While I have many great memories of my elementary school teachers using teaching with more of process and/or praxis curricular approach, I can also recall times in which I have experienced the Tyler Rationale. This “traditionalist” way of looking at curriculum views it as a product and heavily focuses on objectives. As we learnt in class, viewing curriculum as product comes from Ralph Tyler. Tyler believed “that curriculum development can rise above context” (class slides), which directs focus onto final product. I can recall times in school in which teachers would read us the curriculum objectives and sometimes even list the objectives at the top of assignments. I remember some…

In Kumashiro’s introduction entitled, “The Problem of Common Sense”, he deconstructs the idea of common sense, and how in schools we can turn this analysis into anti-oppressive education. Kumashiro uses the term commonsense to refer to what is “traditional” and what “everyone should know” and he explains that instead of using this “norm” to shape our curriculum, it should be “examined and challenged” to understand who this norm is privileging and who it is oppressing. It is so important to deconstruct and reform what we think is common sense because it is limiting, and as Kumashiro said, “common sense often makes it easy to continue teaching and learning in ways…