As a senior math and science teacher I have been asked many times “when will I ever
use this?” I have come up with some standard responses over the years, like “You are learning logical thinking skills that can be applied to other areas of your life” or “you are demonstrating your ability to learn.” The truthful answer is they probably won’t be using what I teach unless they also become teachers. Even students, like engineers that need high level math for university often end up utilizing computer programs in their career instead of doing calculus. Many students accept that this is just the way things are, and they cooperate, but I have had a few very bright students that underperformed because they needed to see relevance in order to put in effort.
So how did we get here? Why does curriculum have little relevance to the majority of our students? Should we be looking to change this? I think the answer to this comes in how we create curriculum and the needs of various stakeholders. I think we can all agree on a basic need to be literate and numerate, but as we progress through education the outcomes become more dictated by the needs of post secondary institutions. We are teaching pre-calculus to students, because of the very small number of students that will take a calculus course in university, and the even smaller number that will take further calculus courses and use those skills throughout their career. Would it be better to choose statistics as the basic of secondary math instead of calculus? Should we have a curriculum at all? These are valid questions, and I think as the world evolves we need to adjust our curriculum, but I don’t think that it is possible or even necessary to change our curriculum so that we only teach things that everyone will use. Knowledge is useful, but sometimes it is just fun as well, and I think we need to capture the joy of learning for our students, and one way we can do this is by following them into the participatory culture.
Participatory culture is an environment where individuals actively create, collaborate, remix and share knowledge rather than just passively consuming it. Henry Jenkins discusses participatory culture, and how it is changing our students in the linked videos. His line at the beginning of the second video really stuck with me. “In almost every case young people had a richer intellectual and creative life outside of school than in school. The things they learned about, the things they care about were things they did after the school day was over.” Participatory culture is a brain shift in how we think about knowledge. Instead of static it is dynamic, democratic and constantly changing. Our students might not like writing a poem, or doing a math problem, but they are making Tiktok and Youtube videos, reading, sharing pictures and commenting on X, Snapchat and Instagram. We have access to every bit of knowledge we would ever want via sites like wikipedia and YouTube. Our students need some of the skills we are teaching to participate in digital culture, but they also need digital literacy to assess bias, and credibility of the constant stream of information they have access to.
Participatory culture can be a tool of engagement for our students, but also a necessary inclusion to help our students navigate the digital world. Modernizing curriculum, and giving teachers more flexibility can allow more inclusion of this learning style, but I also think we need to look at how we can fit this into our current paradigm. Halverson, Kallio, Hackeett, and Halverson (2016) came up with four different ways to incorporate participatory culture into education, these include: maker-spaces, student led productions, collaborative problem solving, and digital circulation. In the subject areas I teach this can be incorporated by encouraging students to bring their creativity and ingenuity to math and science instead of just their calculator. For example, my students could participate in a project where I ask them to edit and defend a wikipedia article or make a youtube video on a relevant concept? Instead of delivering the algorithm for a math process, can I have my students collaboratively work together to develop that process? Can I have my students find citizen science projects to participate in to make the scientific inquiry we are engaging in carry more weight? All of these ideas would bring more relevance to what I teach. I think systemic change needs to happen to provide teachers more time for this level of creative inquiry, but I still think we need to fit it into our classrooms whenever we can.
Hi Danine, Thanks for your great post! I agree that we should be engaging students with creative inquiry projects as often as we can. I think there needs to be a balance between teaching the foundational skills that curriculum can provide and following student interests by using makerspaces and other creative options. As an example, in my Grade 5 Science classes, we have just started a unit on Forces and Simple Machines. Of course, students always want to jump right in to the building/creating/experimenting activities. I have taught this unit many times and I have learned that if I don’t provide the foundational knowledge of simple machines and how they work together, students get frustrated and give up on their creative ideas. When we take the time to learn the components and the outcomes that are provided in the curriculum, students feel much more comfortable and confident when they are designing and building their own simple machines.
Thank you for your reflection! I too ask the question about whether we should have a curriculum or not. I feel that my frustration is not only tied in with the aspect of knowledge, but also the aspect of up-to-date knowledge. My degree is focused on high school social studies, and the most frustrating part was working with a curriculum that is almost as old as I am. I understand the budgetary concerns, but there is a point when you are altering the material in the curriculum more so than you are using it. The inclusion, educational approach and societal focus has changed. How much time is acceptable for a teacher to spend remixing the material so students can participate in a meaningful way, and keep up with their other work demands?