links for curriculum design

Traditional CD
http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/envrnmnt/drugfree/sa3trad.htm

Definition
http://www.uws.ac.uk/schoolsdepts/capd/signposts/curriculum-section1.asp

Connectivism

Siemens, G. (2006). Connectivism: Learning theory or pastime for the self-amused? Retrieved from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism_self-amused.htm

1. Problems

• Our educational model today is largely defined by the desire to achieve and produce in an economic system. Many of the nobler elements of learning, often found in the belief or faith domain, have yielded to the increased quest for efficiency and utilitarianism.
• The space of shifting ideals presents challenges for society as a whole: (a) the erosion of existing structures of knowing and need for knowing, and (b) the yet to emerge characteristics of the new space are unknown, or speculative at best (p. 23).
• Educators today face challenges relating to: (a) defining what learning is, (b) defining the process of learning in a digital age, (c) aligning curriculum and teaching with learning and higher level development needs of society (the quest to become better people), and (d) reframing the discussion to lay the foundation for transformative education—one where technology is the enabler of new means of learning, thinking, and being.

2. Technology is changing the society

Instead of knowledge residing only in the mind of an individual, knowledge resides in a distributed manner across a network. Instead of approaching learning as schematic formation structures, learning is the act of recognizing patterns shaped by complex networks. The networked act of learning exists on two levels:

• Internally as neural networks (where knowledge is distributed across our brain, not held in its entirety in one location)
• Externally as networks we actively form (each node represents an element of specialization and the aggregate represent our ability to be aware of, learn, and adapt to the world around).

3. Distinction between connectivism and other learning theories

We are social beings. Through language, symbols, video, images, and other means, we seek to express our thoughts. Essentially, our need to derive and express meaning, gain and share knowledge, requires externalization. We externalize ourselves in order to know and be known. As we externalize, we distribute our knowledge across a network—perhaps with individuals seated around a conference, readers at a distance, or listeners to podcasts or viewers of a video clip. Most existing theories of learning assume the opposite, stating that internalization is the key function of learning (cognitivism assumes we process information internally, constructivism asserts that we assign meaning internally—though the process of deriving meaning may be a function of a social network, i.e. the social dimension assists in learning, rather than the social dimension being the aim of learning). The externalization of our knowledge is increasingly utilized as a means of coping with information overload. The growth and complexity of knowledge requires that our capacity for learning resides in the connections we form with people and information, often mediated or facilitated with technology.

4. Media, Symbols, and Technology

• While not quite in alignment with Vygotsky’s (1986) assertion that language gives birth to thought, Bandura (1986) stated, “power of thought resides in the human capability to represent events and their interrelatedness in symbolic form” (p. 455). Media, language, technology, and symbols are devices that enable humans the capacity to externalize the nebulous elements of private thought. The externalization of thought is an important concept to consider in light of traditional theories of learning largely emphasizing knowledge construction and cognition as primarily internal events (in the mind of individuals).
• McLuhan (1967) suggested, “societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication” (p. 8). The rapid growth of social-based technology tools creates an unprecedented opportunity for anyone with a computer and internet access to play the role of journalist, artist, producer, and publisher. If media truly does shape humanity, the changed nature of dialogue and information exposure created by the internet will have greater implications to our future than the nature of the content currently being explored. Much like tools shape potential tasks, the internet shapes opportunities for dialogue—outside of space and time—that were not available only a generation ago.

What is learning?

• Most theorists approach learning as some type of change in performance due to acquisition of skills or knowledge. However, knowledge acquisition does not equate with learning. Completing a certain task may be a function of learning on a basic level (i.e., driving a car), but does little to address the larger, interconnected nature of learning in relation to other aspects of the learners competence, comprehension, and skills. In a society of information abundance, these definitions of learning seek to address primarily lower-level cognition and emotion. The greater need of learning is to make sense of the space in which the learner functions and the potential implications of acquired knowledge. Learning how to operate a forklift may be learning at a basic level. Skills of this level, while important, are declining in a societal context. Learning needs are currently driven by high volumes of data and information, requiring a shift to higher-level models of learning.
• Learning is more than the acquisition of information. Our capacity to accept new information is hindered by existing mindsets and understandings. In a sense, what we believe influences our capacity to know more. Numerous factors—internal and external to the learner—influence the likelihood of learning occurring. Stokman (2004) explored social networks as structures that influence and foster learning, concluding that mutual interdependencies influence the potential for interaction or connection forming. Similarly, learning is a multi-faceted process that functions in a milieu of different needs, interdependent tasks, barriers, affordances, and numerous other contributors and detractors to the experience.

Theories

• Educational technology is replete with theories. Some adapted from previous models (behaviourism, cognitivism, constructivism), blended theories¹, emerging theories (connectivism), and related views of networked learning (Wikipedia, 2006). Blended and emerging theories counterbalance established theories in pursuing a theory in line with the nature of the society it purports to support. Tools change people. We adapt based on new affordances. To rely on a theory that ignores the networked nature of society, life, and learning is to largely miss the point of how fundamentally our world has changed.

Learning Theories

• Behaviourists are largely concerned with the outcome, or observable elements of learning. Behaviourists see learning as a “black box” (Driscoll, 2000, p. 35). Instead of focusing on the internal mental activities, behaviourists focus on observable behaviour (Gredler, 2005, p. 28). Behaviour is managed through a process of strengthening and weakening of responses. Key theorists in behaviourism include: Pavlov, Watson, Skinner, Thorndike (Gredler, p. 29, Driscoll, p. 19).Cognitivists, to varying degrees, have posited a structured view of learning that includes the model of a computer (input, encoding, storage, outcome), a staged process of development, and schematic views of knowledge, with learning being the act of classifying or categorizing new knowledge and experiences.
  
• Cognitivists see learning as information processing. The computer is often used as a metaphor for learning (Driscoll, 2000, p. 75). Sensory input is managed in short-term memory and coded for retrieval in long-term memory. Situated cognition, the view that thought is a function of, or adaptation to, the environment in which the thinking (or learning) occurs (p. 154), and schema theory, the view that meaningful learning (p. 116) is a process of subsumption in an internal hierarchy of concepts, are extensions of basic cognitivism. Piaget and Vygotksy are sometimes classified as cognitivits (Gredler, 2005, pp. 264 & 304; Driscoll, pp. 183 & 219). Other cognitivists include Bruner, Gagne, and Ausubel.
• Constructivism is a frustratingly vague concept. The Centre for Research on Networked Learning and Knowledge Building (n.d.) suggested, "constructive “theory” of learning, generally, has not at all become more specific or articulated or gained any increased explanatory power or unification. There has not been any progressive problem shift after the 80s but a continuation of a very general and ideologically colored discussion." (¶ 2)
• Constructivists hold learning to be a process of active construction on the part of the learner. Learning occurs as the learner “attempt to make sense of their experiences” (Driscoll, p. 376). The roots of constructivism can be found in the epistemological orientation of rationalism, where knowledge representations do not need to correspond with external reality (p. 377). Adherents to constructivism borrow heavily from theorists previously mentioned: Piaget, Vygotsky, and Bruner (Dabbagh, 2005; Driscoll, 2000).
• Learning theories and theorist classifications are contradictory. For example, Driscoll (2000) listed Bruner as a pragmatist/cognitivist, while Dabbagh (2005) listed him as a constructivist. New entrants into this space quickly find a convoluted mix of psychology, philosophy, and theory pop-culture. Discerning theories with underlying assumptions of learning is challenging. Particularly confusing is the theory of constructivism, which researchers tend to treat as a banner under which to fly numerous aspects and new views. It has come to mean everything, anything, and nothing. While not as acerbic, Driscoll stated, “there is no single constructivist theory of instruction. Rather, there are researchers in fields from science education to educational psychology and instructional technology who are articulating various aspects of constructivist theory” (p. 375). Additionally, it may be unclear whether constructivism is actually a theory or a philosophy (p. 395).

Also see:
Siemens, G. (2004). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning. Retrieved from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm

Connectivism (learning theory). (2008, August 17). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved August 27, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Connectivism_(learning_theory)&oldid=232432157

learning theories

Three competing theories

• Behaviorism: e.g., human as "programmed animals"
  
  • Classical Conditioning (Pavlov)
  • Operant Conditioning (Skinner)
    
• Cognitivism: e.g., human mind as computers
• Constructivism: e.g., computers as mindtools
  
  • Social Development Theory (Vygotsky)
  • Discovery Learning (Bruner)
  • Stage Theory of Cognitive Development (Piaget)
    

Others (Theories and Models)

• Problem-Based Learning (PBL)
  
• Humanism (Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers)
  
  • Hierarchy of Needs (Maslow)
  • Experiential Learning (Kolb)
    
• Situated Learning Theory (Lave)
• Attribution Theory (Weiner)
• Multiple Intelligences Theory (Gardner)
  

Turning points in curriculum

Marshall, J. D., Sears, J. T., Allen, L. A., Roberts, P. A., & Schubert, W. H. (2007). Turning points in curriculum: A contemporary American memoir (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Merrill Prentice Hall.

Part 1 Contextual panorama for contemporary curriculum work (1897-1946)

Chapter 1. Prelude to contemporary curriculum theory and development

• Curr. history is a continual recurrence of focus on subject matter, learners, and society throughout the 19 century
• Two added elements
  
  • What is worth knowing and experiencing (and worth sharing)? - different responses shift the balance among SM, L, & S; e.g., Schubert's (1980) three schools of curri. - intellectual traditionalist, experientialist, & social behaviorist
    
  • Who decides (and should decide)? - null curriculum (Eisner, 1985); P. Freire
    
• The birth of curr. studies
  
  • How to provide universal education (schooling for the elite until 1890s)
  • Horace Mann & Henry Barnard - promoting universal schooling
  • Charles Eliot led National Educational Association's (NEA) Committee of Ten - the best preparation for college was the same as the best preparation for life
  • Committee of Fifteen: developmental theories (Herbarians - e.g., Child development, recapitulation theory) v. the disciplines of knowledge (Hegelians - e.g., Harris: "five windows of the soul"). Result: a shift from subject to learner as a basis for curri. work.
  • Social behaviorist: G. Stanley Hall started America's first psychological laboratory
  • Dewey's curricular view: a balanced integration of emphasis on subject matter, society, and the child. His central curr. position: the progressive reorganization of subject matter. Arguing for the pedagogic necessity of starting with the psychological and moving to the logical
    
    • Psychological: the concerns and interests of the learner's life world of experience
    • Logical: both the disciplines of knowledge and knowledge accumulated by human beings through everyday experiences
    • Pedagogical process: identifying individual student interests, encouraging students to share these interests within a community of learners, excavating common human interests symbolized by the individually identified interests, tapping a broad array of experiential resources as precedent, and drawing on the fund of written knowledge in pursuit of original interests and the discovery of new interests
      
  • At the turn of the century, Dewey's pragmatic experimentalist educational philosophy, progressive social and educational theory, and experiential and reconstructionist curriculum thinking came to the fore
    
  • Joseph Mayer Rice (1913): Educational progress would only occur if teachers and their leaders were carefully guided, efficiently managed, and systematically controlled. He described the gross ineptitudes, similar to Kozol's (1991) "savage inequalities" between urban and suburban schools
• Struggles surface
  
  • The overwhelming influence of Taylorism (technical efficiency); IQ=potential;
    
  • Edward Thorndike(1924) - founder of ed. psych., test & measurement
  • Dewey: intelligence cannot be reified as test scores
  • Frank Bobbit (social behaviorist): scientific curr. making - activity analysis
  • William Kilpatrick: The Project Method (1918) - integrate curr. around projects that grow from student interests
  • "What are the purposes of education?" (revived by the decline of faculty psychology, the move away from classic subjects, and the influx of new student populations
  • 1920s & 1930s: the heyday of progressive practices. but progressivism never dominated educational thinking or practice because the traditionalist position was kept alive (curri. makng was a top-down, expert-driven enterprise resulting in selection or creation of products to be systematically delivered to students who were assessed on their retention of knowledge and acquisition of skills
• The progressives multiply and divide
  
  • The Eight Year Study (1933-1941): the performance of students from the experimental-progressive schools equaled or exceeded that of students from traditional schools
  • Reconstructionist progressives (foster critical thinking and social action around issues of ethics & justice): George Counts (Dare the school build a new social order? 1932- curricula must be designed to overcome injustice and oppression and create democratic, equitable, fulfilling way of life), Harold Rugg, Theodore Brameld
  • Child-centered ("apolitical") v. social reconstructionist. Dewey called for a deeper look into the difference and find reciprocal relationships between individual and political growth - failed and weakened the collective voice of progressives
    

Part 2 The rise and fall of curriculum specialists (1947-1960)

Chapter 2. Curriculum development at its zenith: curriculum people

• Background: postwar America, an era of hope and optimism
  
• 1947 Chicago Curriculum Theory Conference (Virgil Herrick & Ralph Tyler)
  
• 1956 Benjamin Bloom: Taxonomy of Educational Objectives
  

Chapter 3. Transfer by eminent domain: National interest

• As Cold War escalates, James B. Conant advocates national interest, rather than growth of the individual, as the primary purpose of schooling in Education in a Divided World
  
• The 1950s: revolutionary upheavals in politics, business, pop culture, religion and tech (e.g., Catcher in the Rye, Salinger, 1951; I Love Lucy; My Fair Lady; Lord of the Rings; Brown v Board of Ed.; Little Rock Nine; Elvis Presley...)
  
• 1957 the launching of Sputnik
• Jerome Bruner (1960) The Process of Education - new curri Bible (ties between curr. & natl interest, the lure of science & tech., and public disappointment with school curricula) - a rekindled interest in curr. problems by ed psychologists and concern for school's ability to produce sufficient numbers of scholars, scientists, poets, & lawmakers
  
• "The contribution of university scholars in the creation of the most advanced weapons systems had led the nation's political leadership to look to the university scholars for devising curricula in science and mathematics for the elementary and secondary schools" (Tanner & Tanner, 1980, p. 434)
  
• Result: Teachers became either subject matter specialists or human conduits for the transmission of subject matter knowledge, students became child-scientists, and the curri. worker took a backseat to psychologists and other discipline scholars of the "first rank." Progressive ideals and the democratic aims of American ed. were disappearing
  

Part 3 Reestablishing agency and agendas (1961-1969)

Chapter 4. Muted heretics endure (1961-1964): "Outsiders" (Psychology contributors)

• B. F. Skinner (1958): "Teaching Machines" - radical behaviorist
• Hilda Taba's (1962) Curriculum development: Theory and practice
  
• Technological view of curriculum - efficiency movement (Bruner "automatizing devices")
• In spite of the dominant technorationality, progressive ideas were kept alive (e.g., Huebner: curri. field permits the use of all major disciplinary systems, not only behaviorist psychology; John Goodlad, 1964, critiqued the national curri. reform projects)
  

Chapter 5. Transcending a muddled juncture (1965-1969): Publications

• Background: Godfather, 60 Minutes, Martin Luther King, Jr, ...a decade of political turmoil and social change (transformation from an era of New Frontier innocence and idealism to the realpolitik of the Nixon-Kissinger legacy)
  
• Coroner for conventional curr. making - Joseph Schwab's (1969) The practical: A language for curriculum, diagnosing the curriculum field as moribund - a wake up call for new directions. It is the most significant curriculum publication since Tyler's Basic Principles in Curriculum and Instruction (1950)
• 1965 Chicago curriculum meeting (bases and principles) - curr. field needed to shift from "objective" and empirically based issues to socially oriented, value-based questions by radical thinkers (Michael Apple)
  

Part 4 (Re)shaping the contemporary curriculum field (1970-1983)

Chapter 6. The Renaissance blossoms: Professional organizations and gatherings

• Background: 1970s - overconsumption of tech and natural resources, overindulgence with sexual freedom and freedom of expression, overreliance on federalism and individualism
  
• AERA (formed in 1916, the same year J. Dewey published Democracy and Ed.), Division B (formed in 1964) - "Curriculum & Objectives"
• James Macdonald: A transcendental development ideology of education
• Paulo Friere (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed
  
• The 1970s - new people and ideas emerged in opposition to traditional practices and procedures
• Paradigm: a conceptual framework or way to look at the world composed of knowledge, values, and assumptions that govern activity or inquiry in an academic field such as curri.
  

Chapter 7. From chorus to cacophony: Paradigms and perspectives (Multidimentional, eclectic)

• Background: early 1980s - Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince, Channel One, USA Today, Star Trek...
  
• Analytically distinctive curriculum paradigms (3 from Schubert, 1986, and 1 from Lather, 1992)
  
  • Predict (the perennial paradigm)
  • Understand (the practical paradigm)
  • Emancipate (the critical paradigm)
  • Deconstruct (the poststructual or postmodern paradigm)
    
• Reconceptualization (Henry Giroux)
• Aesthetic perspective (Elliot Eisner, The Educational Imagination)
• John Goodlad: Curriculum Inquiry: The study of curriculum practice
• Glatthorn (1980)
• Cronbach statistics
• Michael Apple - Ideology and Curriculum
• The multiple perspectives and sophisticated nuances contained within each of them
• "Paradigm wars" (Pinar et al., 1995) - serious rifts
  

Part 5 The uncertainties of contemporary curriculum work (1984-2002)

Chapter 8. Implosion and consolidation: Marginalized voices

• By the mid-1980s, teachers were center stage in the curr. field
  
• Marginalized voices - the business-as-usual mode of improving curri.
  
• The fracturing of theoretical unity & disciplinary cohesion (the end of science in the postmodern era)
  

Chapter 9. Difference that breeds hybridity: Race, reform, and curriculum

• 1983 A Nation at Risk
  
• 1989 President Bush's education summit: took up the cause of accountability and standards,
  
• Goals 2000 and the NCLB (a pedagogy of poverty): from national goals to state assessments - educators lose control
  
• Conflict over national values, priorities, and directions - "cultural wars" of the 1990s (what knowledge is of most worth - regarding growing racial, ethnic, and cultural differences)
• Hybridity: the condition of heterogeneous assembly - the making of sth. out of disparate or incongruent parts or elements (national school reform & theoretical diversity)
  

Chapter 10. Imagining the postmillennial curriculum field

• future & possibilities through the intersections of democracy, globalization, and technology
• The paradox of "consolidated diversity" - communication & community have become not only more challenging but also more crucial to the work of curri.
  

Cultures of curriculum

Joseph, P., Bravmann, S., Windschitl, M., Mikel, E., & Green, N. (2000). Cultures of curriculum. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

1. Training for work and survival (connected to Kliebard's social efficiency - realism)

• Goals: prepare students for future economic success, "play the game of life"
• Roots: Contemporary American culture such as "success", "good work", and vision of economic and technological trends
• Learners: Manually-minded, usually of working-class or minority origin
• Teachers: Coaches and exemplars of skills
• Content: Employability skills, work maturity skills
  
• Context: The marketplace and industry
• Planning: External control, work-oriented
• Evaluation: Income improving effectiveness, test score comparisons
• Dilemmas: Professional goal vs. standardized test; vocational vs. academic education; lack of business involvement
• Critique: Fail to prepare the young for work; ignorance of work-life issues; class-based, limiting character; little vision of individual transformation
• Samples: strengthening the economy, career-centered ed., in the 1840s Horace Mann appealed to employers to support public schools on the basis that education makes better workers; 1980s, community colleges
  

2. Connecting to the canon (Connected to Kliebard's humanistic - idealism)

• Goals: Engage student with classic knowledge and develop understanding of the best way to live one's life
• Roots: Historical Euro-American aspirations for grace, order, well-being, and justice
• Learners: as athletes
• Teachers: as elders and masters
• Content: Repository of wisdom featuring thickness, adaptability, endurance, creativity, artistry, pedagogic value
• Context: a community of scholars
• Planning: teacher centered, thematic integrated
• Evaluation: No critical examination (the content is good because it is good)
• Dilemmas: Teachers' knowledge; controversies over the content of the curriculum; adverse public perception
• Critique: Intangible outcomes; conservative nature, resisting innovation; deficient as a mono-cultural model
• Samples: Tradition, renaissance, liberal arts; The McGuffey Readers (forging cultural identity - a truly American education); the Culture Wars against the dominant approach (the tradition of white, male, Western European thought)
  

Note: The debate between Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois somehow symbolizes the battle between "Training for Work and Survival" and "Connecting to the Canon"

3. Developing self and spirit (Connected to Kliebard's child-centered - pragmatism)

• Goals: nurture individual's potential, creativity, spirituality, and self-knowledge thus to proceed freely and naturally to greater knowledge of themselves and of their world
• Roots: ideal of 'child-centered' or 'progressive education'; Dewey: schooling is not preparation for life but life itself (Plato, Dewey, Noddings, Greene, Miller)
  
• Learners: those need love, safety, freedom, and guidance to be able to learn
• Teachers: gardener, facilitator, authentic co-learner, role model, resources, nurturer, personal and intellectual support system, objective guide, coach, mentor
• Content: psychological, emotional, spiritual, and social growth in academics, athletics, arts and aesthetics
• Context: the physical-social environment in the classroom
• Planning: teachers and students negotiate; under constant modification and revision so as to continue the inquiry to greater length and depths
• Evaluation: non-standardized; subjective; problem-solving based
• Dilemmas: teachers are obliged to be artists who have both commitment and skills
• Critique: stereotypes of denying the importance of subject matter, rejecting of all authority, and making learners self-indulgent
• Samples: educating the whole child, personal growth
  

4. Constructing understanding (Connected to Kliebard's child-centered - pragmatism)

• Goals: encourage learners to utilize their experiences, intellectual strengths, and interactions with others to bridge the formal knowledge with the continually evolving individual mind
• Roots: Constructivist belief that learners actively create and restructure knowledge, and that knowledge doesn't exist outside them as some objective, universal entity
• Learners: continually involved in recognizing their world, actively imposing order and meaning on their experiences and 'creating' the world in which they live
• Teachers: learning facilitators and co-developers of understanding with the student
• Content: the learning approach is as important as the topics; less is more; integrated curriculum
• Context: the focus is the learner rather than the subject matter; a "thinking about thinking" environment
• Planning: teachers shape the curricular process; student negotiate with the teacher about the criteria; teacher-centered + student-centered instruction
• Evaluation: based on student performances or artifacts generated as a result of substantial effort
• Dilemmas: teachers need to reconceptualize view of instruction and to be infinitely skilled; "chaotic" and "correctness"
• Critique: little more than thematic, project-based learning; incompatibility between standards; merely a set of guidelines for instruction; disconnected with larger issues of curriculum
• Samples: questioning the unknown - creating restructuring knowledge; continual evolution of creating unique individual understanding
  

5. Deliberating democracy (Connected to Kliebard's social reconstructionist - pragmatism?)

• Goals: understand and experience the process of democratic decision making
• Roots: sociopolitical emphasis upon the group process of deliberating the curriculum (Dewey's theoretical formulation of democracy and education)
• Learners: 'citizens' of the classroom community exercising explicit determination over the substance and processes of learning for their benefit and that of their peers at the same time
• Teachers: catalyst for collaboration; negotiating learning procedures with learners
• Content: civic participation; definition of rules and expectations; peer mediation of conflict and adjudication of disputes; creation of a classroom constitution
• Context: using multi-dimensional, interdisciplinary and context-conscious learning to address problems and an audience beyond the school
• Planning: a constant state of formation (to be constantly monitored and calibrated to avoid imbalances and neglect). Students = key players
• Evaluation: focused on learning and the learner while broad enough to encompass other matters (student setting goals, unit and quarterly reviews, the collaborative assessment of students' achievements)
• Dilemmas: constraints of official authority; planning and evaluation vs. study activities (time balancing); democratic teachers vs. traditionally narrow-minded and hierarchical institutions
• Critique: hard to approach small-group democracy; undervalue authority; democratic culture vs. social reality (inequality or injustice)
• Samples: community is the center; democracy is 'of the people, by the people, and for the people'; 'empowerment'

6. Confronting the dominant order (Connected to Kliebard's social-reconstructionist - pragmatism)

• Goals: give each child the uncompromised opportunity to develop into a self-determining and rationally acting person; to empower the individual so as to transform themselves and society for better; to build a society that makes possible growth and development for everyone
• Roots; British oppression; social ferment; the Great depression; Neo-Marxism; Postmodernism; the feminist movement; critical pedagogy (Giroux, Apple, Greene, Slattery, Doll, Freire)
  
• Learners: individuals with unique personal histories that are dynamic, rich with the respective influences of family life, peer relationships, and popular culture; critical co-investigators in dialogue with the teacher
• Teachers: Transformative intellectuals, engaged critics, partisans (not doctrinaire), provocateurs, co-investigators
• Content: the organized and systematic depiction to learners of the things about which they want to know more
• Context: honors supportive relationships, previous experiences, and multiple cultural and linguistic realities, a forum for critical analysis of the world
• Planning: teachers invite students to generate ideas, to negotiate subject matter, and to find resources outside the school settings
• Evaluation: qualitatively evaluating the ongoing work of students to provide feedback about communicative skills, content knowledge, and critical insights about the content
• Dilemmas: disturbing the social order; learners' resistance of doing critical analysis; many dependent factors; the circumscribed worldview of teachers themselves; a discontinuity between theory and guidelines for practice
• Critique: complexity and negativity
• Samples: equal rights, social justice, transforming, empower individual so they may transform themselves and society for better
  

Kliebard's four strands

Curriculum Trends Emerging from the Progessive Era (overview of Kliebard, 1986)

1. Humanistic

• Advocates & issues
  
  • Charles Eliot (pre-1900): curriculum should "give one the intellectual mastery needed to make independent and sound judgments under a variety of circumstances." (later changed his mind)
  • William T. Harris: anti-vocational ed. - "curriculum should take its cue from the great resources of civilization."
  • Power of reason
  • Passing on Western cultural heritage
    
• Philosophical Base
  
  • Idealism
    
• Associated with
  
  • Faculty psychology
  • Classics/math, as in Harris' "five windows of the soul" (grammar, literature/art, math, geography, & history)
  • Connecting to the Canon
    
• Criticisms
  
  • Impractical for the masses
    

2. Social Efficiency

• Advocates & issues
  
  • Herbert Spencer: science is of most worth
  • Frederick Taylor: "scientific" management
  • Edward Thorndike: standardized testing
  • Appeal "objective" standards, precise, measurable outcomes, control (predictability)
  • Standardized techniques
  • Greater specialization in content
• Philosophical Base
  
  • Realism
    
• Associated with
  
  • The practical subjects
  • Graded classes
  • Subject divisions
  • Curriculum "differentiation"
  • Training for Work and Survival
    
• Criticisms
  
  • Social predestination
    

3. Child-Centered

• Advocates & issues
  
  • G. Stanley Hall: "cultural epochs" - in their individual development from conception, children pass through all the evolutionary stages in the development of the human species (Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny - stage theory - "science" of child development*)
    
  • "differentiated" instruction
  • William H. Kilpatrick: Project method (the project, based on children's interests, should replace the subject as the basic building block of curriculum)
  • Natural order of child's development
  • In harmony w/ child's interests
    
• Philosophical Base
  
  • Pragmatism - the "scientific" emphasis aspect
    
• Associated with
  
  • Child's interest
  • Child-initiated activities
  • Constructing Understanding
  • Developing Self & Spirits
    
• Criticisms
  
  • Frivolous
  • Doesn't prepare for adulthood
    

*note: theory of G. Stanley Hall was based on the premise that growing children would recapitulate evolutionary stages of development as they grew up and that there was a one-to-one correspondence between childhood stages and evolutionary history, and that it was counterproductive to push a child ahead of its development stage. The whole notion fit nicely with other social Darwinist concepts, such as the idea that "primitive" societies needed guidance by more advanced societies, i.e. Europe and North America, which were considered by social Darwinists as the pinnacle of evolution.

4. Social Reconstructionist

• Advocates & issues
  
  • Lester Frank Ward: "civilization is achieved by intelligent intervention"
  • George Counts: "Dare the schools build a new social order?"
  • Harold Rugg: social studies textbooks
  • Concern for social justice
  • Social change and justice
  • Issues of race, gender, class
  • New social vision
    
• Philosophical Base
  
  • Pragmatism - the social emphasis aspect
    
• Associated with
  
  • social problems
  • Confronting the Dominant Order
  • Deliberating Democracy
    
• Criticisms
  
  • Too radical
    

Whose markets, whose knowledge

Apple, M. W. (2007). Whose markets, whose knowledge? In A. R. Sadovnik (Ed.), Sociology of education: A critical reader (p. 177-193). New York: Routledge.

Introduction

A leading critical educational theorist, Michael Apple is recognized for his affluent scholarly works which center on education and power, cultural politics, and curriculum theory and research. Following Apple’s previous studies on the New Right, this article critiques the current rightward educational reform efforts, analyzes neoliberalism, neoconservativism, authoritarian populism, and the professional and managerial new middle class that dominate the social field of power surrounding educational policy and practice, and reveals the complexities and imbalances in this field of power.

Purpose of Study

The conservative modernization movement in recent years has put egalitarian norms and values under attack. The simplistic interpretation of what’s happening to education from the perspective of economic elites does not present a holistic view of the major tensions surrounding education as it moves in conservative directions. In an effort to provide a conflict perspective on the struggles over curriculum and educational policies in the United States, this study addresses the following questions:

1. How have neoconservatives and neoliberals dominated public discourse over the past two decades?
2. What are the roles of authoritarian populists and the professional and managerial new middle class in alliance with neoliberals and neoconservatives?
3. How does the above four elements form a New Right hegemonic alliance to influence educational policies?

Social Theory/Methodology

The social theory that lies behind this study is critical theory, which focuses on the origins of social, political and economic oppression and aims to unmask sources of oppression, to promote understanding of causes and consequences of oppression, and to encourage participation in liberation (citation of Dr. Beilke’s handout). This theory well serves the author’s goal as to critique the social, political, and economic inequities brought by the New Right trend in education.

The methodology of this study is critical inquiry with interpretive discourse in particular. Critical inquiry calls current ideology into question, and initiate action, in the cause of social justice. It interrogates commonly held values and assumptions, challenges conventional social structures, and engages in social action, with the spotlight on power relationships within society so as to expose the forces of hegemony and injustice (Crotty, 1998). In critical discourse the beliefs, norms and values that are taken for granted in everyday interaction are “expressly thematised and subjected to critique” (Crotty, 1998, p. 144). This methodology is exactly what we see adopted in this article, as Apple unmasks the false consciousness that attempts to justify the conservative modernization and its oppressive policies through his thoughtful analysis and careful critique.

Findings/Conclusion

In this article, Apple closely examines how the social, political, economic, and cultural movements of “the rightward turn” have succeeded in forming a “new hegemonic alliance” to influence educational policies in the United States. At the beginning, he discusses what Rightist movements have done and why they have been so successful, along with the identification of the new alliance that contains four major social, political, and ideological elements – neoliberals, neoconservatives, authoritarian populists, and the professional and managerial new middle class. Among them, each element has different and sometimes conflicting interests. However, they come together and form a “broad-based alliance” when “conservative modernization” becomes the suture of the four. One by one, Apple discloses and critiques the central tenets that underlie the four elements.

Neoliberals, proponents of the “economic rationality,” uphold a vision of students as human capital and education as a product. They criticize that not only are schools and other public services failing our children as future workers, but also they are wasting financial economic resources of our society. The solution is centered on “either creating closer linkages between education and the economy or placing school themselves into the market” (p. 179). However, Apple points out that the economic decline is not caused by government or poor people but by mergers and leveraged buyouts manipulated by economic elites. And there is a risk that the neoliberal “economizing” and “depoliticizing” efforts may reproduce traditional hierarchies of class, race, and gender when neoliberals attempt to transform responsibility for decision-making from the public to the private sphere. For example, the voucher and choice programs may end up with the long-term effects that the affluent white families switch to private schools and refuse to pay taxes to support public schools. Therefore, the educational apartheid will be exacerbated consequently.

Neoconservatives, the second major element in the conservative alliance, emphasize on a return to traditional values and “morality,” which neoconservatives refer to as “real knowledge.” With a fear of the “Other” and a sense of cultural pollution, Neoconservatives are determined to enforce traditional curriculum and national standards across the country, making a shift from “licensed autonomy” to “regulated autonomy.” No Child Left Behind, for example, is an outgrowth of the “regulated autonomy” which contributes to the “deskilling of teachers, the intensification of their work, and the loss of autonomy and respect” (p. 185). Apple articulates, however, that this perspective that underpins the mistrust of teachers and the fear of the loss of cultural control is often an “ethnocentric, and even racialized, understanding of the world” (p. 185).

Authoritarian populists, representing the “Christian Right,” are motivated by a desire to integrate religion and God within the school curriculum. Abiding by biblical authority, “Christian morality,” gender roles, and the family, this group rejects any “unorthodox” ideals such as modernism, liberalism, feminism, and humanism. In concert with neoconservativism and in order to take advantage of educational marketization and privatization to create communities of their own belief, authoritarian populists find a place in the conservative alliance. Apple believes that the growing authoritarian populist influence in federal and state educational policies privileges students from religious segments of society over students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

Finally, the professional and managerial new middle class is associated with maintaining social and economic inequality by supporting educational policies that are favorable to their class standing within society. The majority members of this class are likely to be mobilized by the right especially when the future of their jobs and children is ensured by the shifts to the latter.
In conclusion, Apple reiterates the complexity of educational policies in the United States. While he admits that the hegemonic alliance is powerful, Apple, with cautious optimism, indicates that many teachers, academics and community activists are still defending emancipatory educational programs, and our educational policies and practices are going in multidimensional directions. All these facts are shedding a light of hope for us to fight against the New Right forces.

Critique

As an abstract of Apple’s studies on the conservative movements in education, this information-rich article is clearly written and well organized. With a straightforward format, it is not hard to read and comprehend.

The key concepts for the four elements that form the new hegemonic alliances are well addressed, not only with the terminologies such as “arithmetical particularism,” “reprivatization,” and “value and sense legitimation,” but also with examples such as voucher and choice plans, No Child Left Behind, The Bell Curve, and Channel One. They are very helpful in terms of making connections between theory and practice. Interestingly, I found that the Chinese communist leader Mao’s description of the new middle class in the 1920s China is somehow similar to Apple’s description of the professional and managerial new middle class. However, given the fact that Apple was deeply influenced by neo-Marxism, I do not feel too surprised to see this coincidence.

A reflection upon the cultures of curriculum (Joseph, Bravmann, Windschitl, Mikel, & Green, 2000) also helps in making connections. For neoliberals, I believe that they have a shared vision with that of the culture of “training for work and survival.” While for neoconservatives, it is “connecting to the canon.” As for this article, there is no doubt that Apple’s endeavor is “confronting the dominant order”- with a language of critique, hope, and possibility which calls for moral discourse.

While I agree with Apple’s in-depth analysis of the conservative modernization in education and his criticism of the New Right’s attempt to shape the landscape of educational policies in the United States, I remain skeptical as he claims that the neoliberals change people’s common sense by simply redefining the key concepts (e.g., democracy) through the strategy of “sense legitimation” (p. 182). (Based on my common sense, I doubt people’s common sense can be shaped only by passive alternation of the meaning key concepts.) It might be more convincing if he can provide more evidence to demonstrate how the neoliberals “change the very meaning of the sense of social need into something that is very different” (p. 182) and show “the extent of acceptance of such transformations of needs and needs discourses” (p. 183).

Although Apple has successfully analyzed and interpreted the causes and consequences of the conservative trend, he does not provide a solution. He does give us some hope at the end of the article. However, “in a time when it is easy to lose sight of what is necessary for an education worthy of its name” (p. 190), who can promise that this hope will not be transformed by the neoliberal strategy of sense legitimation?

References

Crotty, M. (1998). The foundations of social research: Meaning and perspective in the research process. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Joseph, P., Bravmann, S., Windschitl, M., Mikel, E., & Green, N. (2000). Cultures of curriculum. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Citation of Dr. Beilke’s handout.