusive of other functions and so a teacher is a curricularist. So what does a TEACHER do to deserve the label curricularist? Let us took at the different roles of the teacher in the classroom and in the school. The classroom is the first place of curricular engagement. The first school experience sets the tone to understand the meaning of schooling through the interactions of learners and teachers that will lead to learning. Hence, curriculum is the heart of schooling. The teacher as a curricularist… 1. Knows the curriculum. Learning begins with knowing. The teacher as a learner starts with knowing about the curriculum, the subject matter or the content. As a teacher, one has to master what are included in the curriculum, It is acquiring academic knowledge both formal (disciplines, logic) or informal (derived from experiences, vicarious, and unintended). It is the mastery of the subject matter. (Knower) Prepared by Prof. Simeona S. Abraham, Dr. Luis Miguel P. Saludez, Prof. Joy Therese L. Villon  PED 09 – The Teacher and the School Curriculum 4 Southern Luzon State University College of Teacher Education PED 09 – The Teacher and the School Curriculum 2. Writes the curriculum. A classroom teacher takes record of knowledge concepts, subject matter or content. These need to be written or preserved. The teacher writes books, modules, laboratory manuals, instructional guides, and reference materials in paper or electronic media as a curriculum writer or receiver. (Writer) 3. Plans the curriculum. A good curriculum has to be planned. It is the role of the teacher to make a yearly, monthly r daily plan of the curriculum. This will serve as a guide in the implementation of the curriculum. The teacher takes into consideration several factors in planning a curriculum. These factors include the learners, the support material, time, subject matter or content, the desired outcomes, the context of the learners among others. By doing this, the teacher becomes a curriculum planner. (Planner) 4. Initiates the curriculum. In cases where the curriculum is recommended to the schools from DepEd, CHED, TESDA, UNESCO, UNICEF or other educational agencies for improvement of quality education, the teacher is obliged to implement. Implementation of a new curriculum requires the open mindedness of the teacher, and the full belief that the curriculum will enhance learning. There will be many constraints and difficulties in doing first or leading, however, a transformative teacher will never hesitate to try something novel and relevant. (Initiator) 5. Innovates the curriculum. Creativity and innovation are hallmarks of excellent teacher. A curriculum is always dynamic, hence it keeps on changing. From the content, strategies, ways of doing, blocks of time, ways of evaluating, kinds of student and skills of teachers, one cannot find a single eternal curriculum that would perpetually fit. A good teacher, therefore innovates the curriculum and thus becomes a curriculum innovator. (Innovator) 6. Implements the curriculum. The curriculum that remains recommended or written will never serve its purpose. Somebody has to implement it. As mentioned previously, at the heart of schooling is the curriculum. It is the role where the teacher becomes the curriculum implementor. An implementor gives life to the curriculum plan. The teacher is at the height of an engagement with the learners, with support materials in order to achieve the desired outcome. It is where teaching, guiding, facilitating skills of the teacher is expected to the highest level. It is here where teaching as a science and as an art will be observed. It is here, where all the elements of the curriculum will come into play. The success of recommended, well written and planned curriculum depends on the implementation. (Implementor) 7. Evaluates the curriculum. How can one determine if the desired learning outcomes have been achieved? Is the curriculum working? Does it bring the desired results? What do outcomes reveal? Are the learners achieving? Are there some practices that should be modified? Should the curriculum be modified, terminated or continued? These are some few questions that need the help of a curriculum evaluator. That person is the teacher. (Evaluator) Doing the multi-faceted work qualifies a teacher to be a curricularist. To be a teacher is to be a curricularist even if a teacher may not equal the likes of John Dewey, Ralph Tyler, Hilda Taba, or Franklin Bobbit. As a curricularist, a teacher will be knowing, writing, implementing, innovating, initiating and evaluating the curriculum in the school and classroom just like the role models and advocates in curriculum and curriculum development who have shown the way. Think Tank A. Read the questions below and answer those in not less than five sentences. 1. Does the sabre-tooth curriculum still exist at present? Give example of your evidence. 2. Describe the kind of curriculum that exists as described in the article. 3. What does the author mean, when he said “A curriculum should be timeless?” Explain. 4. What is the difference between education and training? Prepared by Prof. Simeona S. Abraham, Dr. Luis Miguel P. Saludez, Prof. Joy Therese L. Villon