While reading these articles I was again brought back to many basics we are taught as teachers. The first is developing objectives and bringing purpose to objectives. Tyler states, "We are devoting much time to the setting up and formulation of objectives because they are the most critical criteria for guiding all the other activities of the curriculum-maker." (62). I find as a teacher, policy-maker, administrator, or even a business person the objective is what sets the path. It is important to have a clear objective that is obtainable. Throughout many Professional Development trainings I have experienced such as Curriculum Instruction That Works and Assessment for Learning there is a large emphasis placed on creating objectives and the role they place in the classroom. Like this chapter, this P.D. experiences have had differing opinions about how to create the perfect objective and their place in the classroom. It must be important if the reading by Tyler was written in 1949 and it is still used as a resource for the background of objectives and their purpose in the classroom.
Tyler explains several viewpoints for objectives and I found that I agree with bits of all of them! The first viewpoint is "The Learners Themselves." This is about creating student centered goals based on their needs and interests. In my Middle Level Education program we learned that if a group of students is presented with a topic and asked what they want to learn about it, most of the time, the topics that need to be taught are proposed by the students, but then the student takes more interest and responsibility in the topic. However, this is not always the case from what I have learned from my professional experiences. However, I agree when Tyler states, "Educators recognize the value of beginning with present student interests as a point of departure."(11) When students are proposed with ideas and give feedback to the teacher there is always enough there to create bridges to the objectives required by the state. The next viewpoint was contemporary life. I feel like this is a given. If students are able to see a significance to their life in their learning they are naturally going to have more interest in their learning and attain more. Subject-Specialists are clearly what are objectives are created off of in the United States, but I love the question proposed, "What can your subject contribute to the education of young people who are not going to be specialists in your field" (26). I feel like this question is the question proposed to me almost daily in math classes. "When am I going to use this in real life?" I mean sometimes it is hard for me to come up with something. From the philosophy point of view I loved the quote, "An education program is not effective if so much is attempted that little is accomplished." (33) This is an ongoing problem in mathematics. Do I slow down for mastery or do I keep going so I can actually finish the objectives required of me? Either way you are putting students in an unfair situation somewhere.
In the article written by Doll Jr. I found that although it states it is an "alternative to the Tyler Rationale" it still seemed very similar. I loved how it compared the focus of past generations Readin', Ritin', and Rithmetic" to what it needs to be today. It is clear that objectives need to change with the times and with societies and technologies changing at an alarming rate it seems to be the question, what should the objectives for today societies be. In Doll's article he still speaks to the ideas of having significant objectives that are able to be interpreted in different directions based on student interests or connections to society. He speaks to the idea of reflections and teaching to mastery without overloading content. Overall, he sums the learning experience up best by quoting Dewey, "teaching is an interactive process with learning a by-product of that interaction. (271).
I again am left with the question, as are many others, what theory towards creating curriculum is the best? What combination would be best? However, I don't think there is one. I think it varies depending on each teacher and their beliefs and educational values they bring to the classroom. It may differ from classroom to classroom. However, it is important that when creating curriculum there is a clear answer to the four fundamentals of curriculum defined by Tyler:
- What educational purposes should the school seek to attain?
- What educational experiences can be provided that are likely to attain these purposes?
- How can these educational experiences be effectively organized?
- How can we determine whether these purposes are being attained?
Andrea,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your post, especially when you discussed how objectives drive our teaching. At the beginning of every lesson I teach I write the objective on the board. Since I teach Kindergarten the objectives usually appear in picture form, but we always spend time discussing why it is important to learn about what we are working on. I find that if students understand the purpose behind what they are learning, they are more willing to engage in learning in the classroom.
Since our school district is adopting the Common Core State Standards I will begin to use those objectives to guide my instruction. While I am in favor of using these standards it is frustrating because these standards do not align properly with our report card outcomes. At the bottom of your post you mentioned that teachers have very little say in what outcomes we should teach or what curriculum we use to teach our students. My colleagues and I meet weekly to “enhance” our report card outcomes (for our own sanity) so that they better match the specific and detailed Common Core State Standards, but we were told that the actual report cards will not be modified for parents for years to come. If student success is our overall goal I believe we should be concerned about making sure the report card outcomes are as specific and detailed as the standards we feel strongly about adopting, so that my students are receiving the highest level of education.
I most definitely agree with your statement that there is no one theory of curriculum or combination of theories that is best. I think that there are numerous innovative ideas out there that are all creative and increase student engagement and no one is necessarily better than the other. I do disagree a little when you say it depends on the teachers and their educational values though. That statement worries me a little because I think about my school. It is going through a turnaround process, as it has been in the bottom five percent of the state for years and we are working in a student-centered model. There are teachers who different many different variations of the student-centered model, while all being successful and showing student growth. There is then teachers who are stuck in the traditional setting, who are not showing growth. While I do think teachers should have a good amount of autonomy, I do not think teachers should be allowed to keep teaching or doing something that is failing our students because that is their “educational values.” Numerous of these traditional teachers have stated that they do not think students deserve more time on work or think students should have strict deadlines, so they will not implement the student-centered model and they are falling behind students whose teachers will. You stated it best when you said “contemporary life” was a given, but not all teachers do application based projects or work with their students. You also noted that students are more invested when they come up with work, but some teachers still refuse to give students any type of say in their assignments or their classroom experience. I think that teachers should have the ability to do what works best for their facilitation style in the classroom, but they do need to be innovative. They do need to move forward and try new things and keep pushing for what is best for their students’ growth, not just their own beliefs in education.
ReplyDeleteHi Andrea,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your post this week because you managed to touch on a number of points made in the readings. You especially managed to incorporate many of the lessons shared by Tyler (1949). Ultimately, this helped me to make sense of the arguments he was making—thank you!
Despite the clarity that you provided me with, I am still left wondering about some of his main points. You said you loved the quote “An education program is not effective if so much is attempted that little is accomplished” (Tyler, 1949, pg. 33). But how much is too much? Today, we live in a fast paced society where technology (one of the main forces that shapes our daily interactions) evolves quickly. This has changed the nature of knowledge. In some respects, people today are expected to know more about a lot of different things. This is best reflected by the fact that the average person goes through approximately ten career changes in their lifetime. So I question, is it possible to actually attempt too much? Like many other people, I switched majors in college. Before studying education, I was studying to become an engineer. In my program at Purdue, they frequently told us that we would only use approximately 10% of what they taught us, the problem was that they did not know what 10% this would be, so they insisted on teaching us a lot. To be honest, they did not manage to ‘accomplish’ to teach everything that they attempted, but the lessons that stuck served to shape our life paths. In some respects, I think that it is safe to try to accomplish ‘too much.’
Sincerely,
Edward Nelson
I was intrigued by your selection of the quote by Dewey, "teaching is an interactive process with learning a by-product of that interaction” as I questions whether this is really happening in schools. If teaching is supposed to be an interactive process who are teachers interacting with? Too many schools still have teachers isolated rather than work in collaborative teams and too many teachers are still not interacting with their students because they have a teacher driven classroom not a student centered classroom. I agree that Dewey had it right but Dewey originally said these things 100 years ago and yet still today those teaching methods are alive and well in classrooms. How can we change the thinking and methods of those that still follow outdated practices. I believe the direction we need to be headed is in the direction of the 4 R’s. I would challenge that I am glad that someone else is setting the objectives so I can spend more time on the 4 R’s designing lesson that help students make deep rich-connections and reflect on their learning.
ReplyDeleteAndrea,
ReplyDeleteI appreciate you beginning with the focus in deciding approaches to curriculum creation on what will be in the best interests of the students. I think that this is sometimes lost in all the debates that go on about curriculum. So, I wonder, when you talk about curriculum creation and design, who gets to say what is in the best interests of students? You mention allowing students to provide a list of things they want to learn, and I have had great success with this model, but how often do you think this is done? Is there room for this curricular move in classrooms and districts where CCSS has been adopted? Or, where scripted curricular materials are used? I also wonder how this connects to the quote from Dewey you invoked about teaching being interactive. Who, exactly, is involved in the interaction around curriculum creation? Or, do you think this interaction is bound by pedagogy rather than curriculum?
I think it is interesting that you see a connection between Tyler and Doll. It seems to me that their fundamental difference lies in the notion of objectives. Do you think that this is the case? If so, do you think that there is a way to harmonize their approaches in spite of starting from a different place in curriculum creation?
Lots to consider!
amanda