Presentation 3

I agree with Meier's claim that "teachers must lead their own way toward their own liberation." Thomas Jefferson advocated that citizens have the responsibility to overthrow their own government if it is not appropriate for them, unresponsive to their needs, and archaic (Bear's interpretation). The same principle applies in the purlieus of education. Who knows best what isn't working, needs to be changed, laid to rest, eliminated, or new policies and solutions initiated than entrenched inveterates of scholastic purviews?

Education reform is untenable, a subluxation of paradigms. For too long educators have been subjugated to ideologies and statutes adjudicated by a few privileged outsiders; political denizens schooled in antediluvian ambits of academia. We must no longer function as proletariats! Me must enlighten the ruling class to their avidja! We must...we must dictate a new praxis and govern ourselves. We must procure the future of education and its ameliorations! To do anything less is a reprehensible iniquity toward students.

If we as educators are to transform the professional arena of pedagogy, than we are obligated to establish a working theory from which to conduct the business of didactic conveyance. This treatise is presented to help stimulate individual's in the theoretical development of their own instructional directions.

Over the centuries, curriculum and education orientations have certainly gone through many philosophies, from Plato’s idealism, Rousseau’s naturalism and the ‘Age of Enlightenment”, Pestalozzi’s slant on naturalism, Horace Mann’s social responsibility, the experimentalism of John Dewey, Montessorri’s existentialism (Gutek, 1991), and the phenomenologicalism of Dayne Huebner (Pinar & Reynolds, 1992): however, basic emphasis and purposes have generally been on the transmission of the social values and prevailing ideals of the dominant society in which formal, institutionalized education has been undertaken.

Curriculum may be categorized other than in “isms”, as listed above. Eisner classified five general areas of curriculum orientation: Development of Cognitive Processes, Academic Rationalism, Personal Relevance, Social Adaptation and Social Reconstruction, and Curriculum as Technology (Eisner, 1985). In reality, I think the curriculum structure of current mainstream education in the U.S. is an eclectic configuration of historical “isms” and orientations.

The definitions of curriculum espoused in multitudinous writings and discussions I have come across are rather simplified and narrow in scope: i.e., planned instruction, structured series of intended learner outcomes, and the “official” documented objectives. The “five concurrent curricula” types, such as; official, operational, hidden, null, and extra outlined by Posner certainly are worthy of consideration. However, curriculum, as a whole, is too complex a phenomenon to reduce to a simple statement. There are numerous social, political, financial, materials/resources, geographical, philosophical, and other factors that affect types, characteristics, and emphasis within curricula for the development and perpetuation of various concepts, skills, and values of any particular micro/macro/global society. I understand where Posner is “coming from” in the use of “null” and “extra” for describing curricula; but, I will drop them from discussion in this text because I don’t see them as essential for some model of planned pedagogy for the individual and society.

The real considerable quandry with formulating a “curriculum theory” is defining, establishing, accepting, and agreeing upon the terms with which the “educational establishment” uses in describing “cirriculum” (and “education” for that matter) as “a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena.” So, what I would like to offer at this point is a “model” of what I see any given curriculum to be, a psuedo-atomic matrix.

Psuedo-atomic Curriculum Model

In this model, Curriculum is the dynamic (interacting between and among), ethereal, intersecting area, in constant flux, where the component constructs of time, place, resources, content, philosophy, traditions, experiences, and perceived objectives (formal and informal) are designed to meet the perceived desires and needs of the society by a designated body of that society under the umbrella of institutionalized pedagogy. Curriculum, the overlapping area, is what actualy occurs within formalized education. It is dynamic and constantly unsteady because all of the components are always mutable in various degrees and not perpetually in direct relational proportion to one another.

Each of the dimensions of the curriculum field, or matters with which a theory of curriculum should be concerned, as well as the internal and external forces that influence decisions about educational ends, are also delineated in the matrix. Furthermore, sources of guidance for educational decision making are, likewise, sections of the model.

Curriculum writers need to delimit their operational definitions for the context in which their curricula are created. They should also keep in mind the basic, overall premiss that guides their purpose of institutionalized pedagogy. For me, that major objective is the self-fullment of both the individual and the society in which they function. From a pragmatic standpoint, the practiced curricula in educational settings should be joined with educational research.

Purpose of Curriculum

The reader may be unclear as to what I mean as “formal institutionalized pedagogy.” This is a multidimensional construct of several interacting components: curriculum, instruction, instructor, learning environment, and the learner, that are brought together under a set of ajudicated edicts and scrutinized by parents and local academic administraters, as well as, state and federal organizations. As in any corporate entity, when several structures with their own animate natures are brought together, there is an obligatory interacting dynamics. This confluence is the essence of conventional public and private educational settings. Please study the following diagram.

Formal Institutionalized Education

This four dimensional model of instruction is an etheral solution characterized in multi-interdimensional compenents and their dynamics between and among one another and the whole in various rates and densities of continuous instability, empirically manifested in pedogogical activities. You can visualize it as a multicolored nebula that changes shape and size with the various hues moving about.

Hopefully, these little tidbits of thought and graphics may help you in developing your theory of curriculum. Keep in mind that any curriculum theory needs to take in a broad spectrum of related elements in its formulation.

Eisner, W.E. (1985). Five basic orientations to the curriculum. Education imagination

Gutek, G.L. (1991). Cultural foundations of education. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company.

Pinar, F.P. and Reynolds, W.M. (1992). Understanding curriculum as phenomenological and