Chapter 5: Curriculum

"…college syllabi appear both outdated and conservative, caught in an intellectual time warp."
Lewin and Stuart , 2003

In a synthesis of a cross national study examining teacher education programs (4 of them in Africa) Lewin and Stuart (Lewin & Stuart, 2003) found that college curricula are outdated, rarely integrate theory and practice, and make few attempts to relate advances in educational theories and strategies to local contexts. Furthermore, college curricula generally place little emphasis on student teachers' prior knowledge and experience, instead treating the future teachers as if they had little experience as students, parents, child minders, volunteer teachers, linguists, musicians, or community members. Some authors also argue that there are often inconsistencies between the curriculum and the reform oriented policies and programs promoting learner-centered education (Swarts, 2003).

This chapter is an attempt to help teacher educators develop an understanding of curriculum design and theories as they relate to LCE. The chapter will assume that teacher educators have knowledge of the processes of curriculum development in Africa and aims to be a gateway into the broader range of ideas about curriculum developed by educational and curriculum researchers as well as reformer-philosopher such as Paulo Freire and John Dewey.

College curricula in Africa are often developed at the national or sub-national level with some flexibility to interpret the curriculum at the college through tutor-designed syllabi and lesson plans. Many college tutors are enlisted to participate in the development of curricula and materials at the national level. However, few college tutors have backgrounds in curriculum development and design. This chapter is structured to provide descriptions of different perspectives on what constitutes knowledge, ways such perspectives influence curriculum, types of curriculum, and major curriculum theories. The seminars at the end of the chapter will prompt the participants to use these ideas to develop a critical understanding of the curriculum in their particular contexts.

Perspectives on Knowledge - Epistemological Perspectives

"A coherent teaching philosophy is always accompanied... by a philosophy of knowledge"

Rene Thom (1922-2002), a French mathematician, once said, "…whether one wishes it or not, all mathematical pedagogy, even if scarcely coherent, rests on a philosophy of mathematics" (Thom, 1973, p. 204). What Thom said about mathematics education is also true of teaching in all subject areas. A coherent teaching philosophy is always accompanied, whether one is aware of it or not, by a philosophy of knowledge. In other words, as teachers or a teacher educators and curriculum developers, you always have an epistemological perspective—epistemology being the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of knowledge. It is important, therefore, to be aware of and be able to reflect on your epistemological positions.

Epistemologists ask, "Where does our knowledge come from?" To understand the importance of this question for a curriculum worker, recall the exposition on LCE in the last chapter. Imagine being a student in a classroom that implements LCE. In such a classroom, the source of knowledge for students is not only the teacher and the text; students are expected to solve problems and develop knowledge in the process. Clearly, a curriculum that responds to LCE will be based on a different set of ideas about the sources of knowledge than a curriculum that responds to a traditional mode of educating children. What knowledge is and how it is acquired become critical questions for the curriculum developers and teacher educators to pose. An understanding of the epistemology is important in guiding the development of curriculum materials as well as teaching and learning. Since this resource book is largely concerned with two different ways of educating children, the transmission mode and the learner-centered, we would like to discuss two epistemological perspectives related to these two modes: positivism and constructivism.

Positivism

A positivistic perspective on knowledge assumes that knowledge is separate from the knower. Knowledge is fixed and waiting to be discovered, as the human mind can only discover knowledge that already exists. John Dewey called the positivistic view of knowledge the "spectator theory of knowledge," because we can only observe the pre-existing reality according to this perspective; we cannot participate in knowledge construction (Dewey, 1960, p. 23; McEwan & Bull, 1991). What are the pedagogical consequences of such a view of knowledge? When knowledge is seen from a positivistic perspective, curriculum materials and teaching and learning also appear as focused on transmission of pre-existing knowledge or information. By careful explanations and paying attention, knowledge can be acquired by the student who is well prepared to receive it. How well the student receives the knowledge is reflected in the grade he or she receives. If knowledge is to be transmitted by the teacher and received by the student, then the curriculum tends to be consistent with a teacher-centered model of instruction and a traditional system of assessment that aims at assessing recall of received knowledge.

Constructivism as an Epistemological Position

Recall from the discussion in chapter 4, a constructivist perspective on knowledge regards knowledge as constructed through interaction with the environment, dialogue with others and reflection – all within culture and language. In the constructivist perspective, knowledge is created through a process of new information interacting with the prior knowledge and experiences of learners. Learners are then in a state of what Piaget calls disequilibrium, where this new knowledge creates some disturbance. Through dialogue, discussion, practice and reflection, the new knowledge begins to make sense in relation to the learner's previous knowledge and experience. In the process of making sense of the new information in relation to the previous knowledge, new meaning is created. Since every child is different, each child will have different backgrounds and experiences and, thus, will construct different meaning from new information. When viewed from this perspective, new knowledge is always being created.

As discussed below, two different philosophies of knowledge should lead to two different kinds of curricula. Table 5.1 shows an example of how this happens in the particular case of science education.

The theories of knowledge influence the curricula. In the table below, notice how a change in epistemological perspective entails a change in teaching practice. In the next section, we will describe the types of curricula that exist concurrently in any teaching situation, irrespective of its underlying theory of knowledge.

Curriculum Types

"a curriculum that responds to LCE will be based on... a different set of ideas"

Posner (1994) identified five types of curricula ongoing at any one time, calling them concurrent curricula. He acknowledged that curriculum is not merely the documents that prescribe what to teach. Curriculum, when looked at broadly, has many aspects. These five main aspects are:

1. The official curriculum is the curriculum as written and documented in syllabi, curriculum guides, textbooks and other printed materials.
2. What the teacher actually teaches and the learning for which the student is tested comprises the operational curriculum (sometimes called implemented curriculum), which may or may not be completely consistent with the official curriculum.
3. The term hidden curriculum describes the subtle lessons that schools teach children about appropriate roles and behavior for people of different ages and sexes, who has the right to make decisions for whom (authority and power), and what kind of knowledge is most important or legitimate. These lessons are contained in the structure of the school itself, in formal and informal "rules" which guide teacher and student behavior and are communicated consciously and unconsciously both inside and outside the formal classroom setting. These institutional norms and values are not usually openly acknowledged.
4. Eisner (1985) used null curriculum to refer to subject matter that is not taught, and urged us to consider carefully why certain subjects are not taught and the basis for deciding what is and is not included in the official curriculum.
5. The extra curriculum is made up of all planned school experiences outside the formal subjects. This curriculum is typically voluntary and responsive to student interests, for example, sports teams or drama clubs.

Curriculum Theories

The field of curriculum consists of a great multitude of theoretical ideas. We cannot go over each one of them in this chapter, but will survey some of the main ideas without attempting to necessarily draw connections between them. For a teacher educator interested in knowing more about curriculum theory and practice, see the references at the end of this chapter.

A number of scholars have put forth theories on the purposes and organization of curriculum. This section summarizes the perspectives on curriculum theory by some of the more well known educators.

The Tyler Rationale

The dominant model for curriculum development in the West (and adopted throughout the world) is that proposed by Ralph Tyler from the University of Chicago in the 1940's and 1950's (Kliebard, 1970; Tyler, 1949). Tyler argued that to develop a rational curriculum one should ask the following four questions:

1. What educational purposes should the school seek to attain? (Aims and Objectives)
2. What educational experiences can be provided that are likely to attain these purposes? (Subject Matter or Experiences that Lead to Aims and Objectives)
3. How can these educational experiences be objectively organized? (Systematic Program Arrangement of subjects and objectives)
4. How can we determine whether these purposes are being attained? (Assessment and Evaluation of Students)

To understand the operation of Tyler's rationale, consider how you may go about designing a mathematics curriculum for, say, grade 6. The first step would be to establish the objectives. Under the current standards based reforms, such objectives are usually statements about what the children will be expected to know and be able to do. Next, Tyler's rationale would require you to imagine a set of experiences that, once provided, would enable students to acquire the knowledge and skills set in the statements about the objectives.

For example, imagine a mathematical task in which students are required to compare and order positive and negative fractions, decimals, and mixed numbers and place them on a number line. As such, then, the curriculum developer will be required to figure out a set of experiences and activities that must be provided to the students in order to help them accurately compare, order, and place the numbers on a number line. However, this would not be enough. The next step would be to ensure that students understand the concept of rational numbers, have learned to distinguish between fractions, decimals, and mixed numbers and have already acquired the concepts needed to compare and order numbers. This suggests sequencing and ordering the curricular experiences for the students in response to Tyler's third question. Finally, a number of assessment instruments would need to be designed in order to assess whether or not the students had acquired the knowledge and skills set forth in the objectives.

Influencing the whole process of Tyler's thinking about the organization of curriculum are the fields of educational psychology, educational history and philosophy. Tyler's model emphasizes product and behavioral objectives in curriculum design. The Tyler Rationale claims to be objective and impartial, because it is a method or procedure for developing curriculum rather than a description of what should be taught and how. However, critiques of Tyler argue that the curriculum from this perspective does not consider the backgrounds and experiences of the learner (socio-cultural context is given little consideration) and is teacher-centered in that the teachers are focusing on meeting the behavioral objectives rather than focusing on what learners really learn. Tyler's approach also purports to be a technical one devoid of bias when, in reality, curriculum is always politically determined.

The Tyler approach to curriculum has been adapted in many countries around the world and is characterized by curricula that emphasize content to be acquired by defining behavioral objectives.

John Dewey and Progressive Education

John Dewey (1859-1952) was an American philosopher and educator sometimes considered the founder of progressive education. His influence on education is still felt around the world today.

Dewey thought that education should prepare learners, particularly primary and secondary school learners, to be thinkers and problem-solvers rather than storehouses of knowledge. He believed that students learn best in social situations and through experience. The teacher, according to Dewey, was someone who could provide meaningful learning experiences in and out of the classroom that would help students develop communication and other social skills, problem-solving abilities and habits of mind. He felt that the whole child, including the affective domain of emotions, should be addressed in education. He promoted the idea of education as preparation for citizenship and that democracy should be part of the school experience in order to prepare learners for a democratic society. As a university professor in pedagogy at the University of Chicago, he and his wife established an experimental school to test out his ideas.

Freire's Emancipation Approach

In the 1960's Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator, developed a method for teaching illiterate peasants in the poorest areas of Brazil's cities how to read and write using what is sometimes called an emancipation approach. According to Freire, curriculum's main purpose is to stimulate and sustain critical consciousness of the (adult) learners. According to Freire, in order to overcome the perceptions that many poor people have of themselves as worthless, inferior and helpless in relation to the dominant culture, curriculum and learning should teach people to overcome inferior attitudes and increase self-awareness and human responsibility. The job of critical education, thus, is emancipation through self-awareness. The idea of self-awareness and critical reflection and its role in professional teacher education is taken up in more detail again in chapter 8.

Curriculum, according to Freire, should enable learners to pose and solve problems within their particular socio-economic contexts. According to this perspective, groups of educators visit a community and work with its representatives to observe how the people live in order to understand the community's specific context. This team of educators and community representatives develop themes for literacy training such as. alcoholism, poor sanitation, and lack of transportation.

These themes are brought to the community in the form of concrete curriculum materials. Discussions, dramatizations and reading are taught through the use of these themes. The questions raised in the process of naming the world and learning lead to consciousness-raising and changing of the status quo. Curriculum, according to Freire, is transformative in nature as those being educated understand inequalities in the world and are empowered to make changes.

Curriculum in African Indigenous Education

In contrasting western knowledge systems with indigenous knowledge systems, Madjidi and Restoule (2008) suggest that curriculum should include indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing as a means for appealing to the personal dignity of students and the community as well as providing opportunities to validate their lived experiences. Bao (1989) identified the following as characteristics of indigenous education:

1. undifferentiated from other spheres of human activity, involving almost all members of the community, who were "simultaneously educating and being educated"
2. relevant to the needs of the learners and society
3. functional since "learning could and was immediately applied"
4. community-oriented, using locally available materials and the language of the people as the medium of instruction

At the same time, indigenous education has several limitations. It was, and generally remains, undocumented. Since it was prescribed and restricted to locally available knowledge, it was not responsive to individual needs and interests and, therefore, did not always engage the learner's interest. It was not enriched by new ideas or research and lacked the feedback essential for educational progress and growth of knowledge (Pursley, 1995).

Summary of Curriculum Theories

There are a number of educators and theorists who can be associated with three main schools of thought on curriculum theory. This section has highlighted some of the influential thinkers that have contributed to educational theory and practices. A summary of the three main stances on curriculum is presented in Table 5.2. (Some authors argue for more than three main approaches, the fourth most common approach being postmodernism.)

Seminars

Seminar 1. Analysis of college curriculum

Introduction

In this chapter, a variety of ideas about curriculum have been presented. Through this seminar, you are encouraged to use those ideas to examine the curriculum of your college.

Specific Tasks

Think about the "curriculum" in the college in which you work. The following prompts may help you in presenting your reflections:

1. How closely does the operational curriculum follow the official curriculum? If they are not very similar, can you explain why? Do you think it is important for the operational curriculum to follow the official curriculum? If so, which one do you think should be changed? How could this change take place?
2. Can you identify some "lessons" student teachers learn that are not part of the official curriculum and might be considered hidden curriculum? How do you perceive these lessons derived from the hidden curriculum? Are they positive? Why? Are there negative lessons? Explain.
3. Some argue that the socialization that takes place in pre-service teacher education institutions is a powerful shaper of the beliefs and practices of future teachers. The norms and procedures, the types of relationships between students and teacher educators and others, ways of communicating, expectations about behavior and performance may all be part of the socialization process of a teacher training institution. What types of socialization go on at your college that might be considered part of the hidden curriculum? Do these socialization factors have a positive effect on student development? Give examples and explain. Are there some negative aspects of the hidden curriculum at your institution? Explain. Are there aspects of the hidden curriculum at your college that if made explicit to students (instead of hidden) could benefit students more than if these aspects remain hidden?
4. Are there subjects or topics you consider to be important which are not currently included in the curriculum? Can you suggest reasons why they are excluded? What is the impact of the fact that these things are not taught (null curriculum)?
5. Are there extracurricular activities offered in the schools? How is the content of this curriculum determined? What is the relationship of extracurricular activities to the official curriculum? What is its relationship to the operational curriculum?

Seminar 2. Understanding Paulo Freire

Introduction

Paulo Freire's book Pedagogy of the Oppressed gives a perspective on curriculum that is fundamentally aligned with progressive curriculum reforms. Like Dewey, Freire is against the transmission model of teaching and learning. Freire promotes a curriculum deeply rooted in the social, cultural, and economic contexts of disadvantaged and oppressed communities.

Specific Tasks

Before this seminar, read Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed. If it is not possible to read the entire book, read Chapter 2. In a group or with a group of colleagues, describe your understanding of what Freire means in each of the following statements. Apply your understanding of his meaning to your own socio-cultural context.

Quotations from Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed

• Freedom is not an ideal located outside man; nor is it an idea which becomes myth. Rather it is the indispensable condition for the quest for human completion.
• [The oppressed]…call themselves ignorant and say the 'professor' is the one who has knowledge and to whom they should listen. "Why don't you," said a peasant participating in a culture circle, "explain the pictures first? That way it'll take us less time and won't give us a headache."
• A careful analysis of the teacher-student relationship at any level, inside or outside the school, reveals its fundamentally narrative nature. This relationship involves a narrating Subject (the teacher) and patient listening objects (the students)… Education is suffering from narration sickness.
• The "banking" concept of education [is one] in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing and storing the deposits.
• Authentic liberation—the process of humanization—is not another deposit to be made in men. Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it.
• Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferals of information.
• Dialogue is the encounter in which the united reflection and action of the dialoguers are addressed to the world which is to be transformed and humanized, this dialogue cannot be reduced to the act of one person's "depositing" ideas in another, nor can it become a simple exchange of ideas to be "consumed" by the discussants.
• Founding itself upon love, humility, and faith, dialogue becomes a horizontal relationship of which mutual trust between the dialoguers is the logical consequence.
• Any situation in which some individuals prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence. The means used are not important; to alienate human beings from decision-making is to change them into objects.
• Conscientization refers to learning to perceive social, political and economic contradictions, and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality.

Summary activities for this seminar could include:

1. Develop a chart which shows how Freire views the meanings of Oppression and Liberation in the educational context.
2. Explain what Freire means by dialogue and what it looks like in the teachers' college.
3. Describe the ideal student-teacher relationship according to Freire.

Suggested Reading

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Myra Bergman Ramos. New York: Continuum.

Seminar 3. Analyzing the college curriculum

Introduction

This seminar is designed to help you use the ideas in this chapter as an analytic frame to examine the college curricula.

Specific Tasks

1. After reading each of the three examples demonstrating different curriculum theories, review the curriculum summary chart with your colleagues.
2. For each of the examples in the readings, explain how they fit into each of the curriculum theories.
3. Does your college curriculum fit into any of the three theories? Are there elements of different theories in your college curriculum? Where would you place your college curriculum on the chart?
4. As a teacher educator, where would you place your own beliefs about curriculum? Conservative, Progressive or Transformative?
5. As a teacher educator, where would you place yourself in terms of your practice (what you actually do in the classroom)? Is it the same as your beliefs? Explain.

Suggested Reading

Craig, H., Kraft, R., and du Plessis, J. (1998) Teacher Development: Making an Impact. Washington, DC: World Bank and AED/USAID (p. 77-91).

References