Designing Educative Curriculum Materials to Promote Teacher Learning
by Elizabeth A. Davis and Joseph S. Krajcik
How many times have you attended a workshop or a school improvement day and walked away feeling it was a waste of time and what did the training have to do with what you teach? On the other hand, the workshop was engaging with all the bells and whistles that you would like to try but you won’t be able to implement them into your curriculum because you don’t have the resources or tools to try it. Who writes and decides the curriculum for a school district? How could a curriculum that has been taught for the last 20 years be of any value to teachers and students in today’s world. These we just a few of the questions I began asking myself after reading this article.
When I began teaching in my district I was given the textbook and was told here you go. We didn’t have a curriculum; the textbook was the curriculum. Any supplemental materials were added at your own expense. Today, it’s somewhat better but not much. The state mandates our curriculum and the district asks if you are following their mandates, everyone says yes and all is right with the world.
I concur with the article that educative curriculum materials need to be concrete. These materials need to help teachers adapt curriculum to the multi-needs of the classroom. By improving curriculum materials, teachers have a deeper understanding and the power to affect what is taught and how it will be taught. Curriculum materials can provide teachers with new opportunities to increase their expertise based on research. Have you ever attended a workshop and the main presenter is very knowledgeable, but has no idea on how to explain or teach it in a way their students will understand or become engaged? When planning a curriculum in a particular subject area, the teacher needs to be aware of who their audience is and how to modify the lessons accordingly. What are their main objectives and goals? How will the subject matter be assessed? What questions and activities can enhance and promote higher learning? When planning a curriculum administrators should first promote teacher learning.
I realize this is over a year after you posted, but maybe you still monitor the site from time to time, so here's my message in a bottle. I'm trying to design some educative curriculum materials for experimental content (a double whammy) right now.
ReplyDeleteHave you ever discovered educative curriculum materials that you could or did enact? If so, what made them attractive and useful? How much did you have to jack with them to get them to do what you wanted? When you listen to a presenter are you at that time mentally simulating how the content would be parsed for the various abilities and limitations you perceive in your students?
That's a lot of questions, I know, but I see materials that I thought were cracking innovative and exciting being turned into worksheets instead of dynamic interactions. Yes, the standards expected for testing leave teachers with a narrow path, and I want to figure out how to deal with that context in order to get teachers the materials they actually need and want. So as you ask for concreteness, I am now asking you, as well, for that specificity at least as a first iteration.