Week 3 blog

Developing a Curricular Vision for Teaching


    The first section of this week’s reading talks about why teachers should learn about curriculum. As what is mentioned in the reading, the textbook writer, curriculum developer or department head cannot know exactly what a teacher must do with the classroom (Darling-Hammond et al, 176), they cannot know more about students’ needs and abilities than classroom teachers do. Therefore, the mandated curriculum needs to be shaped and understood by teachers in order to meet both the needs of students and the demands of curriculum content in teaching., which requires teachers to grasp knowledge of curriculum.

    In the second section, educators propose that teachers are required to develop a curricular vision for teaching, which refers to an understanding of different views of curriculum and implied educational goals and the teacher’s role; how to develop and carry out curricular plans; and how to make curricular decisions and address curricular issues (Darling-Hammond et al, 176). Considering learning experience from the student’s perspective is emphasized for understanding curriculum. From my understanding, curriculum is not just an instructional guideline which provides teachers teaching contents and goals, but more implies a series of instructional processes like designing tasks, teaching methods, activities and assessment in support of educational goals, which requires teachers to think about both needs of students and demands of instructional goals. 

    In addition, it is argued that teachers need to have knowledge of a planning process to be able to plan curriculum, but not just the individual lesson (Darling-Hammond et al, 184), which requires them to know about educational purposes, learning experiences, and evaluation. As for educational purposes, teachers ought to be clear about what is important to study in a specific subject they teach, basing on social needs and expectations, and academic standards for further learning. In terms of paying attention to learning experiences, it is necessary to plan specific activities in light of students’ levels of readiness for various kinds of learning experiences. During this process, task analysis is regarded to be important to avoid a curriculum that is just a sequence of interesting activities, making sure that the activities designed are aligned with the educational goals. With regards to evaluation, teachers need to have abilities to evaluate their curriculum decisions, including the abilities of collecting and analyzing information from students through assessments. In order to prepare teachers to develop a curricular vision, three major kinds of learning areas are proposed in the reading, which include considering educational goals and purposes, designing curriculum and instruction, and evaluating curriculum plans and materials. 

    From my understanding, it is not enough for teachers to just have knowledge of curriculum, the more important is they need to know how to apply this curricular vision into their teaching practice. Teachers are responsible to narrow the broad educational purposes through designing practical and suitable instruction for students and make what they teach accessible to students, because I think the core of both curriculum design and implementation should be students. Furthermore, teachers are responsible to connect the abstract educational standard with specific teaching. Thus, they need to be clear about their own teaching goals and design the teaching style that is aligned with them. 

Comments

  1. AnonymousFebruary 1, 2019 at 7:35 PM

    Very insightful input on this week's reading. I enjoyed reading about the teacher's role and and responsibility to structure curriculum, and I thought your post a good job at summarizing the arthur's main's on the emphasis of the teacher within curriculum development, and it provides your personal input on what that exactly means. A think that a teacher's presence in a classroom is essential to build a relationship between the student and their education, and often times, a student's view on education or a certain subject and be wholly determined by their experience during their educational career. The teacher's role is to understand the curriculum so to gauge the student's interests, provide an efficient learning environment that can be measured through analytical data, and without the understanding of the curriculum's objective, a teacher might find it difficult to build that student's relationship with their education.

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  2. Amanda MartinFebruary 14, 2019 at 3:09 PM

    Thank you for this post! You took some very important points from the reading and expanded on them. I want to touch on teachers being able to connect broader education topics and providing a platform for students to make sense of these ideas. I agree that this is a critical piece of the learning process and I believe that teachers could definitely use more guidance in this area. Not only should teachers help make curriculum relevant, but we are also responsible for including different parts of the DOK (depth of knowledge) for all learners. In my experience, especially as a special education teacher, we tend to stray away from letting our learners explore tasks that require high order thinking because we are afraid that students will not make those deeper connections. I would personally love to learn how to shape curriculum while embedding opportunity for learners to display various levels of knowledge.

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  3. Yesenia BuenoMay 11, 2019 at 9:58 AM

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  4. Yesenia BuenoMay 11, 2019 at 9:59 AM


    Hello and thank you for your post. I also agree that curriculum should be understood by teachers and that they are responsible in narrowing the broad educational purposes into a suitable instruction for the type of students they are educating. I agree with the idea of having teachers being heavily involved in shaping curriculum but sometimes the reality of how curriculum is developed from a bureaucratic level can sometimes leave little wiggle room for teacher autonomy in the classroom.

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