I have been in education for ten years, and I haven’t thought enough about that question.  I’m now in the second week of the course, “Curriculum Theory” in my JHU-ISTE program, and we’ve started wrestling with some tough questions about curriculum.

The first being the title for this post.  What is curriculum?

It seems the answer can’t be cleaved from many political influences in most cases.  That’s fascinating- that so many will battle so hard over the very definition of something I find could be rather to entirely simple.  The more I delve into the topic, the more I find myself forced to simplicity.  In my opinion, curriculum is…

All the stuff our students learn.

That’s it.  Simple.

Where it gets exponentially complicated starts with the very first step away from the definition.  Who gets to pick the stuff the students learn?  Much more difficult and political.

Some say that the curriculum we choose is broken down into three parts; the written, the taught, and the tested.  Sure that’s part of it, but curriculum is much more than that.  It’s ALL the stuff our students learn.  That means both the intended and unintended.  When we start picking exactly what the stuff is that the students will learn, we begin formulating a construct that students will engage when learning.  Obviously, there will be written curriculum that is to be taught and then tested, but there is much more to it than that.  Because it’s the bigger construct of the scope of the curriculum that will likely have the greatest impact on a student.

What I mean is, if we set up a curriculum that focuses on finite, rote recitation of facts as a major outcome, we will intend to have students complete our institution’s educational scope and sequence with a specific knowledge base we’ve predetermined.  However, what we most likely will not intend for students to learn is how to game our system.  This is happening quite often in educational institutions who most value specific, information-based learning outcomes as students figure out how to work the system, or “Do School” as Denise Clark Pope suggests, and their final proficiency may say much more about how they learned to exploit than how they learned to learn what was intended.

Things continue to grow more complicated when we take another step back and look at some of the umbrella questions surrounding curriculum and its inception.

For example, the question was posed in our class last week, “Whose values should be reflected in the content and processes of curriculum?”  That question, frankly, is kicking my tail.  I’ve thought on it quite a bit, and I still don’t have a good answer for it.  I’d like to say mine, but mine probably isn’t yours, so why do I get to decide it’s mine and not yours?  I might say the learners, but what if collectively, they decide they don’t much value education in general?  Where does that leave us?  I could take the cheap way out and say society, but who in the world can say exactly what the values of society are?  Like I said, it’s kicking my tail.

Another step back.

Look bigger than just the curriculum.  Look at schooling in general.  What exactly is the purpose of school?  I’ve written about this before, and I still believe in what I wrote in that post.  It is all about learning.  That is the purpose.  However, if learning is the goal, what is the conduit?  That, I would have to say, is democracy.

This gets us nowhere easier than previous topics.  As Deborah Meier has stated before, democracy is an incredibly difficult process to understand.  There are fewer more important revolutions in the history of mankind than the information revolution.  That knowledge and learning and information moved from the privileged few to the masses means more for the progress of citizenry than perhaps any other reform.  However, learning in a democracy means dealing with difficult issues.  The tyranny of the majority.  The repression of the minority opinion.  The absolute need for empathy.  These are not always addressed in the democratic learning institutions where our students are learning.

If we teach in a democratic institution, then what exactly should be taught?  What subjects should students learn?  Yet another question to which I don’t have the answer.  I’d like to say students should learn what is of interest to them, but that if rife with complication.  I know if I had been given the opportunity to pick that which I would learn when I was in middle school, none of the subjects would have had any academic value.  I can assure you this, though, they would have been interesting.

Should we continue on with the just in case model; giving students a bit of everything just in case they might need it some day?  Should we move to the just in time model that delivers knowledge and learning right in the time when it is needed?  Do either really offer a true solution?

I can absolutely see the need for students to learn how to communicate dynamically, and it is likely there is a certain level of mathematics and science that is needed to succeed in our world, but other than that, what should we teach?  Citizenship, vocational skill, world languages, finance?  What about specific classes in project management, collaboration (the real kind, not just cooperative learning), critical thinking, etc.?

Obviously the more I write, the less I seem to know.

One last point before I bring this rambling, stumbling wreck of a post to a close.

What about me?  What do I do that makes a difference in the lives of learners today?  That, is a very valid question.  I’m the Instructional Technology Coordinator for a K-12 district in Illinois.  I have held this position for two years now.  I’d like to say that in that time, I’ve managed to facilitate great change in the way students interface with learning through technology.  For a host of reasons, I simply can’t say that with truth.  I face the same challenges many of my colleagues face in this profession.  I try to jump many of the same hurdles.  I’ve found there are reasons why I never went out for track in school.

I do believe we can engage our students in new and emerging ways.  I also believe there’s much we can be doing to better some of the old ways.  I will not stop fighting for what I believe is best for our students.  And that is, simply, learning.  I try to ground the work I do in that bedrock.  Many days I fail.  That doesn’t mean I will give up the trying.  As long as I’m in this position, and as long as I’m affiliated with the work of educating students, I will continue to fight for their learning.

Obviously, this is some kind of fragmented post.  But these are the things I’m wrestling with.  If you have any thoughts on one, a few, or all of the topics raised, I would greatly appreciate your sage wisdom.  Or even more questions.  Those seem to be what I can handle best at present.

Thanks to kevindooley for the use of the image.

There exists a philosophy of technology that states we should be dedicating specific time in our school day to teach students finite skills of operating computing technology.  That in order to prepare our students properly for the world, we must teach them how to word process and how to operate Power Point and how to keyboard.  The computing instruction is an end goal.  The students should learn these skills because the skills themselves are the important part of technology, and if we don’t stop throughout the day and teach them how to specifically operate the tools or applications within a computer, we will be failing to equip our future.

I’ve had discussions with individuals who say they’d rather see the students learn technology skills in isolation, and it isn’t necessary to embed or even relate this instruction to curricular content or goals.  The important part is that students learn how to operate the computer and properly work the word processing application.

I’ve found this to be a fairly popular philosophy and culture in many circles of public opinion.

So, you are in this conversation with someone.  Someone who believes adamantly that we must focus time and energy and effort on explicitly teaching students how to operate specific technology.  Someone who says we should have a checklist of computer proficiencies for each student so that we will know they can operate a computer successfully.  That if we fail to do so, we will be failing to prepare our students to succeed in the future.

And you respond by saying…

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Thanks to Flickr user wZa HK for the use of the image.

I might be wrong on this.  Feel free to posit your opinion and help me figure out what needs figuring.

There is a philosophy of technology in education that says we should afford students the chance to interact and explore specific technology experiences to ensure exposure to the technology.  Let me give you an example.

A program could be established at a school allowing all students at all grade levels in the building to engage in a short unit on digital video editing.  The unit would be done for the sake of exposing students to the process and skills of digital video editing as many of them may have cause to use those skills in a future class or occasion where they would employ the learned skills.  We also want to expose as many students as possible to the process as it may spark an inert interest and fan it into a full flame of passion for the experience, and thus, give cause for the said student to pursue a career in the field of video editing.  We also want to make sure all students in the building have the opportunity to have a common experience and exposure, so we’d make sure we work the video editing unit into a rotation outside the general classroom to ensure all students have the experience.  If we left it up to the general education teachers, it may well be that some students wouldn’t have the experience as their teachers may not be comfortable with the technology, or have the time, and thus not choose to do a digital video editing experience embedded in their class.

So the philosophy is to have all students work with digital video editing outside the general classroom to give them exposure and skills for the future.

Frankly, I don’t agree with this philosophy.  This is where I could be wrong.

I believe we should work to create both an opportunity and cause for teachers to have access to the necessary environment where they use the digital video editing as a means to engage students in embedded learning.  Allow an english teacher to dynamically engage literacy by creating a lesson that utilizes this technology.  Allow science students to demonstrate scientific principles by creating a video representation of a concept of study.  Allow foreign language students to produce a video entirely in the language they are learning.

I believe if we isolate the experience for the sake of affording the experience, we’ve made it solely about the experience and not the learning.  Yes, digital video editing is rife with opportunities for learning, but wouldn’t those opportunities be magnified when coupled with specific curricular goals?

To me, the former feels like the “just in case” model we’ve been trying to move away from for a long time.  The problem is, if we use the “just in time” of the latter, some students may well not get the experience.  But, is that a problem?  Do we think every student needs this experience?

Personally, I think we want the latter.  This is the epitome of my philosophy of technology.  My philosophy has been disagreed with as of late, and I’m wondering if I’m wrong.

Am I?

Thanks to BAMCAT for the Flickr image.

Technically, we already have a tech plan.  We are required to submit one to the state of Illinois in order to receive our eRate funding.  The problem is, while it’s a solid plan, its focus is far too narrow to be a true guiding document for the entire district’s implementation of technology.  We needed more.  This fall, we began the process of working to accomplish that goal.

We started out with the understanding that the actual, pragmatic technology practices in place in our district were far too nebulous.  We had what some might call pockets of innovation, but we lacked a unified, cohesive vision of how technology impacts the learning experience.  I believe that is the case in far too many districts due to a perception by decision makers that simply acquiring technology is the answer to the need propagated by our shifting culture.  Unfortunately, as this article details, technology itself is simply not the answer.  If a tech plan is built exclusively upon technology, it is doomed to fail.

In the hopes of avoiding the inherent failure of technology being implemented for the sole sake of implementing technology, we determined to build our plan upon the bedrock of student learning.  The process and potential final product we established is something I’m extremely excited about.

We started our process by determining that we would eventually be building a vision framework for technology rather than a specific technology plan.  The key difference between the two concepts being; a plan is something you execute, typically in a linear fashion, to its end and evaluate whether or not you achieved success by its implementation.  Whereas, a framework is a foundation and structure upon which you build to establish a solid, dynamic end result that has room built within it for growth and change.  Our framework will serve as a guiding document to assist teachers in engaging students in more robust learning experiences through the use of technology.  The focus is entirely on students and their learning experiences.

Once we knew that a learning-based framework was our final goal, we had to determine what, exactly, that meant.  What would be the learning upon which we build?  We started looking at a myriad of learning skills being presented as essential by a host of educational groups.  We culled from the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, NETS, AASL, and Bloom’s digital taxonomy.  We compiled a list of 26 core learning skills to be explored and narrowed down to five.  We chose to go with five, and call them “Foundational Learning Skills” because we found that number to be both manageable and attainable as a focus for the framework.  We also expect to revisit each of the five foundational skills in subsequent years to examine our effectiveness and determine if we should supplant a skill with another based on the change of society and modern practice.

We know in order for our framework to be successful, we need to build it with the support and representation of all vested groups within our district, so we established a committee with which to work.  Our technology committee is comprised of 55 individuals with a direct interest in our students’ futures.  We have representation from every building in our district, and we have administrators, teachers, technology support staff, parents, community members, and specialized support staff.  The committee met in January and whittled down our list of 26 skills to our 5 foundations.  The process yielded; collaboration, communication, critical/evaluative thinking, ethical behavior, and problem solving.

Our next task is to take each of the five foundational skills and build three learning experiences that can span and spiral from pre-k to high school graduation.  We subdivided each learning experience up to specifically cover grades PreK-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12.  Each level builds upon the previous, and provides a means by which a teacher can be provided guidance into understanding how technology can interface with learning.

The image below shows a potential example of this framework for the foundation of “communication.”  We purposefully selected experiences that have a key technology component but focus more on the learning experience rather than the specific technology.  We are currently at the point where we are building a matrix like this for each of the five foundational skills.  This example only lists two specific learning experiences, but ultimately, each of the five foundational skills will have three unique learning experiences.  Click on the image to see a larger version of the example.

When this framework is completed, it will serve as a guide to help teachers better understand the way that technology can help students access learning with greater depth and engagement than prior to the advent of any of the specific technology referenced in the framework.  The framework will help drive the focus for professional development and technology purchases, as well as the specific support our staff will need from our technology leaders in our buildings.  We are also working to establish a strong pilot procedure for teachers who want to innovate and experiment with new emerging technologies, so we can have specific data to consider each year when we revisit the plan to make adjustments and refinements to keep current with the changes in our profession.

I am very excited about this process, and I absolutely believe this will help provide a cohesive vision for our district’s technology implementation.  I also firmly believe this will result in a positive change in the way students engage the process of learning.  There is still much work to be done, but I do believe we are headed in an extremely exciting and student-centered direction.

Thanks to jinglejammer for the Flickr image.