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In order to make a perfect pizza pie, you need to have fresh dough with a little virgin olive oil rubbed on top, a not to bitter, little sweet sauce, fresh mozzarella and parmigiana cheese, and a pinch of oregano. For some people these are the ingredients that make up a delicious pizza pie, unfortunately, even with the best ingredients someone could still ruin the pie. The same holds true in the ingredients that go into curriculum development. Even if you have the right ingredients it doesnt always mean that you will have a successful teaching experience. When it comes to life there are many rules or guidelines we have to follow. Sometimes these guidelines go against our beliefs or hinder our wants or desires.
Concerning education these rules could inhibit your performance or you could conform to the guidelines and excel with great success. The curriculum itself is outlined first by the state and then school district, which in reality is driven by the community. As you begin to embark on curriculum development your outline, for public schools, should be the learning standards for the state. In the New York State Learning Standards you will find the general outline for each subject, coarse of study, and grade level. This gives you your basic outline to follow. Each school district will have in its syllabus the NY State Learning Standards as well as their own curriculum guide.
Even thought the curriculum is outlined you are still to choose or develop the most appropriate material to be used in your classes. The rest of the curriculum development is left up to you, the teacher. The second and maybe the most important thing that you should take into consideration when developing a curriculum is the audience to which you will be teaching. As a teacher you have to gage or measure the students abilities; can the students handle a rigorous coarse of study, a non challenging environment, or a curriculum that sits in the middle of the road.
Identifying the students abilities will enable you to develop a curriculum that is suitable to your students needs. Which bring us to the next point of curriculum development, students needs. According to William Glasser, the students first need is love. If a person is able to give and receive love and can do it with some consistency then that person has experience some degree of success. This feeling of success brings forward the second need which is the need to feel worthwhile or positive self-esteem. Developing a students self esteem allows the students to except a degree of failure without damaging their well being which will enable the students to stay on the right path.
Combining these two basic needs you end with the students need for identity. It is because of the feeling of self or distinction from others, importance, and self-worth that will keep a student on the path to success. If you as a teacher keep this in mind when you are developing you curriculum, you will have a program geared to teach the students social responsibility, self discipline, build self-esteem, and help the students understand the relevance between what is being taught in the classroom and its usefulness in their lives. Intertwined with the students abilities, wants, likes, and dislikes is the students learning styles and the teachers own teaching philosophies.
As an educator you have to understand the people you are trying to teach. There a many different types of learners and the curriculum should be flexible enough to touch the various types of learners. In a typical classroom setting you could find all eight of Howard Gardners multiple intelligences woven within the fabric of the students. To ensure some magnitude of success be shore to include sections of the unit that appeal to the different types of learners. Closely related to learning styles is teacher philosophies.
Always keeping in mind your audience, you may have to alter your teaching methodology. Only you will know which approach will work for each class. Direct the curriculum according to philosophy you have adopted for each class but be shore to allow the curriculum to be flexible enough so it can be used by a humanist, cognitivist, or a behaviorist. There are many factors to consider when developing curriculum. The main ingredient is the state and school curriculum outline followed by the educators discretion on how to teach to the various learners, abilities, needs, and levels of learning. A curriculum is an overall sense what to teach and how to teach it, so that the students understand the material and are able to apply what they have learned in meaningful capacity.
There are certain forces that have a direct impact on curriculum in schools. Ranging from parental concerns to the Board of Regents curriculum is challenged from all sides. It is difficult to say where the pressure begins, ends, and comes from but one thing is certain, it is there. We have seen societal pressure burn, ban, dictate, and destroy books, beliefs and curriculum many times and in many forms. The parental pressure of schools to teach what society deems important and necessary grows and declines every day. Children come home and tell their parents what they learned in school that day, if the parent feels that their children should not be learning that material rest assure that a phone call, letter, or visit will be the next step.
If enough parents complain and pressure the school board, nine times out of ten the board will fold to parental concerns. A great example of this would be the banning of certain teenage books from the libraries of some public schools. Parental pressure and complaints, in my book, go hand and hand with each other. If there is one there is the other. Another large force that shapes curriculum is economics. Areas of wealth generally have the funds available to institute more or new programs into their curriculum.
A more economically stable community is willing to pay more to have the right classes being taught to their children. On the down side this causes not only social pressure but political pressure as well. Communities of the affluent school districts tend to be more politically connected to the source and their decisions are carefully watch by the surrounding community. Some of the less fortunate communities, economically speaking, are at the other end of the spectrum all together. They do not have funds readily available to them for new programs, computers, or extra- curricula activities. All of these things combined are the deciding forces or factors that help make up curriculum.
As mentioned earlier students abilities play a large role in curriculum as well. What the students are able to accomplish, their needs, abilities, parental support all have a part in curriculum development. It is the children we develop curriculum for anyway. Isnt it?
For the most part, everything that has been mention previously does play its role in the development of curriculum but it would not be complete without adding the deciding force, New York State. The State set forth its own curriculum and standards that the school districts have to follow, unless they are not a public school or a charter school. Even with all of the power the state has it still comes down to mothers of America helping pave they way for American education. As you can see there is not just one force that drives curriculum but a web with many facets that guides us into the new millennium. The future of education lies with those who are at the helm right now. They are going to take our children into the twenty-first century.
The curriculum will be full of new ideas and ed...
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