Curriculum Studies Home Page

Curriculum Studies Specialization of the Cultural Diversity and Curriculum Reform Program

School of Education University of Massachusetts Amherst, MA 01003 Faculty Advisor: Dr. Robert L. Sinclair 429 Hills North (413) 545-4185

Curriculum innovations of recent decades have been filled with the rhetoric of promise and potential, and while some have materialized and brought beneficial results, many have proven hollow in actually improving students' learning. The lack of impact is starting to show. Signs indicate that today's students are more poorly equipped for higher education and entering a career than were their predecessors. The roars of educators who called for changes in schooling during the 1980s have, at best been softened to mere whispers, and at worst have been converted to political posturing and partisan demagoguery. The majority of Americans seem convinced that the quality of public education is on the decline, and yet there is no consensus about what should be done.

Concern continues to mount over how to improve the performance of learners who attend our institutions. It is this increasing concern that will give momentum to educational improvement in the 1990s. Let us hope that the leaders of the next decade will be more interested in whispers that become roars. Educators cannot sit back and wait for some remote external source to provide answers that will blow in through the classroom window. Rather, improvement in our schools will be accomplished by active leadership that comes from within those very institutions that are being questioned. A new breed of educator must emerge. Leaders are needed who can tap existing human resources as a means for turning institutions around and making them a more effective medium for learning. Leaders are needed who can remove conditions that hinder learning and can construct environments that foster learning. To confront educational problems in a fundamental way the Curriculum Studies Specialization concentrates on systematic improvement in the connections between the curriculum, the environment, and the learner. It prepares its members for the major leadership responsibility of changing school environments to increase learning.

The description of the Curriculum Studies Specialization is presented in four sections. First, the premises that provide a theoretical, value, and practical base are advanced. Second, the goals that guide decision-making and determine organization are stated. Third, the academic dimensions that serve as a structure for courses and experiences leading to graduate degrees are described. And finally, the administrative organization, or how we work and relate together as a community of colleagues engaged in a mutual effort, is presented.

PREMISES

The following premises give direction to the goals, degree programs, school services, and research of the Curriculum Studies Specialization:

Lasting school improvements require an approach that considers the interdependence and interaction among factors in the total learning environment, including the influences of the home and the larger community.
Learning environments can either stifle or foster the abilities and interests of people and, thereby, can either contribute to perpetuating or correcting inequalities based on race, sex and social class background.
In order for the learning environment to connect with learners who have varied abilities, interests, and backgrounds, it is necessary for schools to provide multiple environments that properly match the academic needs of individuals and groups.
Curricular concerns are powerful entry points for improving the total learning environment and for making schools responsive to the differences and similarities among pupils.
Lasting school improvements cannot be achieved through unilateral outside intervention, but can be accomplished through a collaborative process among all participants that results in clear benefits to teachers and students in the schools.
The school principal is usually the key leader in facilitating efforts by pupils, teachers, and parents to improve learning environments.
Teachers, in concert with the principal, should play a central role in curriculum decision-making and in creating multiple learning environments in schools.
Relations between homes and schools significantly affect the attitudes of parents, teachers, and pupils; and must be considered an important factor in improving learning in the home and in the school.
The meaning of curriculum includes the expressed, emerging, and hidden dimensions of a learning environment; and these dimensions are influenced by curriculum decisions that are made at societal, institutional, and instructional levels.

GOALS

Specifically, seven goals give meaning and direction to daily actions of the students and faculty in the Curriculum Studies Specialization:

To conduct research into the influence of school curriculum on learning.
To disseminate information to pupils, teachers, parents, and administrators about the positive and negative aspects of education and schooling.
To develop curriculum, and associated instructional practices and organizational structures, that will help eliminate race, sex, and class barriers to learning.
To increase the effectiveness of curriculum for fostering learning for pupils who are not meeting their potential due to learning disabilities.
To increase effective parent and pupil involvement in curriculum decision-making.
To promote parent-school cooperation intended to increase learning through more effective home and school environments.
To prepare leaders who can improve educational environments by developing and implementing curriculum that fit the needs, interests, and understandings of the learners.

CURRICULUM DIMENSIONS

In order to prepare its members for important leadership responsibilities, the curriculum of the Curriculum Studies Specialization is rigorous and unique. It is designed to meet the individual needs and objectives of every participating student during the course of their study, depending on levels of experience, energy, and ability. The curriculum emerges from the attempt to match individual learning styles and interests with the type and amount of structure the individual needs to gain the knowledge, skills, and competencies associated with each goal of the Specialization. In this way, formal courses, independent studies, research studies, and school-based projects are arranged.

By concentrating on the experience its members bring and on the skills they seek and need, the Specialization continually improves and alters its highly personalized nature. The sensitivity to individual needs and to academic rigor that characterizes the course of study results in a learning environment that encourages excellence by releasing the potential of its members instead of locking it in. Students simultaneously move toward accomplishment of the Specialization's goals and their own academic objectives leading to completion of the graduate degree. By balancing and blending six dimensions of scholarship into their academic program, they define a major and two minor concentrations in Curriculum Studies.

Dimension One - Curriculum Theory

The current state of the art and science of curriculum studies does not present scholars with an abundance of curriculum theory. In general, the designs for curriculum decision-making that are put forward have only limited predictability. In this academic dimension, a student concentrates on analyzing and extending existing designs, and on internalizing a personal approach to curriculum decision-making. Priority is given to the advancement of existing knowledge and to the creation of new ways to view curriculum problems. Specific objectives for this dimension include:

To analyze theoretical frameworks that underlie the methods used for curriculum development.
To evaluate ideas of major theorists and their designs for developing curriculum.
To develop skill in theory building.
To identify assumptions that guide various approaches to curriculum decision-making.
To define a meaning of curriculum in terms of its expressed, hidden, and emerging aspects.
To interpret associations between the historical development of the curriculum field and future priorities for curriculum improvement.
To analyze the impact of learning theories on curriculum development.

Dimension Two - Curriculum Research

Systematic inquiry into the effects on learning of intellectual, social, and physical conditions in the educational environment is necessary to insure continuous school improvement. General directions for needed curriculum change and the more specific alterations in existing curriculum are, in a direct way, guided by research findings. This academic dimension is designed to facilitate the completion of research in an area of interest to the student and, in the process, to foster the mastery of research skills. Students become familiar with existing research findings, and they generate their own research studies. They develop skills in carrying out research about the nature and effects of educational environments, while at the same time they learn to recognize the importance of research as a source for curriculum change and development. The objectives for this dimension include:

To distinguish between valid and invalid research data.
To become a knowledgeable consumer of educational research.
To critique the designs, reliability, and validity of research studies.
To evaluate the usefulness of research studies for solving curriculum problems.
To translate research implications into curriculum practice.
To develop reliable and valid questioning strategies for studying curriculum within the schools.
To create observational techniques to study curricular components and their interactions with individuals and groups of individuals within the schools.
To investigate the dimensions of curriculum effectiveness and their relationship to individual student cognitive, affective, and psychomotor performance.
To operationalize environmental events and analyze how they relate, individually or in combination, to the learning process.

Dimension Three - Curriculum Development

To make the curriculum visible, academic skills and calculated risk are mixed with intuition and sensitivity and then applied to the task of writing an expressed curriculum. In this academic dimension students learn the basic skills of curriculum construction. The development process demands the ability to translate ideas into actual decisions. The priority here becomes the integration of theory and practice. Students create their own design(s) for curriculum development and apply their design(s) to specific school settings. Also, the curriculum developer perfects sensitivity to the values, contributions, and history of cultural groups typically neglected by conventional curricula. This dimension fosters skills for teaching others how to develop curriculum, and extends the concern of the curriculum worker into decisions that effect the hidden and ever emerging aspects of curriculum. Specific objectives for this dimension include:

To master skills for developing curriculum.
To assess individual, instructional, institutional, and societal needs.
To write objectives for specific curricula.
To screen selected objectives through examining various philosophies of education and learning theories.
To design instructional strategies and learning opportunities to implement formulated objectives.
To design evaluation procedures to measure student performance.
To analyze the connections among curriculum, educational environment, and learning.
To design curriculum materials.
To apply designs for curriculum development to actual writing of curriculum.
To lead others through the processes of curriculum development.
To increase the effectiveness of school curriculum for meeting individual pupil needs.

Dimension Four - Curriculum Implementation

The ability to move theoretical ideas into curriculum practice demands knowledge about educational change, leadership behavior, and human relations. These aspects of curriculum implementation receive attention in this academic dimension. The emphasis here is on the evolution of a personal leadership style best suited to the individual and to the educational environment he or she works to improve. Students learn ways to foster school reform, and to aid school personnel in finding desirable directions for change.

To intervene appropriately in a classroom, school, or school system, educators need to understand the process of planned educational change. Changes in the learning environment, unless carefully implemented and followed-up, seldom pass through the classroom door. Because of the commitment to the process of planned change, students of curriculum studies develop a perspective of continual evaluation and improvement as a way of life for institutions and human beings.

Over a period of time, a school, much like an individual, becomes characterized by certain modes of behavior which are like a personality. An organizational personality is infused with a system of values that reflects its history and the impact that various administrators, parents, teachers, and pupils have had on its development. Effective analysis by educators interested in improvement must include an understanding of past influences as well as current conditions of the school. Students are provided opportunities to diagnose such organizational variables in order to develop viable plans for implementing improvement in educational environments. Specific objectives for this dimension include:

To compare various theories of educational change.
To identify one's own leadership style.
To analyze the influence of internal and external conditions on human behavior.
To identify the advantages and disadvantages of planned change.
To develop procedures for diagnosing the constraining and facilitating forces existing in organizations.
To identify conditions in organizations that are hindering the learning process.
To implement strategies for involving teachers, parents, and pupils in curriculum decision-making.

Dimension Five - Curriculum Evaluation

Evaluation provides information that makes it possible to choose wisely from an array of possible alternative decisions. Simply stated, this academic dimension is concerned with the process of collecting and analyzing data about the effectiveness of curricula and about the accomplishments of learners. Students develop competency in the use of various evaluation techniques to provide data for curriculum decision-making. Procedures for developing formative evaluation, to guide you as you go along; and summative evaluation, to make sense of your progress at a point of termination, are stressed. Ultimately, evaluation becomes a part of a continual improvement process. The objectives included in this dimension are:

To differentiate among assessment, measurement, and evaluation.
To acquire knowledge of different methods of curriculum evaluation and their situational suitability.
To utilize summative and formative evaluation techniques for improved curriculum decision-making.
To utilize evaluation data for long and short term curriculum planning.
To gain skill in developing evaluation designs and instruments for determining curriculum effectiveness.
To use evaluation data to determine the need for curriculum change.
To identify criteria for evaluating existing data.

Dimension Six - Curriculum Specialization

Each member of the Specialization has a major concentration in curriculum studies. In addition, students define two minor academic concentrations that extend the major emphasis of their study. The minor concentration can be an in-depth inquiry into one of the academic dimensions mentioned above. In other words, it would be possible to major in curriculum studies and minor in research and implementation. Also, students sometimes define a concentration in a particular subject matter (sociology, science, Spanish, and so on) or in a curriculum problem (multicultural curriculum, adult education, special education, and so on). It would be possible, then, to major in curriculum studies and minor in multicultural curriculum and Spanish. The specific objectives in the concentration dimension depend on the minors a student selects. These six dimensions of scholarship and their associated course offerings serve as the basic structure of the academic program. Students, in concert with faculty, use this structure to plan graduate programs leading to three degrees: Masters of Education, Certificate of Advanced Graduate Study, and Doctor of Education. Candidates for the Doctor's degree complete courses in each of the academic dimensions described above. Also, optional courses and experiences available in the School of Education and throughout the University and Five College area (including Amherst College, Smith College, Hampshire College and Mt. Holyoke College) can be integrated into the degree program. The specific course of study for the Doctor's degree will be approved by a three member faculty advisory committee. The program of study will serve as a base for an individually designed comprehensive examination to determine the accomplishment of mastery of desired skills and competencies. Successful completion of the examination is followed by the writing and defense of a dissertation proposal for research into a problem of interest to the candidate. The completion and successful defense of the dissertation results in a Doctor of Education degree. Students shape the curriculum to their own concerns and to the perplexing problems educators must face. Creating an individual program is rarely easy, since candidates are involved in making important decisions about themselves and their commitment to helping others through the improvement of schools and education. The Curriculum Studies Specialization is committed to fostering independence and to providing competence that permits educators to make a difference in the lives of people.

ORGANIZATION

The organizational goal of the Curriculum Studies Specialization is to put into practice an honest and direct way of working together consistent with the educational ideals we are attempting to promulgate. Leadership is seen as a function rather than a position. Responsibility rotates according to the nature of the tasks and according to the expertise and interests of the individuals involved. Effective administration is accomplished through cooperation and sharing that is spontaneous and casual, never contrived.

Administrative decisions are minimized and academic decisions for individuals are maximized. An efficient and humane advising and counseling relationship is established between the candidates and their faculty advisor--a relationship that emphasizes professional responsibility. The Curricular Studies Specialization, then, is organized to provide an academic program that emphasizes carefully designed courses of study and scholarly research. The resulting learning environment is best described as gentle with people yet tough-minded with ideas. Careful attention is given to the professional and intellectual development of each member. Personal relationships among participants grow in a natural manner, and the sharing of ideas and resources is common among students and faculty alike. This personalized and scholarly approach, meshed with the competence and commitment of the members, is a source of strength for both students and faculty.

The Curriculum Studies Program can be reached by e-mail

ncel@educ.umass.edu

NCEL Home Page-- CDCR-- School of Education-- U-Mass