According to the Levin article, how are school curricula developed and implemented? What new information/perspectives does this reading provide about the development and implementation of school curriculum? Is there anything that surprises you or maybe that concerns you?
Politics plays a huge role in curriculum development and implementation. Politics controls what students learn, how they learn, and everything.
Policies govern just about every aspect of
education—what schooling is provided, how,
to whom, in what form, by whom, with what
resources, and so on. The application of these
terms to curriculum is evident. Curriculum concerns what is taught—a fundamental aspect of
schooling and thus of public policy (Levin, 2008, pg. 8)
We saw from the lecture and Levin’s article (2008) that teachers and students got little to no say in building a curriculum. The curriculum is also never neutral as it may “endorse or support, explicitly or not, particular teaching and learning practices” (pg. 14). Take Catholic schools for example. I, for one, went to a catholic school and know for sure that Catholic Studies is a mandatory subject to take whether you are catholic or not. Not only this subject adds to the number of subjects you must take to graduate, not everyone benefits from it since not everyone is Catholic in that school. Moreover, in curriculum building, Levin states that there are two concerns about the politics of curriculum. First is the “overall shape of school curricula” such as what subjects are “included (or excluded), how much of each, and at what stage of students’ education” (pg. 14). The second one is the “content of particular subjects” (pg. 14). Levin (2008) added that people debate what should teachers teach in one subject. For example, people would debate whether to include sex education in the sciences or not. Overall, a lot of things go into how to build the curriculum, and I am not surprised that some aspects of education are limited because of how politics control what students should learn.
After reading pages 1-4 of the Treaty Education document, what connections can you make between the article and the implementation of Treaty Education in Saskatchewan? What tensions might you imagine were part of the development of the Treaty Education curriculum?
It is funny how a social studies curriculum will have infinitely many pages, then there is a Treaty education document–19 pages with one page of goals which only goes up to grade 12 and not beyond. Since politics is a major contributor to curriculum-making, it is quite ironic to think that a 19-page curriculum will solve the problem.
References:
Levin, B. (2008). Curriculum policy and the politics of what should be learned in schools. In F. Connelly, M. He & J. Phillion (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of curriculum and instruction (pp. 7 – 24). Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
Saskatchewan Treaty Education Document
I admire that you acknowledged that the curriculum will never be neutral and added the quote to support your proposition. I would like to hear your further thoughts on why you believe it’s funny that there’s only nineteen pages for the treaty curriculum, perhaps to be more in depth, you could discuss your thoughts on the outcomes the nineteen pages along with their significance to teaching treaty education. I admire you adding your own experience going to a catholic school to your blog post, as it made it much more entertaining to read and shows that you made a personal connection. Thank you for sharing.
Hi Jozelle! I really enjoy that you mention how curriculum can never be neutral! As a student in the elementary education program, I am taking a lot of anti-bias education courses. As hard as we can try to make the curriculum anti-bias, it will never happen, someone will always be left out and someone will always be privileged. All we can do is try to make these aspects smaller so that the effects are not as drastic.
I also think your answer to the treaty education question is very interesting and I think you could have elaborated more on your statement to really get your point across. You make a very good point there but there is just not enough content to back it up.
I love that you use quotes directly from the text too!