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.
  

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.

Big Names in Curriculum Theory

John Dewey

Technorationality (behaviorist discourse that focuses on learning outcomes, criticized by MacDonald)

Ralph W. Tyler (the father of curriculum reform)
Tyler (1949): framework for deliberately designing and evaluating curriculum (Tyler rationale)
1. What educational purposes should the school seek to attain?
2. What educational experiences can be provided that are likely to attain these purpose?
3. How can these educational experiences be effectively organized?
4. How can we determine whether these purpose are being attained (evaluation)?

Paulo Freire
A combination of existentialism & neo-Marxism

1947 Chicago Curriculum Conference (hosted by Ralph Tyler) - birthplace of curriculum theory.

Social Efficiency Educators
Ross, Bobbitt, Gilbreth, Taylor, Thorndike

Reconceptualists: in opposition to the Tylerian satus quo. The decade of 1960s marks a critical moment of reconceptualization impacted by the 1957 launching of Sputnik and social unrest (the civil rights movements & the Vietnam War protest). 1969 as begining of the "decade of the Reconceptualization" (Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery, and Taubman)

William Pinar
Creator of the word "Reconceptualists"
Use "post-critical" to describe the existential/phenomenological work

James MacDonald (reconceptualist) (Teacher of Steve Mann, who mentored William Doll and George Willis): from scientism - person-centered humanism - sociopolitical humanism - transcendentalism. Curricularists could construct discourses and structures to allow for an environment more conducive to personal freedom.

Dwayne Huebner (reconceptualist) (Teacher of Michael Apple at Teachers College)
Curriculum as an educative environment. Rejecting technorationality. The purpose of education is "transcendence" - teachers are to help students grow in their capacity for personal evolution and change. Objected to learning theory because it conceived of education as "doing sth. to an individual", which is in opposition to his Heideggerean notion of a person as "being-in-the-world". Power/knowledge connections.

Paul Klohr (reconceptualist)
Teacher of Pinar and Greene at OSU

Maxine Greene (reconceptualist)


Joseph J. Schwab
“The field is moribund. It is unable, by its present methods and principles, to continue and contribute significantly to the advancement of education” (1970).

Janet Miller
Vice-president of AERA Division B (1997-1999)
Managing Editor, JCT (the offical journal of the "Reconceptualists") (1978-1998)
Emphasizes the importance of a diverse curriculum field, advocating controversy, but with mutual respect

Elliot Eisner
Three curricula that all schools teach (1985)
1. Explicit curriculum: The learning and interaction that occurs that is explicitly announced in schools programs
2. Implicit (hidden) curriculum: The learning and interaction that occurs that is not explicitly announced in schools programs
3. Null (non-existing) curriculum: systematically excluded, neglected, or not considered

Adler

Larry Cuban
Four categories of curricula (1993)
1. Official: in curriculum guide and conform with state-mandated assessment
2. Taught: individual teachers focus on and choose to emphasize (teacher’s knowledge)
3. Learned: all that students learn
4. Tested: tests represent only part of what is taught or learned

Michael Apple
Neo-Marxism & critical pedagogy
Refuses the notion of reconceptualization

Kliebard

Tanner and Tanner

Reynolds

Taubman

Doll

Gadamer
All understanding is essentially dialogue (Truth is not method but simply what happens in dialogue). What we must never forget is that we are always part of what it is we seek to understand. Truth as experience (without method). Being that can be understood is language. Language is about negotiating and making sense of a human world largely of our own construction.
Hermeneutics is a more general procedure for understanding itself. Gadamer is not usually thought of a "postmodern" but he has this in common with postmodern theorists - questioning the foundations of philosophical modernism. Against Descartes' man as a thinking machine capable of arriving at the kind of certainty to be found in geometry.

Giroux

Heidegger
Interpretation of the world is impossible without pre-understanding. Language is the house of being.

Sears

Postmodern curricularists

Michel Foucault
Triple root of power, knowledge and self.

Deleuze

Lyotard
the overarching view of history is one more metannarrative, even thought it is dominant.

Lather
not dissolving differences may be a good thing

Patrick Slattery (student of Pinar)