Entry 4: Exposing and Reconceptualizing the Curriculum (Vallance, 1973) & McTighe & Wiggins, Newmann & Whelage, Kriete, and Technology Connections

Exposing and Reconceptualizing the Curriculum

Vallance (1973) Hiding the Hidden Curriculum: An Interpretation of the language of justification in nineteenth-century Education Reform

Vallance shares a thoughtful reflection on 19th Century Education Reform and the Hidden Curriculum. Vallance shares that hidden curriculums have been around since the beginning of schooling and that 19th Century educational- rhetoric led to the establishment of hidden curriculums. She states that because it has been around for so long and embedded in the ideals of schooling that hidden curriculums (while debated) cannot just disappear, but rather that we should aim to understand hidden curriculum so that we can make improvements to education. 

In her discussions, Vallance alludes to the Scholarly Academic curriculum ideology. Her descriptions of each time period detail the purposes of education and hidden curriculums within each period.   

Vallance provides an overview of the functions of hidden curriculum which are a means of social control:

-inculcation of values

-political socialization

-training in obedience and docility

-perpetuation of traditional class structures

She noted that until the end of the 19th century hidden functions of school were believed to be benefits of schooling. Vallance states that one can be critical of hidden curriculums using the following dimensions or lenses: 

Dimension 1: Hidden curriculum refers to contexts of schooling including student-teacher interaction, classroom structure, the organizational pattern of education as a microcosm (community of the social value system 

Dimension 2: HC can bear on number of processes operating in schools including values acquisitions, socialization, classroom structure

Dimension 3: HC embraces different degrees of intentionality and depth of hiddenness from incidental and quite unintended of curriculum arrangements, outcomes that are deeply embedded in historical social function of education. 

Vallance also posed the following questions to consider when analyzing hidden curriculum:

• When did reference to the function of hidden curriculum drop out of public rationales for schooling? 
• What contributed to the shift in focus?
• What hid the hidden curriculum?

She goes on to describe education through history:

Prior to 1830's: From Colonial Period

-Schools limited, family & church based

-families shifted to working and schools tried to make everyone the same

-economy made for importance of skills and need for the 3 R's. Because parents worked schools had to change an teach socialization

-educational control came from above with a "public religion" and unifying education as the "American Public"

-2 purposes thus far: transmit the traditional culture in a socialization process/conservative response AND school had to create a national and uniform culture

-Keep class differences but do it peacefully.

-All classes learn 3 R's

-practical education for all classes and classical education for upper class

-welfare for public at large, not individuals

Mid Century: The Common Schools and Beyond:

-urban education creating common schools

-many educational institutions developed

-understanding that schools were "white: and others were a part of society so needed national assimilation

-common schools became peacemaking agencies

-Horace Mann tried to keep peace and consistency of values

-"national character" and nurturing schools for changing populations

Post Civil War: Urbanism and Centralization

-districts began

-nationwide institution

-socialization remained

-rural schools more conservative

-urban schools were patchwork of ethnic groups

-politics became inefficient so school boards were formed

-educational machinery increased: textbooks, content, and centralization

-focus on homogeneity, efficiency and obedience to teachers

-silence, life skills, curriculum and organizational structures

Vallance discusses high school as a hidden curriculum in an of itself. When high schools developed many of the ideals of 19th education systems began to change and become more aligned to the social Efficiency Ideology. I wonder if there are studies that show hidden curriculums within the context of each of Schiro's curriculum camps?

Curriculum Construction: Reflections on McTighe & Wiggins

This article really hit home for me. In my role as district administrator I have been developing Elementary Science UbD units for the past 4.5 years. Teachers across our 120 schools use the resources within the units to help them plan standards aligned science instruction for their students. Moreover, we construct curriculum using UbD.

I have to agree with McTighe and Wiggins that UbD units are purposeful and planned. (They also require a lot of time to plan and design.) I do agree that providing students with learning targets from Stage 1 helps them to understand their goals during the unit. The authors mentioned a performance task for Stage 2 that provides students with the opportunity to share their learning through real world applications. UbD uses the format of GRASPS (Goal, Role Audience, Situation, Product, Success Criteria) for it's performance task organization. Basically students have a goal to accomplish using a role such as a meteorologists in which they perform as task to show understanding related to real world experiences. I love the discussion that the assessments in Stage 2 of UbD should be formative in nature. They are to show learning rather than to be used by a teacher for grading. 

Two quotes in the article stood out to me in the article: 

"Teachers are designers. An essential act of our profession is the design of learning experiences to meet specific purposes." ~McTighe & Wiggins (1988) 

I LOVE this quote as I believe it to be true. Designing learning is one factor that makes us professionals rather than semiskilled technicians. 

"Teaching is a means to an end." (p. 22) 

I never thought of teaching this way, but really the end is to make a difference in the lives of our students. 

UbD is an effective way to construct curriculum in my opinion. 

Standards & Assessment

Reflections on Five Standards on Authentic Instruction by Newmann & Whelage

This article was reader friendly, clear, and specific. The purpose of the article is to provide teachers with a framework (or set of standards) for instruction that emphasizes critical thinking, meaning, and engagement. Moreover, it shares standards for authentic instruction. The authors state that for learning to be meaningful it is inclusive of the following three criteria:

1. students construct meaning and produce knowledge
2. students use disciplined inquiry to construct knowledge
3. students aim their work toward real world products, discussions, or performances that have value and meaning beyond school

The authors discuss that while we have standards for curriculum and assessment, that there is a lack of standards for instruction. I found this intriguing. As an adjunct instructor, I teach students how to teach science. The methods that I teach are based on science education research and pedagogy, yet there are no standards for what I should teach. NSTA does have a position statement that discussed what science education students should learn however.  The authors state that the standards we have are procedural and technical and that we are lacking standards for quality. This reminds me a bit of Bloom's levels of cognitive processes : factual, conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive. Based on Newmann & Whelage we are lacking metacognitive or even conceptual processes for instructional standards. The authors argue that lack of standards for instruction results in no value outside of school and students who do not think critically. 

To solve this issue the authors designed five standards for instruction. Each standard falls on a 5 point scale and includes (1 point being at a low level and 5 points for a high level of each standard):

1. Higher-Order Thinking
2. Depth of Knowledge
3. Connectedness to the World Beyond the Classroom
4. Substantive Conversation
5. Social Support for Student Achievement 

The standards were used to evaluate instruction in elementary, middle, and high school math and social studies classes. The goal was not to evaluate teachers but to determine how school systems and structures, professional learning content, school leadership, and school/classroom culture positively or negatively affect student achievement and authentic instruction.  Moreover, the standards for instruction framework is to be used as a tool for reflection, inquiry, criteria and a as a way to keep the conversation going in the realm of education. There is no research on this framework, yet the authors believe that authentic learning experiences offer some hope and help for more effective instruction. 

I like this article a lot. I did grapple with the ideas that no we really don't have specific standards for what authentic learning looks like. However, in Zeretta Hammond's  Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain research she shares a framework for which to plan instruction that is based on brain research. 

I also kept coming back to the question "Who's knowledge is of most worth?" as I read the article. How did Newmann & Whelage determine the standards? Are we missing something in this set of standards? What else might we consider?

Reflections on Essential Questions by Technology Connection (1995)

Essential Questions are a part of McTighe & Wiggins UbD unit in Stage 1 as they set purposes for learning and provide students with guiding questions to refer back to during units of instruction. The article provides a nice overview of the purposes, benefits, and goals of using Essential Questions in curriculum and instruction.

According to the article there are many benefits to Essential Questions to include:

-Aligned to Blooms higher levels of thinking

-Spark curiosity and wonder

-They are purposeful 

-Answers are invented and diverse

-Involve real world problem solving

-integrated across disciplines

-They reoccur in learning

-linked to other questions

Essential Questions also:

-guide planning

-lead units

-prompt teachers to create engaging questions aligned to unit standards

-provide purpose

-prompt thought provoking experiences

-connected to inquiry based learning (or constructivism)

-engage learners

The authors share several characteristics of engaged learners, noting that engagement is the goal of using essential questions for instruction. The characteristics  include students being responsible for own learning, being energizes by learning, being strategic in learning, and collaborative. These characteristics remind me of Costa and Kallick's Habits of the the Mind as shown below. The authors even noted that students can learn to frame their own questions but requires training, depth of knowledge, and time. As noted previously, as I design UbD units for my district I also design Essential Questions so that students and teachers to engage in discussions about the content. I like to use the image of everyone sitting around the table eating dinner, someone throws out a question, and everyone at the table has a different perspective and response to the question. I used this image when leading professional learning on UbD/essential questions.  

Critical Perspectives: Learner-Centered

Reflections on The Morning Meeting Book (Kriete)

I am very familiar with the morning meeting book and the components of morning meeting. When I began teaching in 1994, I used some of the components of the morning meeting routine each day. For example, I always greeted students at the door upon arrival and wished them a great day with a farewell at the end of the school day. I always tried to find something positive to say to each student as they left for the day. Later in my career I worked as an Instructional Coach/Leaded Teacher and when the morning meeting book came out, I led my staff through a book study. We ended up embedding the morning meeting as one of our SIP (School Improvement Goals). I still use components of morning meeting today by greeting my EDU 305 students at the door upon arrival. I would also have weekly class meetings and reflections at the end of the week that looked similar to the components of the morning meeting. 

The morning meeting is congruent with the learner-centered ideology curriculum camp as it serves to meet the social, emotional, and intellectual learning needs of students.  As I read Kriete's chapter I also wondered if the routine of a morning meeting would be considered a "hidden curriculum"? Vallance explained that dimension 2 of a hidden curriculum bears on number of processes operating in schools including values acquisitions, socialization, and classroom structure. I might have just answered my own question since the goal of morning meeting is about values, socialization and classroom structures.  

Morning meetings include 30 minutes of intentional morning meeting routines to get each day started. The routines are  greeting, sharing, group activity, and news/announcements. Many of the routines are considered important and foundational to the social and emotional well being of students. Morning meeting provides a structural framework for which to lay in the early years and build upon so that students continuously learn social and academic skills. Morning meeting structures become a part of class culture and building class culture. The goals of morning meeting also reminds me of modeling and teaching students Costa and Kallick's Habits of the Mind. They seem harmonious in their purpose. The structure and routines of a Morning Meeting also reminds me of Harry Wong's the First Days of School text on how to be an effective teacher. I read and applied many of the routines shared by Harry Wong in my classroom over the years. 

Morning meeting routines helps students feel significant and encourages them to realize that they can fun in school. Moring meetings provide students with voice, value, relationship building, and a chase to take risks safely. It was interesting to read the research about the impact of educators have on students when they create positive cultures and classroom environments that help students become interested, exhibit positive behaviors, and feel attached to school. (Elias et al., 1997) I really like the thought on using morning meeting a means to develop social, emotional, and intellectual learning (SEIL). Moreover, it is an integrated approach for teaching and learning. Using the group work routine by discussing current and local events really brings in the notion of cultural responsiveness into the culture of the class as well.  Like Wong, Kriete suggests that teachers should teach and model the structures, systems, and expectations of their morning meeting routines. The goal is to help students become the leaders of their learning and the teacher the facilitator of learning and structures. The morning meeting approach is learner centered, yet it may also be inclusive of characteristics of the social reconstruction and social efficacy approaches.