The Impact of Community on Curriculum Decision-Making in a North American Jewish Day School
This chapter presents the first tentative results of a qualitative study of a curriculum development process undertaken with the Herzliah High School in Montreal. This is the largest community Jewish day school in that city, with two campuses in different locations. The results are tentative because the project is continuing, allowing for further refinement and enhancement of the curriculum and materials produced. The research focuses on the ‘partnership model’ of curriculum development in which administrators, teachers, parents, students, and curriculum experts create curriculum in a collaborative forum. The chapter examines how decisions are reached in this process, focusing on two central questions. The first considers who ultimately makes the decisions among those involved in the kind of partnership model described here. The chapter then turns to the impact of ‘the community’ in the curriculum decision-making process.