Traditionalist Perspective of Curriculum Development Reading Response

The Tyler rationale is very prevalent in schools. It is the basis for much of the work students do. As Mark Smith, in his article What is curriculum? Exploring theory and practice states, “Objectives are set, a plan drawn up, then applied, and the outcomes (products) measured.” This understanding of the Curriculum forms how we went about learning in many of the subjects I took in school. For instance, in math, the teachers would have objectives about what we needed to learn this year. They would decide the order, sometimes in order of the textbook, and sometimes we would do the units out of order. We would apply the skills we learned in assignments, quizzes, and tests. Then the teacher would mark our work to see if we meet the outcomes that were planned. This flow of the model is seen in many classes beyond math, and in many more schools than the one I attended.

The Tyler rationale does not take into consideration those who learn differently. By setting objectives and outcomes, it does not take into account the different strengths of students. This focus on measurability and issues that go along with it is prevalent in the article. Sometimes you cannot tell the impact of events until much later. Further, things that may seem insignificant to you can be very significant to students. Going hand in hand with the issue of measurability is the “problem of unanticipated results.” When you set objectives beforehand, both educators and students may dismiss other learning that happens along the way because it is not part of the original goal. Smith states that another flaw of the Tyler rationale is how the plan becomes the most important thing, and learning comes second to that. Students end up having little voice in what they are learning. Smith stresses that this kind of adherence to the plan can also deskill educators, as it “turns educators into technicians.” Another issue with the Tyler rationale that Smith brings up is the issues with educators being able to meet the classroom’s objectives. It states that maybe we need to criticize the approach of trying so hard to meet the goals, instead of helping students to learn.

This model’s benefit is that it does teach students to follow directions and teach them how to learn. These skills can then be applied in the job force or post-secondary. Another benefit comes with uniformity. If a student switches schools, they will not be missing skills that they need to continue learning. It ensures that students of the same grade level will have the same base understandings of concepts they will need to build on in future years. This model also helps to get students through exams because of it’s emphasis on marking, whereas the article states that the Curriculum as a process model can be more challenging to do this. This model also does not rely on the quality of teachers as highly as Curriculum as a process. This way, if students have a teacher who is not as high of quality, it shouldn’t affect their schooling as much as it would if they were using the Curriculum as a Product model. As a result, educators focusing on achieving the set outcomes, have a sort of safety net to fall on with the curriculum and its set objectives telling them what they need to do.

 Smith, M. K. (1996, 2000) ‘Curriculum theory and practice’ The encyclopedia of pedagogy and informal education, www.infed.org/biblio/b-curric.htm.