Curriculum An Integrative Introduction

Curriculum is a topic about which educators as well as laypersons have knowledge, because we all attended school. For most of us, everything in and around schools seems somehow related to curriculum. If we're pressed for its exact meaning, we may hesitate to define it, because the boundaries of "curriculum" are not clear. In this text,curriculumrefers to what is taught in schools, a deliberately open definition that promotes consideration of curricula serving different purposes and contexts. Written for teachers and nonteaching school staff, this text seeks to bridge curriculum theory and practice by presenting information in practical settings. It's one thing to read and comprehend how curriculum processes work at the level of book knowledge, and quite another to put these processes into practice. This text seeks to show how practice informs theory, and howuseof theory helps individuals engage in curriculum tasks appropriately. One major theme of this text is that the curriculum processes (i.e., development, implementation/enactment, and evaluation) involve decision making by people who are guided by their beliefs and values about what students should learn. Furthermore, because the processes are sociopolitical, the beliefs and values incorporated in any particular curriculum may or may not be held by those who use them in classrooms. Both developers and users must arrive at decisions after careful thought, because living with the consequences of decisions made by default or in haste is difficult. A second major theme is that curricular change occurs only after individuals have made internal transitions. That is, people must "end the old" before they can "begin the new." Transitions take time, understanding, and support on the part of all of the people involved. The text discusses the change processes involved when initiating curriculum revisions or when using "new" curricula in classrooms. NEW TO THIS EDITION The third edition provides new content and new features: Instructional level curricula developed by schools or departments are the focus of the development processes. See Chapters 1, 7, 8, 9, and 11. The revised Bloom's taxonomy is used in discussions of cognitive learning out comes. See Chapters 4 and 9. Information about technology in curriculum (e.g., WebQuests) has been updated. See Chapters 8, 9, and 11, as well as Appendix A6. Information about state and national standards as curriculum content sources has been updated and related to the revised Bloom's taxonomy. See Chapters 4 and 8. The discussion of curriculum evaluation has been updated and focused on the application of Sanders-Davidson's School Evaluation Model. See Chapter 12. One specific goal given at the beginning of each chapter helps to focus attention on major points. ForAdditional Informationis a new section at the end of each chapter. These sections list suggested readings and Web resources about selected chapter topics. TEXT FEATURES The text provides the following features: Action Pointsin every chapter invite readers to participate in the construction of their own curriculum knowledge. Readers who are involved in curriculum processes as they study this text are assisted with their own projects through work on the final Action Point in each chapter, beginning in Chapter 3. The answers to selected Action Points can be found immediately following Chapter 12. Questions for Discussionfocus on chapter main points. Some questions are open ended to allow individuals with alternate views to present their ideas. Other questions integrate information from different chapters and require higher-order thinking. Exhibitsof instructional curriculum in Chapters 7-11 assist developers in planning their own curriculum. Curriculum documents in Appendix A furnish illustrations and provideSowell, Evelyn J. is the author of 'Curriculum An Integrative Introduction', published 2004 under ISBN 9780131112919 and ISBN 0131112910.