Curriculum design and implementation

Curriculum Planning History

On a very basic level, I have engaged in curriculum planning within my own classroom, to meet the desired goals for my class at the end of the year. The students must acquire certain basic skills and cover certain types of factual and literary material. I also desire that my students strive to meet more vaguely determined goals like the fact that they become more critical and creative thinkers and that they come together as a group strive to build a classroom community. Looking back, within the limits of the school environment, and given the need to meet school district and national standards, I think I have coped with the need to balance these different forces well. In retrospect I wish I could have been more flexible over the course of the year, and perhaps tailored some of the activities a bit better to the needs of the individual students.

Over the past ten years, given the 'No Child Left Behind Act,' there has been an increased emphasis on so-called basic skills, or what we might think of as the four 'Rs' of 'reading, writing, and arithmetic' as tested by national exams. Less directive formats of teaching these subjects have been deemphasized. Preparing for the format of the exam is deemed essential because poor performance on such national tests can result in reductions in school funding, and also the community perception that the teachers are not 'doing their job.' Even social studies and science classes now stress basic skills, rather than more interactive, experiential formats. Physical education, music, visual arts, and other elements of classroom learning have also been cut back or eliminated, because core academic subjects receive the lion's share of the district's budget and scheduled time..

This stands in stark contrast to the 1990s, where interdisciplinary approaches like 'block scheduling' and multicultural subject matter were introduced into many districts. Standards were defined in open-ended value statements rather than quantifiable norms (Mathison & Mason 1989). It was argued by some educators that this unfairly penalized poorer districts, because students in less affluent schools could not be confident that their institutions would meet national standards, and gradually, a more norm-based approach was embraced, cumulating in the call for nationalized testing (Rogers, McDonald, & Sizer 1993).

However, giving educators greater flexibility enabled schools to more effectively respond to the increased demographic diversity of America and the needs of students. In schools with multicultural populations, including lessons in cultural tolerance, incorporating cultural diversity into the history and literature classes, and even on a very basic level, simplifying some of the language for ESL students in science and math classes when mainstreaming those students made education more responsive and also more student-friendly. Even if students do not meet standards by the end of a particular year, the education of students facing special challenges is often best met by an approach that focuses on educating the student in a long-range fashion, rather than upon annual testing.