Critical Perspectives on Curriculum and Pedagogy

Throughout the history of the United States there has been a long trajectory of dialogue within the field of education around curriculum and pedagogy. Scholars have centered questions such as: What is curriculum? What knowledge should count as curriculum? Who gets to decide? Who does not? And, in turn, what is the pedagogical process of organizing knowledge, subject matter, and skills into curriculum? While many scholars have worked on various approaches to curriculum, the work of Black intellectual scholar Anna Julia Cooper serves as an important point of departure that highlights how curriculum and pedagogy have long been immersed in broader sociopolitical issues such as citizenship, democracy, culture, race, and gender. Starting from the late 19th century, Cooper took up curricular and pedagogical questions such as: What is the purpose of education? What is the role of the educator? And what is the purpose of being student-centered? These are important questions that pull together various traditions and fields of work in education that offer different approaches to curriculum. For instance, the question of whether it’s best to center classical subjects versus striving for efficiency in the development of curriculum has been a debated issue. Across such historical debates, the work of mainstream education scholars such as John Dewey, Ralph Tyler, and Hilda Taba have long been recognized; however, voices from scholars of color, such as Cooper, have been left out or overlooked. Thus, the contributions of Black intellectual scholars such as Cooper, Carter G. Woodson, and other critical scholars of color are brought to the forefront to provide deeper knowledge about the development of curriculum and pedagogy. The work of marginalized scholars is also connected with reconceptualist efforts in curriculum studies to consider current conceptual framings of schooling, curriculum, and pedagogy. Finally, critical theories of curriculum and pedagogy are further unpacked through research conducted with and alongside communities of color. This scholarship includes culturally responsive pedagogy, funds of knowledge, hip-hop pedagogy, reality pedagogy, critically compassionate intellectualism, barrio pedagogy, youth participatory action research (YPAR), and feminist of color pedagogies.

HACIA UNA CARACTERIZACIÓN DE LOS ESTILOS DE PLANEACIÓN DIDÁCTICA: UNA APROXIMACIÓN COGNITIVA

Han pasado más de 70 años desde que Ralph Tyler desarrolló su teoría sobre la planeacióndidáctica. Desde entonces, son muchos los autores que han propuesto modelos prescriptivosque guíen la planeación de la enseñanza, reconociendo por qué la planeación didáctica estáen el centro de cualquier docente efectivo. El presente estudio tiene como objetivo caracterizarlos estilos de planeación didáctica de docentes de educación básica y media superior deuna red de colegios particulares. Así, desde una aproximación cognitiva a la estilística de laplaneación didáctica, que consiste en el estudio de la toma de decisiones realizadas por eldocente en torno a los elementos didácticos que constituyen un plan didáctico, se confirmala fuerte relevancia de la propuesta de Tyler, 70 años después de su publicación original. Seidentificó que el 60.62% de los docentes estudiados son altamente congruentes con dicharacionalidad, mientras que los resultados de los docentes restantes, varían su estilo deplaneación para alinearse a una planeación basada en estándares o en competencias. Asímismo, se encontró tras un análisis de componentes principales, una varianza explicadadel 74%. Esto brinda evidencias sobre la validez de la aproximación metodológica.

Practicing Care and Compassion

To understand the practice of care and compassion in education and curriculum it is necessary to begin with its contextual sources in a diverse array of spheres: historical, religious, social, and educational theory and practice. The legacy of practicing care and compassion in education is embedded in the history of human civilization and the multiple meanings of care and compassion in the Western and Eastern worlds and in the Global South, including dominant cultures and those they dominated. The contributions of women to the understanding and practice of care and compassion in education have been underemphasized, as well as those by unofficial educators, who are not governed by nation-states or wealthy institutions that dominate those who rarely experience care and compassion. By the mid-1800s, an array of cultures and nations began to see a need for public education that attended to all citizens and not just the elite. At the same time, science had become a prime mover in consideration of education and questions were raised by Herbert Spencer and others about what and how knowledge should be selected for members of society. Eventually, a range of ways to conceptualize education were introduced, making curriculum development a site of debate. The practice of care and compassion must be integrated into the development and design of curriculum. Thus, it is important to present curriculum orientations that facilitate the practice of care and compassion. Those who wish to practice care and compassion in education should begin by studying time-honored and still practiced orientations by Ralph Tyler, Joseph Schwab, Paulo Freire, John Miller, Daisaku Ikeda, Nel Noddings, and Martha Nussbaum. The work of these curriculum scholars illustrates the ways in which care and compassion can be incorporated into the practice of teaching and learning. For example, Tyler offers an empirical-analytic perspective; Schwab provides a practical or eclectic approach; Freire provides a critical reconstructionist or radical love orientation; Miller proffers holistic possibilities; Ikeda advocates and exemplifies dialogic and value creation; Noddings calls for a feminine basis for caring; and Nussbaum invokes the intelligence of emotions. Those who wish to teach care and compassion must heed caveats raised by scholars who address individuals and groups who suffer the most, including the so-called wretched of the earth as well as those who have experienced imperialism and colonialism or have had their culture and history removed. Deep and abiding questions must be asked about how care and compassion for these oppressed persons, who make up the majority of the world’s population, can be taught and learned.

Begynnaropplæring i teikning

Artikkelen har begynnaropplæring i teikning som tema. Ved å studere fagstoff om teikneopplæring nytta ved norske grunnskulelærarutdanningar, utviklar denne teksten tre ulike teoretiske kategoriar som skildrar teiknemetodiske tilnærmingar. Kategoriane er forma med støtte frå lese- og skriveopplæringsfeltet og omgrepa analytiske og syntetiske tilnærmingar, samt kunnskapsteoretiske og læringsteoretiske posisjonar. I tillegg blir omgrepet progresjon ved Ralph Tyler (1948) nytta for å utdjupe det som kjem fram. Bidraget er meint å vere ein forsiktig start på å utvikle ei teikneteoretisk plattform til støtte for dei institusjonane som utdannar lærarar for dei minste i skulen.

Understanding the Tyler rationale: Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction in historical context

This historical study attempts to contribute to our understanding of the widely recognized and widely critiqued Tyler rationale for the development of curriculum and instruction by explaining it in the historical context in which Ralph Tyler developed it, by tracing its origins in Tyler’s work, and by reconstructing a history of the course, Education 360, Tyler taught at the University of Chicago. This analysis found that Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction, which emerged from Tyler’s field work with teachers and professors and his conception of evaluation, is best understood as a study guide that Tyler prepared for the use of his students in the course by that name that he taught during the 1940s and 1950s. This analysis found that Tyler’s rationale was remarkable in its time for its embrace of three curriculum sources, its conception of education essentially as experience, its approach to assessment as evaluation rather than as measurement, its approach to curriculum development as a problem-solving process, and its commitment to teacher participation in the development of curriculum and instruction.

¿Marco curricular de enseñanza o aprendizaje significativo? Una visión conciliadora dentro del aula

Durante el siglo xx, el desarrollo de la teoría curricular puede dividirse en dos grandes periodos metodológicos: el primero que va de 1930 a 1960 en donde Ralph Tyler (1973) e Hilda Taba (1974), principalmente, desarrollaron y fundamentaron un modelo por objetivos; en él se planteaban los lineamientos tecnológicos para el desarrollo de nuevas conductas a partir de un proceso de organización, selección y evaluación de experiencias educativas. El segundo periodo curricular comprende de 1960 a 1990, en donde autores como Lawrence Stenhouse (1991), Joshep Schwab (1969), Stephen Kemmis (1986) y César Coll (2007), entre otros, consideraban que los conocimientos, las habilidades, las actitudes y las acciones eran categorías que debían figurar en una planeación curricular. Mientras que el primer grupo estimaba que la educación se fomentaba a través de un sistema tecnológico; el segundo se propuso desarrollar una visión socio-crítica de los problemas educativos.

Concepciones en torno a la normatividad en la didáctica

Las concepciones en torno a la normatividad en la didáctica constituyen el problema de investigación central de esta tesis y cobran relevancia al postular que la didáctica es una teoría acerca de la enseñanza con posibilidades de influir en el mejoramiento de las prácticas. Se propone indagar, desde una perspectiva histórica, cómo se ha ido resolviendo la cuestión de la normatividad, o más específicamente, cómo aparece planteada la normatividad en la producción teórica de la didáctica entre los años 1960 y 1990 en la Argentina. Asimismo, se incluyen las relaciones entre la didáctica y el curriculum. Se parte de dos supuestos principales: el primero de ellos se refiere a que la didáctica ha incorporado en su estructura disciplinar la teoría curricular ocasionando que desde ella se definan los temas, problemas y orientaciones de la producción curricular, y que –en parte por esto– el curriculum no posee un desarrollo autónomo en nuestro país, al menos en el período aquí estudiado. El segundo supuesto se refiere a un comportamiento disímil que cada una de estas disciplinas evidencia en torno a la normatividad. Por otra parte, esta forma de entender la didáctica conduce a introducirse en teorías epistemológicas y metodológicas con una doble intención: en primer lugar, para indagar en problemas y esquemas interpretativos que con respecto a la normatividad aparecen en la reflexión epistemológica y metodológica en las ciencias sociales, para luego con ellos enriquecer el análisis en la disciplina de base. En segundo lugar, porque parece evidente que una investigación como la que se realiza no es posible sin contar con categorías que habiliten un análisis metateórico. A su vez, la didáctica ha ido atravesando por diferentes momentos históricos en su constitución y los mismos pueden analizarse desde una particular configuración integrada por conocimiento, normas, valores y prácticas. Construcción histórica que se enriquece en su comparación con el recorrido realizado por teorías epistemológicas y metodológicas. La construcción de conocimientos que se propone para esta tesis se realiza en el diálogo entre el marco conceptual-referencial antes delineado y el análisis de un corpus empírico integrado por diez (10) obras de didáctica y de curriculum seleccionadas en base a cuatro criterios centrales. El primer criterio permite seleccionar obras de Imídeo Nérici y Hans Aebli para dar cuenta de las características de la didáctica general que se conoció en Argentina en las décadas del ’50 y del ‘60. El segundo criterio se refiere a considerar obras de la teoría curricular norteamericana y que se difundieron en nuestro país desde principios de los ’70, específicamente se analizan trabajos de Ralph Tyler, Hilda Taba y Clifton Chadwick. El tercer criterio permite considerar textos de Susana Avolio, Susana Barco, Gloria Edelstein y Azucena Rodríguez, ya que dan cuenta de las características del pensamiento local en el área de didáctica general en los años ‘70. Por último, el cuarto criterio se refiere a obras de curriculum de Joseph Schwab y Lawrence Stenhouse que se conocieron en la Argentina en la década del ’80 y que impactaron en la didáctica.

Editorial

We write curriculum documents that are full of good intentions – ambitious musical aims, the highest educational aspirations and holistic principles that place the learner at the centre. Yet, in many ways, curriculum writing is an exercise in asserting control of what and how we might teach. The notion of the intended curriculum, that is, explicit goals to determine the outcome of learning, has its roots in what became known as the Tyler Rationale and has continued to influence curriculum inquiry, planning, development, test construction and learning outcomes to the present day (Schubert, 2008). In Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction, Ralph Tyler (1949) formulated a deceptively simple structure that has guided curriculum developers and researchers for over fifty years. This entailed: (i) Defining appropriate learning objectives, (ii) Introducing useful learning experiences, (iii) Organising experiences to maximise their effect; and (iv) Evaluating the process and revising the areas that were not effective. According to Schubert (2008), many curriculum scholars and developers ignored several other aspects of Tyler's work and many of his other recommendations were lost in the tendency to follow his curriculum ‘recipe’ in schools, state departments or ministries of education. What Tyler had argued was that perspectives be sought from other philosophical and psychological positions, and that the influences of society, the individual, and other disciplines also be considered. He also believed that learning experiences were more important than activities or content. Moreover, he asserted that non-school experiences of students and their active social lives were also worthy of study and finally, he believed that the four steps in his model should not be used in the order presented in his text, but according to situation need. However, only the bones of Tyler's message survived while his more embodied emphasis on careful attention to context and nuance in student lives was overlooked in the process (Schubert, 2008).