Images of Curriculum
In this episode I unpack an excerpt from Schubert’s (1986) book titled “Curriculum: Perspective, paradigm, and possibility,” which describes different examples, intents, and criticisms of “images” or “characterizations” of curriculum.
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Welcome back to another episode of the
CSK8 podcast my name is jared o'leary
each week of this podcast is either an
interview with a guest or multiple guest
or a solo episode where i unpack some
scholarship in relation to computer
science education in this week's episode
i'm unpacking a section of a chapter
titled images of curriculum and the
chapter is from a book titled curriculum
perspective paradigm and possibility and
it was written by william h schubert and
if i had to summarize this section of a
chapter into a single sentence i'd say
that this excerpt describes different
examples intents and criticisms of
images or characterizations of
curriculum now this is a little
continuation of some discussion on
curriculum so two weeks ago i released
an episode where i talked about
integration as it relates to curriculum
and two weeks before that i specifically
discussed a paper that i wrote on the
integration or intersections of music
and computer science so just as there
are many different ways that you can
conceive of integrating curriculum there
are also many different ways that you
can conceive of curriculum in the next
unpacking scholarship episode i'll kind
of dive into
some of the more subtle ways to think of
curriculum in terms of what is taught
what is learned implicit things that are
learned hidden things that are learned
all sorts of interesting stuff in my
nerdy opinion as always there are show
notes that you can find by clicking the
link in the app that you're listening to
this on or you can visit jaredlery.com
there are links to hundreds if not
thousands of free computer science
education resources as well as a bunch
of gaming drumming stuff because i
create a lot of content for work and for
leisure speaking of work this podcast is
powered by boot up which is the
non-profit that i work for and you can
learn more about the free curriculum
that i create or the professional
development by clicking the link in the
app that you're listening to this on or
by simply going to bootuppd.org so on
page 26 of this particular chapter
here's a quote that kind of describes
what are images or characterizations
quote i use the terms image and
characterization rather than definition
because they denote a broader
conceptualization than the label for a
thing to make curriculum an object
reduces its richness and rules out
presentation of certain key
conceptualizations that are essential to
an understanding of the field end quote
now the way that the author presents
these different images or
characterizations is in dialogue so they
provide a description of the intent and
some criticisms and they do this for
every one of them so they're not trying
to say hey this is the one right way to
do it and all these other ways are the
wrong way but their intent is to
position many different ways of viewing
or conceiving of curricula for different
purposes just like there are many
different visions or rationales for
computer science education and i'll
include some links to some podcasts that
talk about that in the show notes and
just as there are many different ways
that you can integrate which i talked
about in the episode two weeks ago there
are also many different ways of
conceiving of or creating curriculum and
i say this as somebody who's done that
professionally for the past few years
the design for the curriculum that i
create that is 100 free at boot up has
influences and alignment with different
ways of viewing curriculum that differ
from other organizations that also
create computer science curriculum and
we'll kind of unpack that a little bit
in each one of them so here's a very
quick overview of each one of the
different images or characterizations so
one way of viewing things is as
curriculum as content or subject matter
another one is curriculum as a program
of planned activities another one is
curriculum as intended learning outcomes
next one is curriculum as cultural
reproduction next one is curriculum as
experience then we have curriculum as
discrete tasks and concepts a curriculum
as an agenda for social reconstruction
and a curriculum as career now when
you're listening to each one of these
different images or characterizations i
want you to think of whether or not you
have experienced or even taught one of
these kinds of curriculum and again
there's no judgment on them some of them
are great for some purposes and not so
great for other purposes and that's okay
i think that's a good thing especially
for cs education we need to have many
different perspectives at the table and
many different approaches to creating
curriculum and content okay so let's
dive into the first one curriculum as
content or subject area so this is when
the curriculum is the subjects that are
being taught so when you hear the words
curriculum night which is popular in
some parts of the world you might think
of an event where maybe some parents
guardians community members can come in
and speak with teachers and learn more
about different subject areas so you'll
go in there and learn about well what
are they going to learn in art class or
in music class or in ela or whatever the
curriculum is whatever content or
subject is being taught so this is a
very broad view of what you might
conceive of as curriculum so here's a
quote from page 26 quote educators who
use this image intend to explicate
clearly the network of subjects taught
interpretations given to those subjects
prerequisite knowledge for studying
certain subjects and a rationale for the
ways in which all subjects at a
particular level of school fit together
and provide what is needed at that level
end quote so if we were to think of a
computer science curriculum at a school
that has multiple offerings you might
say in this class we learn ethics around
computing in this other class we learn
cyber security in this class we learn
app development or game development or
whatever and so each one of those is
conceived as their own curriculum now a
criticism that schubert provides is that
this focus on subject areas can often
focus so much on the knowledge
acquisition that it does not account for
cognitive development creative
expression personal growth community
engagement social development etc like
all these different things that can also
be a part of a learning experience and
the author argues that these things are
essential for us to consider in
education not only should we think about
what we intend for the curriculum but
also what is unintentionally learned or
taught and i'll talk more about that in
the next unbacking scholarship episode
so the next image or characterization
curriculum as a program of planned
activities so this kind of an approach
will typically have a scope and sequence
some kind of a balance among the subject
areas or concepts or standards maybe
some techniques or some motivational
devices and anything else that can be
planned in advance so one way you might
view the curriculum that i create for
boot up is it's a program of planned
activities that is a way that you could
go through it does include a lot of
different projects that you can create
it does have a sequence from simple to
complex there's a lot of motivational
devices built into it there's a lot of
teaching techniques embedded throughout
etc etc so that is a way that you can
conceive of the content that i create
however schubert goes on to say that a
program of planned activities can
include both a written document like the
free content in the curriculum that i
create or it could be any kind of a plan
that could even be unwritten so while
the written plans might be the lesson
plans and the curriculum guides schubert
argues that there are many other plans
that you can make that are not
necessarily written he also points out
that while the written down guides and
textbooks and sequences etc can be
helpful they are better when they are
resources to use rather than as mandates
and that is something that really
resonates with me because one of the
districts that i used to work in back
when i taught journal music at band is
they had a curriculum that you had to
follow and if you weren't teaching a
specific lesson on a specific day across
all of the elementary schools in the
entire district you would get written up
so rather than using the curriculum as a
resource it was a mandate and you'd have
at least for me one of five different
administrators who'd come in randomly
unannounced and checked to make sure if
you were teaching a specific lesson on a
specific day among other things which is
interesting because like if you were to
go up to most high school band directors
and ask them to show you like hey what
lesson plan do you have for the ensemble
that you're about to work with and
they'll probably laugh at you because
most band directors do not have a lesson
plan they'll have a list of things to
work through and then a lot of stuff is
going to come up in the moment and
they'll be responsive and work through
things in the moment so what schubert
indicates is that there's a lot more
planning that goes on that's not
necessarily written down and i'd argue
some of those plans can be improvised on
the fly so here's a quote from page 28
quote teachers will sometimes get bright
ideas on the spur of the moment or will
have to change plans in midstream
because of altered circumstances an
unannounced assembly student lack of
responsiveness unavailable equipment
teachers may do a great deal of planning
while driving to and from work or when
pondering the next day just before
falling asleep at night these and
similar activities are all plans yet
they may never be written end quote and
then schubert goes on to clarify that
the intent of this kind of approach is
that quote all these plans have purposes
for which the activities are the vehicle
it is the activity what students do that
is the curriculum end quote now here's
an interesting criticism that schubert
provides quote to characterize
curriculum as planned activities is to
place major emphasis on outward
appearance rather than inner development
it values outcomes and neglects the
learning process emphasis on activities
implies that more careful attention
should be given to ends than means for
example many teachers in school
districts are so intent on seeing that
certain activities are implemented the
activities become the ends in themselves
there's a tendency to lose sight of
purposes that the activities serve such
as their impact on the learning process
or personal meaning attention to
pre-specified activities obscures
consequences that cannot be readily
anticipated for example 20 children who
engage in the same creative writing
activity have 20 quite different
responses thus it may be more sensible
to focus on what each student
experiences than on the planned activity
itself end quote okay so yeah it's great
that you're thinking from simple to
complex scaffolding in things maybe
using like a brunerian approach where
you cycle back down spiral down into
concepts and practices building off of
the prior knowledge etc etc but the
focus can be so much on the design and
the activities themselves not
necessarily the focus on the inner
development that is a criticism of that
approach but again there's a lot of
positives to it and another criticism is
that it's focusing on a sequence for a
group to go through generally speaking
rather than a sequence for an individual
to co-construct together so that could
be another criticism but again there's
positive approaches to this not saying
you should never do this but another
approach the curriculum as intended
learning outcomes shifts the focus
specifically on to
what is intended to be learned so it
shifts from the means to the ends and
then here's an interesting clarifying
quote from page 28 to 29 quote intended
learning outcomes are not precisely
equated with curriculum rather
curriculum is the realm of
intentionality that fosters the intended
learning outcomes end quote so while you
might have an intended learning outcome
the curriculum itself is not what is
intended to be learned it's just kind of
like the medium through which that you
learn the intended outcomes and schubert
describes the intent as being explicit
and defensible in terms of what is
offered to students however as with all
of these a criticism is that quote focus
on intended learning outcomes as the
prime factor in curriculum draws
attention away from the unintended
outcomes which many claim are an
exceedingly powerful force in what
students learn in schools these are
outcomes of the culture of schooling or
hidden curriculum while all the students
in a class may demonstrate that they
have acquired the intended learning
outcome the consequences of its
acquisition may be quite different from
one student to another knowledge that
helps one student when it combines with
the rest of his or her cognitive and
effective repertoire may be enlightening
while the same intended learning outcome
may indeed be harmful to another student
less harmful but still quite powerful is
the impact that differing organizational
environments and institutional
strategies can have on an outcome the
same intended outcome may become quite
different when taught by an inquiry
simulation and lecture method the
central point here is that intended
results may be very different from
actual ones even within a group of
students who seem to have acquired the
intended outcomes end quote from page
scholarship episode we'll talk about
like some of these terms that are used
like hidden curriculum intended
curriculum talk curriculum etc so stay
tuned it's really important for us to
consider how different perspectives or
approaches pedagogies or even content
can have a profoundly different impact
on different people while one
pedagogical approach might work great
for a specific student or group of
students that same approach
might not work very well for another
which again is why i'm a huge fan of
multi-perspective list approaches and
not buying into a specific method or
idea so check out the podcast that i did
on methodology i'll include a link to
that in the show notes by rogelski if
you haven't listened to that one i
highly recommend it now if you want a
more explicit example of how learning a
concept and using the same approach for
the same group of students might be
enlightening for some and might be
harmful for others think about various
forms of oppression that have gone on in
the united states whether it be towards
people of color indigenous native first
american first nation etc cultures
across the americas think about how
learning about those different histories
and the way that
people in the government treated entire
groups of people for many years how that
might have a profoundly different impact
on white kids versus people from within
those different cultures and speaking of
cultures the next section on here is
talking about curriculum as cultural
reproduction so some people think that
curriculum should reflect what is valued
in society or a particular culture so
think of like civic skills or concepts
that some people think should be taught
or explicated in schools here's a quote
from page 29 that kind of elaborates on
that quote the job of schooling is to
reproduce salient knowledge and values
for the succeeding generation the
community state or nation take the lead
in identifying the skills knowledge and
appreciations to be taught it is the job
of professional educators to see that
they are transformed into a curriculum
that can be delivered to children and
youth end quote from page 29 so an
intent behind this is that okay well
it's impossible for every parent to be
able to teach their kids adequately on
their own hardly enough time to do it
not enough knowledge in different
subject areas abilities etc or not a
desire to want to homeschool so they
need institutions to help reproduce
different cultural knowledges and values
for their kids which is one of the
reasons why some private schools exist
because they are very explicit about
this is the set of values that we hold
and so parents families guardians will
send their kids to these schools in
order to have those values taught to
them explicitly and reinforced in
different social settings however a
critique of this is that this view can
perpetuate some forms of oppression so
if you haven't listened to the paolo
ferreri episodes that i've done in the
past that's a four part series i'll
include a link to that in the show notes
but the critique is that we should be
critical of cultural values and norms in
society just because of behavior or
a belief was valued in the past that
does not mean it's not problematic and
schubert argues that some teachers might
consider themselves to be powerless
however schubert points out that schools
are part of institutions and society
that can exert some forces on the
communities that they serve and i think
this is one of the big debates about
whether or not we should have critical
race theory in the classroom is the
debate of whether or not curriculum
should be cultural reproduction so i'll
talk about that more in a little bit but
the next one i want to talk about is
curriculum as experience so this is a
very john dewey approach to curriculum
so it's a means and continuum in terms
of
you'll learn through the experience and
the thing that binds this continuum
together is experience itself so here's
a quote from page 30 quote the teacher
is a facilitator of personal growth and
the curriculum is the process of
experiencing the sense of meaning and
direction that ensues from teacher and
student dialogue end quote so while the
curriculum as experience approach might
have some activities or projects or
things within it it can be done in
dialogue with students rather than done
for or designed for students and another
key distinction is that that's not the
main purpose of it the point is to have
an experience we're able to learn grow
express etc not necessarily go through a
sequence of events or concepts so here's
a quote from page 30 and 31 quote
curriculum as actual learning
experiences is an attempt to grasp what
is learned rather than to take for
granted that the planned intents are in
fact learned experiences are created as
learners reflect on the processes in
which they engage curriculum is meaning
experienced by students not facts to be
memorized or behaviors to be
demonstrated while ideals are indeed
indispensable in giving direction to
action they are fashioned as teachers
and learners interact amid amilu and
with subject matter that give substance
to learning in quote so then schubert
goes on to say that there are four
different common places in terms of
curriculum as experience so this was a
teacher a learner a subject matter and
milieu which is like context social
context so we need to look at the
different intersections and engagements
that go on between those four different
areas so it's not just about what the
teacher is doing or what about the
learner is learning but it's also
how the two interact with each other
through dialogue but the how the two
interact with each other in dialogue is
also with dialogue with the subject
matter and then in social context so how
are you communicating with your parents
about this how are you communicating
with other peers in your class or in the
school about this all of these different
four factors
work together to kind of create this
gestalt or this entirety of well what is
an experience or what is a curriculum as
an experience now because of the four
things that are all kind of working
together this is very hard to research
so this is where the criticism gets into
so while it sounds great and wonderful
it's impossible to
really account for both in terms of as
an educator facilitator designer or
curriculum developer but it's also hard
to research to really figure out well
how do these all intersect what is going
on with the teacher what is going on
with the students so like there's a
tendency among many
education scholars who are doing
research on a curriculum to look at the
curriculum itself and just the outcomes
from students but they don't necessarily
look at well how did the teacher teach
it compared to a different teacher how
was the social environment of that
particular class compared to another
social environment or milieu how are
each of the students as individuals
different from peers in their class and
different from other populations in
different parts of the world or country
or community or whatever it's really
hard to do research on all these things
so there's the tendency to have this
reductionist or simplistic approach in
education research where we focus on
just one of these aspects just whatever
the teacher is doing or whatever the
learner is reportedly learning or
whatever the subject matter is or
whatever the social context is but it's
how all of these intersect that we
really have to look at it and if you're
a teacher who's doing this with let's
say 30 kids in your class or let's say
like i was with a few hundred kids in
your school how are you going to explore
that intersection with every single
learner that you're working with that is
very hard to do unless you take an
approach that allows you to engage in
dialogue with students and encourages
them to come up with their own paths
that they can forge or follow and
deviate from in their own learning and
i've talked about this with john
stapleton katie henry and catherine
bornhorst and our discussion on
rhizomatic learning so i highly
recommend looking at that and then
checking out the episodes with katie and
john if we talk about that in those
podcasts as well i'll include links to
those in the show notes and then
hopefully we'll do an unpacking
scholarship episode on a paper that john
and i have submitted and hopefully it'll
get published down the road all right so
the next set is curriculum as discrete
tasks and concepts now i would argue
that for this one many of the computer
science standards fall within this
particular category so it's not just
curriculum but it's also well the
standards that inform curriculum here's
a quote from page 31 quote the
curriculum is seen as a set of tasks to
be mastered and they are assumed to lead
to a pre-specified end usually that end
has specific behavioral interpretations
such as learning a new task or
performing an old one better this
approach derives from training programs
in business industry and the military
end quote so an example of this and it
also relates to research that i was just
talking about is you do a pre-test and a
post let's find out before and after a
series of discrete tasks on a specific
concept or practice or whatever the
intent for this is often to learn a
skill or set of practices relative to a
domain however a criticism is that quote
the whole of most tasks even mechanical
ones is greater than the sum of its
parts therefore a simple additive set of
procedures may produce the appearance of
a skill well learned but it will not
provide for a variation that is so
essential in our changing world this
requires a knowledge of principles not
isolated skills or even concepts end
quote so i really like that point it's
yeah great that if you want to learn a
specific tasks or concepts but you also
need to consider how they work together
that's one of the criticisms that i have
for many different approaches to
learning coding in particular yeah you
could spend an entire unit just focusing
on different types of variables or you
could spend an entire unit just focusing
on different control structures but the
interesting thing is not necessarily
those concepts by themselves but how
they interact with each other so while
you could do a lesson on if else
statements and then do a pre and post
and see if they understand it what
matters when you're programming is how
do those if else statements work with
all of the other concepts in relation to
the goals that you're trying to do for
your program game or whatever so while
you could do a curriculum as discrete
tasks and concepts or create standards
around those things the interesting
thing is how they are all interconnected
not necessarily the decomposed abstract
understandings that are isolated outside
of actual application within a context
that is needed but that's my own bias
being able to do discrete tasks and
concepts for some subject areas or some
things is very important so i want to
fully recognize that hey there is a
point to this and not just completely
tear it down so the next area is called
curriculum as an agenda for social
reconstruction here's a quote from page
curriculum holds that schools should
provide an agenda of knowledge and
values that guide students to improve
society and the cultural institutions
beliefs and activities that support it
end quote so i unpacked a k-port
center's culturally responsive
sustaining
cs framework and any curriculum that
follows that might be described as a
curriculum as an agenda for social
reconstruction and i say that neutrally
curriculum that uses this approach or
curriculum designers who buy into this
approach are trying to improve the
social order in some way so some
examples that are given are quote to
prepare students who enter the world
with a fervor to provide greater racial
equity or more empathic understanding
among wealthy middle working and poor
classes of people end quote from page 32
the intent of this kind of approach is
that society or culture is not perfect
and that there is always things that we
can do to improve it or to build a
better society and this approach might
involve a lot of communication and input
from students and community members
different perspectives and is centered
around questions like what should be
changed how and why now a criticism is
that quote it is doubtful that schools
large but not particularly influential
institutions are politically powerful
enough to exert major social changes if
they would become powerful enough to do
so the desire of educators to voice
their political beliefs on children and
youth is tantamount to indoctrination of
a very serious kind it sparks the memory
of youth in totalitarian nations who are
brainwashed to support a revolution or
to spy on their own families and report
infractions of rules even in less severe
cases the question arises as to the
right of educators to play deity in the
dictating of social change end quote now
a question that i have for you is does
this remind you of discourse from people
who are against critical race theories
in schools because it certainly did for
me so somebody who uses more equity
centered approaches might be like yes we
really need to focus on social
reconstruction somebody else who had
lines to different images or
characterizations of curriculum that is
not for an agenda for social
reconstruction might disagree with that
they might think school is not the place
for this school is a place for a series
of discreet tasks and learning concepts
or they just might think school is
content or subject matter so maybe in
the equity discussions that we are
having we need to first figure out well
how do we conceive of school in the role
of school maybe people who are that 40
percent who disagree that equity should
be discussed in computer science
education
maybe some of them think that the reason
why it should not be discussed is
because the point is not to work on
social reconstruction within this class
the point is to learn the subject area i
don't know though just trying to provide
some different perspectives for the
field to consider because i think it's
healthy to have dialogue around
different areas that you might disagree
with all right so the last image or
characterization is called curriculum as
career i believe it's a french term so i
apologize if i completely mispronounce
that so for this approach quote the
curriculum is the interpretation of
lived experiences end quote from page
little woo-woo but the concept is that
curriculum is an autobiographical
experience so under the example section
the author writes quote students write
autobiographical accounts that focus on
striving to know who
how and why they have developed as they
have teachers and or other students
respond through written or oral comment
on the writing dialogue ensues and
creates reconceived visions of self
others and the world relevant literature
is introduced and the curriculum becomes
the process of reconceptualization the
purpose of reconceptualization is
individual emancipation from the
constraints of unwarranted convention
ideology and psychological
unidimensionality it is to explore other
provinces of meaning to envision
possibilities and to fashion new
directions for oneself others and the
world through mutual reconceptualization
end quote okay i know that sounds weird
but if you think of curriculum in
connection with the previous episode
that discussed rhizomatic learning which
again is linked to in the show notes
these two approaches when combined
together with like different forms of
assessment like ipsit of assessment
which is a reflection on your learning
if you consider this in relation to what
was just discussed for carrer one of the
things that i would do in the classroom
is one have a rhizomatic approach where
kids could go in any direction they
wanted spend any length of time on any
concept or practice that was of interest
to them and choose when they were done
with a project and move on to a
different language platform etc or
project however as part of an ipsitive
summative reflection at the end i would
ask students when they would turn in a
project what's something that you learn
how does this compare to what you
learned previously and how does this
compare to where you want to go next
what do you want to learn next this
approach was heavily informed by this
writings on career this autobiographical
narrative of basically how you have
developed over time in relation to
learning in a specific content area and
then trying to set goals for where do
you want to go next although this really
resonated with me and it was an approach
that i tried to come combine with like
the curriculum as experience and
curriculum as agenda for social
reconstruction it does have some
criticisms so the criticism is that like
there's so much more to unpack there
like you could honestly used
professional therapists i don't know
maybe even a historian while this really
resonates for me this approach
definitely has some criticisms and one
of the criticisms is that this is really
difficult to do especially if you're
working with a bunch of kids again i had
a few hundred that i work with and
previously i taught over a thousand when
i was working in multiple schools and
traveling between them so to be able to
sit down and really get to know and
understand the history the psychology of
each student is so hard to do from an
educator's standpoint but if you can
approach us in a way that students are
taking control of this exploration and
narrative i think it's a lot easier to
do okay so the last part of this section
kind of elaborates on things and says
that metaphors are also helpful for
thinking of curriculum so not just
images and characterizations in
particular under three categories of
production growth and journey so here's
quotes from page 34. quote production
provides an industrial model that
envisions the student as raw material to
be transformed by a skilled technician
who uses rigorously planned
specifications avoids waste and
carefully sees to it that raw materials
are used for the purposes that best fit
them the growth metaphor perceives the
teacher as an insightful gardener who
carefully gets to know the unique
character of the plants students and
nurtures their own special kind of
flowering in the travel metaphor the
teacher is a tour guide who leads
student through a terrain rich in
knowledge skills ideas appreciations and
attitudes the tour guide knows that each
traveler will respond differently to the
trip because of his or her unique
configuration of background ability
interests aptitudes and purposes end
quote and while each of these different
metaphors or the images and
characterizations might be great for
some purposes they might not be great
for other purposes or other individuals
or communities or groups and the
interesting thing about teaching is if
you have a class of 30 kids you might
have 30 different variations in terms of
how they respond to each one of these
different curricular approaches so it's
very important for us to consider what
approaches are we using either as a
whole like in our entire cs program in a
school or in a specific curriculum that
we are using like if you were to go back
and look at the lessons that i wrote for
boot up you might see that it aligns
with some images and characterizations
of curriculum more than it does with
others which might be different than if
you would go to look at a different
curriculum provider and that's okay but
it's important for us to consider how
those different images and
characterizations relate specifically to
the different values and rationales and
visions that you hold for yourself your
program and the kids that you work with
okay now at the end of these unpacking
scholarship episodes i'd like to share
some of my lingering questions or
thoughts so the first one i want to
share is that you've likely experienced
all of these images of curriculum at
some point whether it was formally or
informally like through therapy sessions
for career or through your math class or
whatever what images characterizations
and metaphors of curricula resonated
with you as a student and then the
follow-up question that i have is well
how does that compare with as a teacher
for an example when i was a student i
loved curriculum as discrete tasks and
concepts especially when it came to
music if i knew what i was supposed to
work on specific skill or to prepare it
was great to just absorb my mind into a
flow state of just trying to improve
that very specific task like playing an
instrument a specific way but as a
teacher while i still had fun teaching
music and things i really really valued
the cura approach curriculum as
experience approach social
reconstruction etc so it was really
interesting how over time i have shifted
in terms of what i value as a student
but then also how what i have valued as
a teacher has shifted over time to
different curriculum and for me if we go
a career approach to think of what are
the catalysts that led to that shift in
time and then where do i want to go next
but to center it back onto the people
that we work with a follow-up question
that i have is how do the different
images characterizations and metaphors
serve different needs for not only you
but the people that you work with who is
it working for and who's it not working
for is it possible to have multiple
approaches or perspectives in the same
space and i would argue yes but if we
were to zoom back out again my final
question here is what images
characterizations and metaphors do some
domains or fields gravitate towards over
others especially in computer science
education or even just thinking broadly
in education at large do science
teachers gravitate towards some more
than arts that would be interesting to
study but i'm a curriculum nerd as you
can probably tell now i do want to
re-emphasize something that i've said in
many episodes and multiple times in this
one that i do value
multi-perspectivalism
i think it is important that we have
many different images and
characterizations of curriculum and we
can have them all in the same school
that's cool so this is not me saying hey
we all have to have
this approach or that approach but those
are my perspectives and you may disagree
with me and if you do feel free to come
on the show i'm happy to chat with you
learn from you talk about perspectives
that i hadn't considered like what
images and characterizations were not
mentioned by schubert but stay tuned for
another unpacking scholarship episode
that's going to come out down the road
that's also going to talk about some
more things related to curriculum that
we need to consider such as the
different types of curriculum like the
intended the taught the experience the
embodied the hidden the tested the null
et cetera so we're going to talk about
that in an upcoming episode so let's get
nerdy so hopefully that's something you
look forward to or maybe you even dread
it let me know in a review but until
then i just want to say i really
appreciate you taking the time to listen
to this i hope you consider sharing this
with somebody else and i hope when
you're engaging in discussions around
integrated curriculum that this provides
some more nuances into
not only how to integrate but what we
conceive of in terms of curriculum as it
may differ from colleagues that we're
speaking with thank you so much for
listening stay tuned for another episode
next week and until then i hope you're
all staying safe and are having a
wonderful week
Article
Schubert, W. H. (1986). Images of curriculum. In Curriculum: Perspective, paradigm, and possibility (pp. 26-34). New York, NY: Macmillan.
My One Sentence Summary
This excerpt describes different examples, intents, and criticisms of “images” or “characterizations” of curriculum.
Some Of My Lingering Questions/Thoughts
What images, characterizations, and metaphors of curricula resonated with you as a student?
What about as a teacher?
How do different images, characterizations, and metaphors serve different needs for you and the people you work with?
What images, characterizations, and metaphors do some domains or fields of study gravitate toward over others?
Resources/Links Relevant to This Episode
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