Equitable Opportunities Education Curriculum

Education Curriculum: Equitable Opportunities to Access and Evaluate Student Learning Through Assessments

Students need to be promoted to the next class or grade when assessed fairly on their skills and learnings. The common assessment methodologies have been under debate recently as it seems to be inequitable in supporting students for assessing core skills and the knowledge their diverse backgrounds provide for their interpretation. This paper aims to review how to ensure assessments provide an equitable opportunity to assess and evaluate student learning with historical evidence, contemporary curriculum practices, and a detailed position. 

Historical Contextualization

It is mandatory to understand the steps taken in history for curriculum development so that early practices could be compared with today’s modern ones to certify which ones worked best. How the needs of students grew and how culturally competent teaching and diversity inclusion impacted the way curriculum is designed today must be interpreted to the core. 

Academic scientism (1890-1916) was when two approaches were seen to influence curriculum development: academic and scientific (Glatthorn et al., 2018, p. 36). The predominant trends at that time supported the ideology that scientific learning boosted rationale and gave students a holistic worldview of how things operate. It remained the essence of the curriculum content as students were believed to expand their horizons for gaining insight. This era’s prominent proponents and leaders were G. Stanley Hall and Francis W. Parker. 

The next era was progressive functionalism (1917-1940), in which two orientations were witnessed to hyperbolize the curriculum development directions: progressive or child-centered and functional orientations (Glatthorn et al., 2018, p. 37). The child-centered orientation seemed naïve as it only emphasized the child’s interests, who himself did not know what was right and wrong for him. The designing of the curriculum with the child’s self-expression needs was required to be broader in its spectrum of effectiveness. On the other hand, functionalism orientation guided the curriculum to be developed based on learning activities of adult life so that stimulus-response should be infused in the syllabus. This era’s prominent proponents and leaders were John Dewey and Franklin Bobbitt. 

The era that came afterward was Developmental conformism (1941-1956) which highlighted the needs of youth and showed concern for curriculum development based on the conformity with educational goals (Glatthorn et al., 2018, p. 39). The developmental theorists of this era believed that there should be relevantly appropriate activities for each developmental stage of a child, such as early childhood, readiness to read, talk, and ability to differentiate between right and wrong, etc. Similarly, there were activities for middle childhood and adolescence. This era’s prominent proponents and leaders were Ralph Taylor and Hollis Caswell. 

The subsequent eras that impacted the development of curriculum were scholarly structuralism (1957-1967), romantic radicalism (1968-1974), and privatistic conservatism (1975-1989); however, the one that is still talked about was during the 1980s, when multicultural education emerged as an important ideology (Glatthorn et al., 2018, p. 46). Making the literacy rate of the entire country as high as possible led to serval education acts to focus on giving the right of education to all ethnicities, giving high significance to multicultural education, curriculum devising, and assessment designing in this era.

With the usage of technology from 1990 to 1999, technological constructivism was the era that is still practiced, evident from school activities that are part of the curriculum (Glatthorn et al., 2018, p. 49). Increasing learning opportunities for all age groups and encouraging parental involvement became the spirit of education standards. The state education standards were strived to be met at all costs so that decisions were made on standards only, and fairness was certified. 

Modern conservatism (2000-2009) is the era recently witnessed, with the main focus being ‘no child left behind’ due to massive school privatization (Glatthorn et al., 2018, p. 52). Diversity education, as well as culturally competent teachers, were the ideas that are intensely concentrated on. Racial discrimination is shunned, and following common core state standards are again stressed with the infusion of technology to meet global education needs. 

Technological functionalism (2010-present) is the current era of educational history, with most trends inherited from its previous era (Glatthorn et al., 2018, p. 59). 

Position on the Topic

The meaning of equitable assessment derives from the indication that students are assessed fairly using methods and procedures that are most suitable to them (Suskie, 2000). It would be different for students with different cultural backgrounds, their prior learning, and previous experience in terms of cognitive learning style as these factors influence their final grades after assessments (Scott et al., 2014). The appropriateness is grounded in the position to present fair assessment for evaluating student learning impartially by citing the learning outcomes, matching the assessments with what has been taught in class, different measures to suit the child’s adaptability such as multiple-choice questions and detailed essays, etc., helping the students in understanding the assessment task to answer it appropriately, and interpreting the results based on certain selected methodologies like comparing with peers or reviewing a child’s growth (Suskie, 2000; McMillan, 2000).