Entry 8: Curriculum as Social Action (Stachowiak, 2017 & Schultz & Olyer, 2006)

Entry 8 Video Recording: rwg-suew-ato (2021-11-14 at 13:07 GMT-8) - Google Drive

Entry 8 Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1qDVM1jqyUW6c-7g2JVCyQjPdtVqYT2-AmA8QhU_QUIM/edit?usp=sharing

• What are the main themes across the readings? 
• How do these readings expose the structure and history of curriculum and ideas regarding how to rethink it?
• What do the readings reveal about the role that politics, identity, power, and place play in the design and selection of curriculum?

Social Action and Social Justice: A Path to Critical Consciousness for Engagement by Dana Stachowiak

The main theme of the article is how to create a social action and social justice curriculum to engage students in critical consciousness. The article is much different than the Scholar Academic or Social Efficiency ideologies as it helps students to reconceptualize themselves, the world around them and their roles in the world. The goal is to try to work toward justice by allowing students to determine curriculum that is important to them I found the information in this article to be very enlightening. It helps provide a framework for how to move beyond using Culturally Responsive Teaching to a more social action and justice approach. The framework is part of the Social Reconstruction ideology. Stachowiak defines the following:

• Equality: everyone is provided the same opportunities regardless of their means
• Equity: everyone is provided opportunities based on their means
• Equality Literacy: When we possess the skills and dispositions that enable us to recognize, respond to, redress conditions that deny some students access to the educational opportunities enjoyed by their peers and in doing so sustain equitable learning environments for all students and families. It is an act of social justice.
• Social Justice: a call to understanding and an action to push back against injustices and inequities. 
• With Equity Literacy and Social Justice as the foundation to pedagogy, it becomes easier to prepare students for engagement in impactful social action.
• Critical Consciousness: enabling students to become consciousness of their operating world view and to be able to examine critically understanding alternative ways of their world and social relations

She proposes that in order to truly engaging students in social action it is important to do so by middle school by including critical consciousness in our teaching and suggests three phases of her framework:

1. Situating the self with others and the world: Thinking about identity, diversity, and place in the world as part of a social system of society and how they are affected by systems and how they affect systems.
2. Understanding the System: Privilege, Power, and Oppression: Explore reasons why they are part of socialization, a system where a culture of norms is set and where privilege, power, and oppression operate persistently
3. Becoming Change Makers: Learning from Activist Ancestors and Current Day Activists: Study social justice movements and individual activists

We Make This Road as We Walk Together: Sharing Teacher Authority in a Social Action Curriculum Project by Brian Schultz and Celia Oyler (2006)

This was a great article giving an example of a way that a teacher in Chicago facilitated learning for his students using a social action lens. Brian, the teacher created the curriculum along with the 5th grade students over the course of several months that included active participation in civil and political life of the students. Students had voice and choice during the project where they worked to create a new school building as theirs was in such horrible shape and not conducive to learning. One major theme of the article was participation and student led instruction/curriculum. The students themselves were the change agents as they determined a problem, came up with an action plan to solve the problem, and worked toward solutions as a team to make changes. 

The Social Reconstruction and Learner Centered ideologies are evident in this real-world example of social action curriculum. The authors of the article want to relay the message that in al curriculum there are opportunities for students to lead along with the teacher in order to make change. Such a message is opposite of the Academic Scholar and Social Efficiency ideologies where the teacher is the knower, expert, and giver of all information. 

The classroom teacher guided students through problem solving processes to help them determine the issues with the school (content). Students determined how they would go about making changes, who would need to be involved, and what resources and methods they would use to support their action plan. Together the teacher and students were equal counterparts in the project and used constant dialogue, critical thinking and problem solving to get their action steps accomplished. Moreover, the students were the leaders and designers of their own curriculum