from Terry Haik
In our recent post, The curious charm of education from uniformityReader James Fos left a useful comment that had an interesting concept – “The Purpose of Knowledge”.
“The standards that dictate the curriculum or evaluation practices that dictate pedagogy?
The current standardized model may be a new and improved model with respect to the various standards that teachers have developed historically in their respective communities, as this refers to the rigor and ability to compare the progress of each school (of a particular orientation). However, it is important to emphasize the opinion of the G -n Hake that the same standards are not acquired in the degree of localization that living communities tend to favor.
The aroma of the “local” found in our curriculum can be improved through the composition of the ideas that shape our communities, the personal educational values of teachers and administrators who make curricula, and through dialogue how pedagogy can be developed by questioning nature, sources and sources Aims of knowledge.
Recently, the Bulhorn of the reform of the curriculum has been dominated by the young children on the playground. G -N Wiggins’ comment on lack of imagination can be overcome in a question of who controls the reform. There is evidence that people, including teachers and the school administration, can exert great imagination when they are empowered. “
Well said.
An idea that is worth tattooing on the forehead or to spray spray on the walls of our school corridors is the need to define – first and foremost – the purpose of education. What are we trying to do and why? Without a clear purpose, there is never progress, just movement. Progress is relative, as it moves towards something. We cannot know “how we do” until we understand where we are going and what we are losing, as we are no longer there.
And just the curriculum – and mastering the said curriculum – is not an answer.
The curriculum as a construction
Let us agree that it is the curriculum that is to be studied – a set of planned experience in training to promote the mastery of knowledge and skills.
This knowledge and these skills are carefully outlined in academic standards. Thus, the standards are like ingredients; The curriculum prepared with the help of these ingredients is a product of the packaging of these ingredients (in the form of units, lessons and activities).
(This is also useful to help how students think of standards – no one wants to eat ingredients; students do not want to eat flour and salt and bake chocolate, but they will eat brownies.)
The curriculum is an institutional construction – something created by humans. We have learned from millennia without a curriculum; It is not necessary to learn, but it is necessary after the training has become systematically – after passing from a personal act to a planned product.
This does not make a curriculum Bad. The purpose of the curriculum is to provide a kind of gathering for everything else. It provides a mutual language to understand and transmit knowledge and functions as a kind of shared understanding. We are all here, In the same way, the crowd of a concert shares the music – and the expectation for music – in general.
The curriculum as a strategy
So the curriculum is a training strategy – this is a tool used to promote training. And as a strategy for training (and, frankly, a relic of pedagogy), it happens that when it is misunderstood, it makes it terribly ineffective.
The parts in each “curriculum” range from topics to ways of thinking about these topics to skills. The standards strive to take something intangible (eg literacy) and make it noticeable (standards). So then, if the curriculum is satisfied for studying and learning (which is then distributed through teaching and training strategies, the success of which is then measured by evaluation), this gives us a goal. Function.
And from a function perspective, this is the primary cause of school. The content of the curricula packages and its outcome is knowledge.
The jumping program to knowledge
But what about this knowledge? Is it certain if the curriculum is mastered? And what is the purpose of knowledge? What should we do with him? A
And not some kind of unclear Webut this 9-year-old boy and that 14-year-old girl and that A small group of adult high schools in this rural area? What you need they Yes?
The curriculum decides for us What knowledgebut does not respond Why Knowledge. This type of talk is usually reserved for epistemology and philosophy, but this is the problem. These are the forehead-loudly obvious concerns that we skip right into a self-right, We know what is the best For every way. It is a matter of concern for every teacher, school and field.
What do we do with what we know?
These are questions of both practice and the fundamental expression of human expression – the urine and the needs of those who study it.
Make a jump from the curriculum to knowledge, then it can be a matter of designing – a search for a curriculum that does not seek to produce students with knowledge, but rather those who reject it until it is packed in a way that fits into their pockets and on their phones and their own cracking imagination.
Until they understand where it comes from and where it can take them.
A curriculum that calls into question the purpose of knowledge; Adapted Image attribution Flickr user of Tulanepublicrelations
