Category: edci532

“We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!
All in all it’s just another brick in the wall.
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall.”

• Pink Floyd  (Lyrics part 2)

This 1979, song featuring a children’s choir and lines of masked children marching in an orderly fashion, was written as a satire, although the writer, Roger Waters, said that while he supports education, his personal experiences in school were negative (Songfacts). I wonder how many people could relate to this. School is great, it just wasn’t for me.  School is important, I just wasn’t the book type etc.  Enough wonderings let me get back on track.

This song began playing in my mind while reading one of the final readings for the course, “Toward a Posthuman Education“.  To back up even further, this all occurred while reflecting back on the course discussions and readings as I contemplated the metaphor I chose for curriculum at the beginning of the course.  The lego metaphor I chose to represent curriculum did a good job of explaining many components of curriculum, but was also lacking in many areas, particularly with regards to the complexity, the multifaceted face of the curriculum.

So, back to the article in question. This article caught my attention due to its dystopian and philosophical nature (Yes, I have a love for both dystopia and philosophy, perhaps due to reading an excess of stories with happy endings as a child…) and its radically different perspective on curriculum. Snaza et al. (2014) begins by discussing what post humanism can bring to the curriculum and then quickly leads into the following dystopian, yet truth containing, description:

“Young people enter primary schools and become instantly a part of the school as anthropological machine (Agamben, 2004; Lewis & Kahn, 2010; as cited in Snaza et al.,2014). They learn quickly to be quiet, stand in line, and place their finger over their mouths when in a hallway—or they will be punished by having privileges taken away, which also means no opportunities for experimentation through play. This machine demands a price from all young people. They become machines for the Educational Testing Services, future workers ready to play their part as money makers, and consumers patriotically saving the economy from recession, buying up anything just to rev up the engine we call an economy. If you are unable to fulfill your mechanical duties, the pharmaceutical machine will come to your rescue. Pills will allow you to do more than you thought possible. This machinic plugging in may cause a loss of appetite, listlessness, even thoughts of suicide but do not worry: the machine has many pills for you; one type is rarely enough. (p. 42)

If you haven’t seen the music video, I have included it here; you will soon see the connection.     (The marching starts at 2.22)

The purpose of all of this is to create what we call civilized citizens (Snaza et al.,2014).

Snaza et al., (2014) provides some good reasoning for rethinking curriculum from a post-humanist perspective.

1. Education research, philosophy and curriculum is built and completed from a humanist/anthropocentric framework.
2. It allows for a rebuilding of education where humans are connected to “animals, machines and things within life in schools at the K-12 and university levels” (p.39).
3. Finally, it will allow for the explor[ation of] new, post-humanist directions in research, curriculum design, and pedagogical practice” ( p.39).

So, there is a post-humanism curriculum to consider, one that appears to have many benefits, but seems complicated in its execution.

Then there are aspects of the hidden curriculum, also striving to create civilized persons, ones that include “frontier colonial logic” (Donald, 2009. p.23).  The discussions by Donald, (2009) connect to Snaza et al’s (2014) discussions in that they both talk about how animality (which we are as humans; we are animals) is something to be overcome by creating civilized humans, through schooling. Snaza et al (2014) questions if this is better, these civilized humans, and notes the divisions this causes. They extend this even further to talk about how the ‘us and them’ mentality has also led to the destruction of the environment. Donald, (2009) echo’s the ‘us and them’ concept, stating that it creates a “condition to be overcome” (p.24). These ideas hurt people and support the continued colonization that goes beyond the teacher in the classroom and lies at the root of the curriculum.  “What is needed is a decolonizing form of curriculum theorizing that conceptualizes Aboriginal and Canadian perspectives as relational, inter-referential and mutually implicative” (Donald, 2009.,p 24 ).

Then there are Aoki’s many discussions of the lived versus planned curriculum and the tension between them.  Creating further complexity, Aoki (1996/2005) also described the curriculum as rhizomean. 

Is curriculum this complicated, or should it be left as the four simple principals created by Tyler (1949)? Unfortunately, while simpler is always nicer, looking at these four principals now, I can see the many layers of complexity built into each one; the planed, the lived, the hidden, the explicit, the extracurricular, the humanistic principals, colonization; all are layered into these four principles, something I see clearly now. The word curriculum has become something more complicated than a document and a teacher in a classroom; it now extends much further to those who develop curriculum, to those who theorize about curriculum, to the researchers, to those who create textbooks and digital content to support the curriculum and most importantly to the students we teach. We want to support the creation of great humans, ones who care about others, the world around them; ones who question and ones who are prepared to take on and help solve the many challenges our world will continue to face.

So, I began building a new metaphor:

1. A layered chocolate cake. This one tried to make the cut but was too sweet and lacked the complexity needed.
2. A “Jack in the Box”. It’s a nice and tidy square box with bight primary colours on the outside. The surprise is what’s inside. Each time you turn the handle you do not know when or what will be exposed. This may connect to the hidden curriculum, the lived and planned curriculum, and one could argue that every time you spin the handle a new component is uncovered. However, it is still missing some key components… and there is the inherent creepy factor….
3. Perhaps a better metaphor for curriculum is a crystal (Non-living things that grow). I spent some time tossing this one over with knowledge that crystals are not considered to be alive, yet they grow and change (as the curriculum does). They are structured (much like the curriculum. Crystals are created from disorder, much like the messy teaching that takes place, that may not look like teaching and may not seem organized but may produce something beautiful. Crystals need room to grow, much like students do and like crystals, the only limits to growth is space. How much space is there in the curriculum ( in its many aspects) for students to grow? Carbon can grow both graphite and diamonds, both considered to be crystals; it is dependent on the process. Just like the process, curriculum, can create or lead to the outcome, the result depends on the process chosen. The bigger question might be, do we want more pencils or diamonds (What are Crystals?)

Tossing this metaphor away, my mind wandering, I searched further for a more fitting metaphor for curriculum. As I searched, I began to wonder about some of my practices. Do I arrange students according to my intentions? Are the resources I am using excluding students? What hidden and excluded components are included in the curriculum as planned and the curriculum as lived, in my biases, in the biases of my students?  As I do this, a house begins to unfold in front of me. This house looks perfect on the outside; orderly, clean with a well-manicured lawn and garden. As you wander through the front door, your eyes first catch a few things that seem out of place, some dust, a book askew on the shelf, but it still seems orderly.  Opening a door, you find a room full of old books, old toys; some broken, all dusty. Nearby is a closet, you open it and are almost knocked to the ground as garbage, bags and bags of it tumble down on you, and around you. Wandering further, you glance out smudged windows to see vines, climbing and trying to make their way through the cleanly manicured garden. A sudden movement catches your eye and you turn to see a winding staircase, you blink, and it has disappeared. Closing your eyes, you breathe in, quickly opening then, and you see it again. It’s continuing to move in an irregular pattern, and you notice that some steps are missing, others look half rotten. After a number of attempts, you manage to grab the rail and pull yourself up, almost falling off as one step cracks under your weight. Making your way to the top you find a room, a room with no ceiling.  Struck by the beauty, you gaze at the stars above and begin reflecting on how hard it was to get to this space, and how it would be even more challenging for others.  The initial first impression of the perfect house now gone, you begin to look around and observe. You observe the vines that have been cut back that are still trying to grow, and you decide to let them grow. You go back to the closet full of garbage and begin to throw these things out, things that are not needed any more; colonial ways of knowing (Donald, 2009) and teacher ego (Aoki, 1993). You go back into the room with the old and broken books and toys and begin dusting them off, some you throw out and some are kept; as they still have value. Perhaps some of these toys connect to students lived experiences, these are placed on a shelf, a reminder of the uniqueness of each. As you place each and reflect on each student, you realize some of them won’t be able to make it up those stairs; won’t be able to see the beauty above. The phone rings and the voice on the other end tells you that in order to live here you will need to park in the lines on the driveway and keep the lawn clean, free of clutter and garbage, and make sure the house gets a fresh coat of paint (grade based reporting). Hanging up the phone, you begin to see that the inside, where we live, our lived curriculum can flourish and grow, we can exist between the lived and planned curriculum.

Perhaps the notion of a house is inappropriate in that it may very well be seen as a symbol of colonialism (or maybe this makes it more appropriate) and I wonder again about the song presented at the beginning, the bricks. Perhaps rather than thinking of each student as a brick, perhaps we rethink the house, and what house means; or we crack open the bricks, to see what lies inside. Perhaps we are dismantling the curriculum and rebuilding, to make room for decolonizing, to make room for post-humanism. This may be years in the making and so, for now, I must continue to keep my front lawn manicured and the cars parked perfectly, but I will continue to look in the closets, the empty rooms, I will throw things out and take things back in, I will let the vines grow and I will find ways for each student to climb the stairs. And, I may begin to break some bricks.

We do not need to create students that are faceless renderings of each other, tramping single file in prescriptive lines, we do not want to create this.  Students are more than just another brick in the wall, and it is clear that some of the walls built, specifically those that exclude and those that support colonization need to be dismantled, brick by brick.

References

• Aoki, T. T., (1993), Legitimating Lived curriculum: towards a curricular landscape of multiplicity. Journal of Curriculum and Supervision, 8(3). 255-268. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/09c0/8e959a4a83c9716e4bafdf233639a8a4c070.pdf
• Aoki, T. T. (1996/2005). Spinning inspirited images in the midst of planned and live(d)curricula. In W. F. Pinar & R. L. Irwin (Eds.). Curriculum in a new key: The collected works of Ted T. Aoki (pp. 413–423). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
• In James Nahachewski & Ingrid Johnston (Eds.), Beyond Presentism: Re-imagining the personal, social and historical places of curriculum (pp. 23–41). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Donald, T.D (2009). The Curricular Problem of Indigenousness: Colonial Frontier Logics, Teacher Resistances, and the acknowledgment of ethical space.
• Snaza, Nathan, Peter Appelbaum, Siân Bayne, Dennis Carlson, Marla Morris, Nikki Rotas, Jennifer Sandlin, Jason Wallin, John A. Weaver. 2014. “Toward a Posthuman Education.” Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 30 (2): 39-55.
  https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/curriculum-facpubs/47
• Tyler, R. W. (1949). Basic principles of curriculum and instruction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.  http://blogs.ubc.ca/ewayne/files/2009/02/tyler_001.pdf

Photo of many hands holding lego figures together in a circle

Curriculum and Collaboration

“We human beings are social beings. We come into the world as the result of others’ actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives when we do not benefit from others’ activities. For this reason, it is hardly surprising that most of our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with others” (A quote by Dalai Lama XIV )

This quote resonates with me as this is a large part of how I view my role as an educator. I and those who form my school community are social beings.  I collaborate with other teachers, with students and I create opportunities for students to work with each other, to collaborate with their peers as well as with me as their teacher.  One clear illustration of this student-teacher/ teacher-teacher/student-student collaboration is the project we took on as a musical theater class.  My co-teacher and I worked with a variety of students to create and perform our very own musical creation of “Pride and Prejudice”.  The learning that took place for the students as well as for us as teachers, far exceeded any expectations we had.  In my other classes, as the students I teach are part of a blended program and only attend two days a week, I build collaborative activities into most classes.  I have seen the benefits of collaboration both in connection to learning content/skills as well as essential communication strategy’s/ problem-solving.  From a social point of view, these activities also help to foster class community and build relationships.  Collaboration is part of my class curriculum and part of BC’s New Curriculum (Building Student Success-BC’s New Curriculum). 

Curriculum and Theories of Collaboration

Snaza et al. (2014) wrote that “consciously or not, we educators and educational researchers are used to looking at schools as places where humans dwell together to learn what it means to be human and to accumulate the kinds of skills and habits required to participate in human societies as adults” (p. 39).  We can presume that this would have been considered either “consciously or not” when developing B.C’s New Curriculum; likely in partnership with the following four “Basic Principals of Curriculum and Instruction” created by Tyler (1949).

1. What educational purposes should the school seek to attain?
2. What educational experiences can be provided that are likely to attain these purposes?
3. How can these educational experiences be effectively organized?
4. How can we determine whether these purposes are being attained? (p. 51)

BC’s New Curriculum, as part of their considerations, determined that collaboration was to be an essential part of classroom learning experiences.  I propose this to be a result of the researched benefits (building of 21^st century skills), and the shift to personalized learning (Building Student Success-BC’s New Curriculum); likely also linked to the unconscious agenda proposed by Snaza et al. (2014).

Theories created by Vygotsky, Dewey, Bloom, Bruner and various others affirm the benefits of collaborative learning.  Vygotsky, who developed current theories around social development believed that we learn through interacting and communicating with others (McLeod, 2018).  Dewey also believed that we learn through interactions and theorized the teacher’s role as that of a guide; the student’s natural curiosity and interests should drive the learning (Lammert, 2020).  Bloom, who created what is widely known as Bloom’s taxonomy of learning, “derived much of its theoretical foundation from the work of Dewey (Salmon, 2019., p. 10).  Bruner, who according to Takaya (2008), initially discussed learning as individual in his early works, came to similar conclusions as Dewey and Vygotsky, stating in 1996 “that education tends to work well when learning is, first, participatory, provocative, communal, and collaborative; and second, when learning is a process of constructing meaning rather than receiving” (p. 84; as cited by Takaya, 2008., p. 15).

McLeod (2018) discusses some specific aspects of Vygotsky’s theories: reciprocal teaching, scaffolding, apprenticeship, the more knowledgeable other (MKO) and the benefits of working in what is known as the zone of proximal development (ZDP).  The MKO is connected to the ZDP which “is an important concept that relates to the difference between what a child can achieve independently and what a child can achieve with guidance and encouragement from a skilled partner (McLeod, S.A., 2018 sec. 5).  Dewey’s theories are commonly associated with a mode of learning called “Inquiry”, a theory soon followed by a more structured approach in the work of Kilpatrick’s Project Based Learning (PBL) (Lammert, 2020).  While there may be slight differences in the exact details of each individual theory, and the specific application of it, all of these theorists have one thing in common, the belief that we learn with and from others.

Although this concept and these theories are clear, supported by research, have been trending topics in the 21^st century ( in my experience) and are included in the curriculum, I am curious about whether teachers as a whole are equipped to implement collaborative activities or if the concepts are merely included in the curriculum as an ode to the latest trend without clear objectives and without the training required to implement them effectively.   I see collaborative learning taking place within the classrooms in my school; however, conversations with others, as well as research, indicates that this is most often not the case.  In a recently transcribed interview with Norris and Solway (both ed-tech researchers), Norris stated that direct instruction is still the most common teaching strategy used in classrooms (Gewertz, 2020).

Aoki, (1993) would likely claim that this is a result of the “planned” versus the “lived” curriculum.  In this case the planned curriculum of collaboration may be different than the lived curriculum.  Teachers may not have the training, nor the time to train.  Teachers may have a classroom of students who lack the skills needed for collaboration due to their lived experiences; teachers may not have the skills/knowledge needed to build collaboration within this environment.  I wonder then, as we shift from face-to face learning to learning that may be blended or all online, how will the lived curriculum affect this already weak integration of the planned curriculum of collaboration?  If we are in tension, and should live in between these two, as Aoki (1993) said, how do we as educators best do this?  How can we use technology to create opportunities for students to collaborate?  What are our lived realities when it comes to using technology and digitizing the practice of collaboration?

Working definitions of Collaboration

Crucially, it would be prudent to spend a few lines to explain and further define the practice of collaboration.  Smith and MacGregor (1993) define collaborative learning as:

an umbrella term for a variety of educational approaches involving joint intellectual effort by students, or students and teachers together.  Usually, students are working in groups of two or more, mutually searching for understanding, solutions, or meanings, or creating a product. Collaborative learning activities vary widely, but most center on students’ exploration or application of the course material, not simply the teacher’s presentation or explication of it” (p. 1).

Collaborative learning benefits learners and teachers as it engages students in active learning, builds relationships, teaches tolerance, caring, conflict resolution, caring, how to create an active voice, how to listen as well as how to express ideas clearly (Smith & Macgregor, 1993).  It could be argued that collaboration as a social endeavor, inadvertently or otherwise has the added benefits of building community and creating a culture of respect, it may even create natural opportunities to work towards decolonizing the curriculum.  Collaborative learning in a face-to face classroom may be evident in a physical way, as students would be grouped together; a classroom may even be set up to encourage collaboration (e.g. pods rather than singular desks).

In addition to my experiences with collaboration in Musical Theatre, I have set up collaborative activities in Foods classes (e.g. group baking), as well as English classes (e.g. group writing).  With the move to learning fully online, these types of collaborative experiences changed and evolved; activities that were easy to create in class, became much more complex in an online world.  Although students had experience with the use of some online collaborative tools (e.g. forums/ shared docs/video conferencing), removal of the face-to face aspect created new challenges and changed many students’ collaborative experiences.  From Aoki’s (1993) perspective this would have been my lived curriculum; as a lived experience, my knowledge, perceptions and skills connected to creating collaboration online along with the students (their experience’s, skills etc.), created the curriculum in that moment in time.

Aoki’s (1993) contemplations with regards to the tensions that exist between the lived and planned curriculum may aid in the development of activities that will help to implement collaboration, regardless of the version of schooling that will emerge in the fall, as we can make a variety of predictions concerning what our lived curriculum as opposed to planned may be.  I expect that the return to the classroom in any form will create the need for the physical distancing and spacing of students.  This may inadvertently discourage collaboration and thus traditional face-to face collaborative activities may need to be revised to take this into consideration. There is also the possibility that even with the return to school, COVID cases could suddenly swing the other direction and we could find ourselves only teaching online again.

Opportunities, Barriers and Final thoughts

Students, as digital natives, have the skills to communicate online.  Salmons (2019) observes that this is “a[n] era where text messaging, social media, e-mailing and blogging are common ways that students interact socially, [the next step is to consider how we can create] collaborative learning [that] encourages students to apply these practices to meaningful tasks” (p.76).   Simple as this may seem, it can be challenging to create meaningful collaboration; collaboration that involves all/or as many students as possible.  While I experienced some success with this in the spring, there were many failed attempts and areas that could be further improved.  Salmons (2019) notes a couple of essential considerations when it comes to creating collaborative learning experiences.  The first and foremost of these is trust, as students need to trust both the teacher and their classmates.  The second consideration would be the skill level of the students when it comes to collaborating; this will determine the type of collaboration that would be most successful as well as the amount of time that would need to be spent on teaching students the necessary skills ( Salmons, 2019).  Like Bloom’s taxonomy, there are varying degrees of collaboration included as part of the taxonomy of collaboration (reflection, dialogue, review, parallel collaboration sequential collaboration, synergistic collaboration ) that move from one level to the next, and that could be used to create collaborative experiences that reflect student needs (Salmons, 2019).  In line with many of the theorist’s work mentioned earlier as well as the personalization of the curriculum, Salmons (2019) notes the importance of considering the needs and experiences of the students. Thought should also be given to the tools that students have access to as well tools that comply with district policies.  In my experience, this can be challenging at times; roadblocks may interfere with experiences we would like to provide for our students.

While no one can know for certain what the future will look like I, like many other teachers I know, am a planner.  So, I will plan, and I anticipate that much like the planned curriculum we use to guide us, my planned activities and my planned online/ blended classrooms will be different from the lived one I will experience in the fall.  Technology may fail, and new strategies may go up in flames, however, I will continue to work towards what may be the most important part of schooling; building collaboration, building community, as this, these relationships, are where “most of our happiness arises” (A quote by Dalai Lama XIV ).

References

“A Quote by Dalai Lama XIV.” Goodreads, Goodreads.  www.goodreads.com/quotes/31335-we-human-beings-are-social-beings-we-come-into-the.

Aoki, T. T., (1993), Journal of Curriculum and Supervision, 8(3). 255-268. Rhttps://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/09c0/8e959a4a83c9716e4bafdf233639a8a4c070.pdf

Building Student Success – BC’s New Curriculum.  https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/

Gewertz, C. (2020, June 3). How Technology, Coronavirus Will Change Teaching by 2025. Education Week.  https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2020/06/03/how-technology-coronavirus-will-change-teaching-by.html.

Lammert, C. (2020). Becoming Inquirers: A Review of Research on Inquiry Methods in Literacy Preservice Teacher Preparation. Literacy Research and Instruction, 59(3), 191–217. https://doi.org/10.1080/19388071.2020.1730529

McLeod, S. A. (2018, August 05). Lev Vygotsky. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/vygotsky.html

Salmons, J. (2019). Learning to collaborate, collaborating to learn: engaging students in the classroom and online. Stylus Publishing, LLC. https://ebookcentral-proquest. com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/lib/uvic/detail.action?docID=5748777

Smith, Barbara & MacGregor, Jean. (1993). What is Collaborative Learning? Wash Cent News.7. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242282475_What_is_Collaborative_Learning

Snaza, Nathan, Peter Appelbaum, Siân Bayne, Dennis Carlson, Marla Morris, Nikki Rotas, Jennifer Sandlin, Jason Wallin, John A. Weaver. 2014. “Toward a Posthuman Education.” Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 30 (2): 39-55.   https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/curriculum-facpubs/47

Takaya, K. (2008). Jerome Bruner’s Theory of Education: From Early Bruner to Later Bruner. Interchange, 39(1), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10780-008-9039-2

Tyler, R. W. (1949). Basic principles of curriculum and instruction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.  http://blogs.ubc.ca/ewayne/files/2009/02/tyler_001.pdf

Photo by Vlad Hilitanu on Unsplash

Metaphors of Curriculum

Lego

COVID has created a lot of open space in my home and as a result has led to the exploration of toys long forgotten and the creation of new games. One such exploration led to the dusting off of bins and bins of Lego. Perhaps the spilling of bins all over the floor, dust billowing into the air, is a more accurate description. My daughter, having shown no interest in the past, was suddenly spending hours laying on the floor of her room creating all sorts of imaginary places and spaces along with wildly designed ships and cars. My older son, used to following the labelled instructions, the box with the desired outcome displayed in bright color planted in front of him, watched from the sidelines, glancing over once in a while but making it clear that he was invested in other activities. One morning, my son came bounding downstairs, a contraption in his hand and joy spilled all over his face. “Look mom!” Look what I built! There in his hand, a battleship of the likes I had never seen before. Enthusiastically, he began detailing each part, explaining how they worked and declaring that this creation could actually fly. Taking in a final gulp of air, he then, with pride in his voice, told me how he had built this on his own; without any instructions. The next number of days were spent creating and recreating ships, towns, and many other structures both on his own and with his sister. I would now often see the two of them laying on the floor, heads together, creating worlds that can only be conquered up through the brilliance of childhood imagination. A month later, faced with the task of describing what curriculum is, the first thing that popped into my head was Lego.

Curriculum is Lego. It arrives in a nice package, clearly labelled with the age it is suited for, a clear set of instructions inside and the outcome plastered on the outside of the box. Curriculum and Lego both contain a limited variety of sets and series, what is to be learned is decided by the manufacturer; similar to the players that determine curriculum (Blades, 1995). While at first this curriculum may seem rigid and inflexible as learners follow the instructions precisely to make just one thing, it is easy to see that the potential is there to create anything. Lego and the curriculum are both rigid and flexible, both organized and messy.

Both the rigidity and the flexibility serve me well as a teacher. They allow me to give students the freedom to explore, but also, create structure; the building of knowledge and skills. This knowledge/skill may be learnt by following the step by step instructions, by receiving help and guidance, by learning how to put the blocks together and take them apart. My daughter, while clearly engaged in playing with the Lego, built ships that consisted of a few blocks, most of the beauty was in her imagination. Conversely, my son, an experienced Lego builder, was able to take the knowledge and skills previously learnt through building with step by step instructions/adult guidance and apply them to create a complex structure.

Connected to the flexibility of the curriculum is the idea that students should be given some say within their learning. Egan (2003) discusses the beliefs of Rosseau and Dewey in connection with the curriculum in regards to “the belief that children are naturally good……[and thus] children’s own interests should be allowed to decide at least some part of what their curriculum should contain”(p13). This was shown when both my son and daughter chose to create their own curriculum by building freely without instructions or specific directions. I became the facilitator, there to help (primarily with separating blocks determined to be one), to guide if needed and to be a sounding board.

Rewind and Reflect

When I first started teaching, I had no idea of the broad knowledge I would come to have connected to curriculum. My initial plan to teach grade 4/5 forever, soon dissolved as I landed my first ­­­permanent teaching job in a K-9 distributed learning school in Langley, BC.  At this school, formerly called Lochiel U-Connect, I taught every subject imaginable from grade 2-9, (oh, the stories I could tell) and assessed students in every subject area from K-9. I would say I became very quickly versed in all curriculum areas across these grade levels in a very short amount of time.  As a new teacher, I found the checklists of outcomes comforting when it came to teaching and assessing student work. I also very quickly found ways to use the curriculum to help families build projects across grade levels and I realized it was okay if some of the boxes did not get ticked.  In 2013, a new principal and some brainstorming led to the further expansion of our school as we added Grade 10 followed by Grade 11 and then Grade 12. Suddenly I found myself teaching high school English and as we grew further, moved locations and changed names, I became a high school teacher.  Currently, I teach English (8-12), Musical Theatre (K-12) and Foods (11/12) in a blended/distributed learning environment at a school now simply referred to as U-Connect. I still like curriculum documents, I like that there is a guide for each grade, each subject area, but I have come to realize that within the structure of these documents, there is a lot of flexibility. Each bin (subject) and the pieces (curricular competencies/content) within it can be pulled apart, mixed and built in many different ways, can include voice and choice, and can be combined with content from other bins.  What struck me, after reading Blade’s metaphorical analysis in “Procedures of Power in a Curriculum Discourse: Conversations From Home”, was the realization that when it comes to curriculum, I have given little, if any, thought to the powers behind the curriculum, to what is included and why. One sentence that really resonated with me was when Blade (1995) stated, “Foucault suggested to me a way to begin this journey of change: if we understand how the systems in which we live and form act to exclude and limit possibilities, then perhaps possibilities for change might be revealed (pp.129-130).  I now wonder, does the current curriculum “act to exclude and limit possibilities?”

What then is curriculum to me?

So, how do I define curriculum? Egan (2003) posed some questions about what curriculum is when he stated:

At the superficial level,  confusion about what curriculum is, and thus what people concerned with it should do, involves argument about whether curriculum subsumes instruction – and thus whether a student of curriculum should also be a student of instructional methods – or whether curriculum involves all learning experiences, or refers simply to a blueprint for achieving restricted objectives in a school setting, or includes the statement of objectives as well, or also the evaluation of their achievement, and so on (pp 9-10).

After wrestling with some of the ideas here, my definition of curriculum as a teacher would include the curricular competencies/content (“the what” as defined by Egan, 2003) but would include more than just that, as the instructional methods (“the how” as defined by Egan, 2003) is also important. To me “curriculum subsumes instruction” (Egan, 2003, p 9) and involves all learning experiences; the curriculum documents simply function as a guideline for the curriculum in my classroom.

Perhaps someone who is writing curriculum is only concerned with “the what” based on what it is believed students should be learning and when they should be learning it.

Perhaps a student of instructional methods is focused on “the how”.

Perhaps to ease inquiry and research, these both function well as separate entities.

But as a teacher, I cannot include only one or the other, or parts of each because what I teach, my curriculum, includes all aspects. When I now reflect back on the metaphor I chose for curriculum, the Lego, I see that this metaphor, in many ways, includes only part of my definition for curriculum. Without the teacher, without the student, it is merely a box with a fancy label, blocks and instructions. It is the sum of all of these parts that creates curriculum, that creates what one may see or experience when walking into classroom.

References

Blades, D. (1995) Procedures of Power in a Curriculum Discourse: Conversations from Home.

JCT, 11(4), 125-155.

Egan, K. (2003) What is Curriculum? JCACS, 1(1), 9-16.

https://jcacs.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/jcacs/article/viewFile/16845/15651