ECS 203 Blog Post #7 (Final)

ECS 203 Blog Post #7 (Final)

Before taking this class, I had little to no knowledge of what “curriculum” and “pedagogy” were, the biases attached to these subjects, and the essential learnings that came with them. In the weeks of taking this class, my knowledge expanded and grew in many insightful ways. I learned that curriculum is what we teach, and pedagogy is how we teach it. The most shocking thing I learned in this course is that the government dictates what is taught in schools;…

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ECS 203 Blog Post #6

ECS 203 Blog Post #6

After reading the article “Teaching Mathematics and the Inuit Community” (Louise Poirier) and then reading “Jagged Worldviews Collided”(Leroy Little Bear), followed by viewing “Curriculum as Numeracy.” (Gale Russell) I learned how Eurocentric mathematical teaching differs from Indigenous teachings on this topic. A large part of my takeaways this week came from watching Gale Russell’s lecture. Much of the lecture discusses how math and curriculum reflect a mainly Eurocentric learning point of view. Gale provides us with a chart that helps…

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ECS 203 Blog Post #5

ECS 203 Blog Post #5

In this blog post, I will be responding to the following parts of an email that was initially sent to Dr. Mike Cappello. The email reads; “During the fall semester several years ago, Dr. Mike Cappello received an email from an intern asking for help. Here’s part of it: “As part of my classes for my three-week block, I have picked up a Social Studies 30 course. This past week we have been discussing the concept of standard of living…

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ECS 203 Blog Post #4

ECS 203 Blog Post #4

In this week’s articles, we learned about three particular educational approaches: Behaviourism, Cognitivism, and Constructivism. I will briefly explain my understanding of these topics and use direct quotes from each article to explain further what each approach means.    What is behaviourism?  “At the heart of behaviourism is the idea that certain behavioural responses become associated in a mechanistic and invariant way with specific stimuli. Thus a certain stimulus will evoke a particular response.” (Skinner, Pg.1) In relation to education, behaviorism…

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ECS 203 Blog Post #3

ECS 203 Blog Post #3

In this week’s readings, we examined how the curriculum is developed and implemented in many different school systems. Levin provides many knowledgeable and insightful perspectives on how the curriculum continues to change based on who is in power (government) at the time. Each person has their own perspective and belief on how the curriculum should look and what is most essential to teach. Levin explains this feeling as “an important element of the politics around education is that everyone has…

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ECS 203 Blog Post #2

ECS 203 Blog Post #2

All teachers have a somewhat common idea of what it means to be a “good student.” These ideologies come from the common notion the education system portrays to teachers. In Kumashiro’s article “Against Common Sense,” a quote talks about the pressure the school system puts on teachers to produce these “good students.” The passage states “Many more students like M would enter my classrooms, students who were unable or unwilling to be the kind of student that schools and society…

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ECS 203 Blog Post #1

ECS 203 Blog Post #1

After reading the article, “The Problem with Common Sense,” we follow the experiences of a teacher who was offered a job with the American Peace Corporation to be a teacher in Nepal. The common theme in this article is why common sense is an issue, especially concerning education and curriculum. After reading this article, we gain knowledge of common sense in our curriculum and what other countries’ common sense looks like elsewhere. Kumashiro defines common sense as a set of…

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