Journal #1 Assignment
Prof. Reinford
EDG_7692C_Presentation_Overview.pptxPolitics of Curriculum
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What is Politics?
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Enduring definition (Laswell, 1958): “who gets what” Implications Education policy?
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What is Curriculum?
Taba (1962):
“A curriculum is a plan for learning”
Oliver Pinar (1977):
“(1) program of studies, (2) the program of experiences, (3) the program of services, and (4) hidden curriculum”
Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery, and Taubman (1996),
“curriculum understood as symbolic representation refers to those institutional and discursive practices, structures, images, and experiences that can be identified and analyzed in various ways, i.e., politically, racially, autobiographically, phenomenologically, theologically, internationally, and in terms of gender and deconstruction”
Is “an official statement of what students are expected to know and be able to do” (Levin, 2001, p. 8)
In The Sage of Handbook of Curriculum and Instruction, Connelly and Fang He & Phillion (2008)
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Who decides the curriculum?
Stakeholders?
What are the levels of curriculum decision making?
According to Scriber, Aleman, & Maxcy (2003)
There are two types of politics in Schools:
Micropolitics = power relationships between teachers, administrators, students within a school.
Macropolitics= power relationship and decision making at the district, national, and federal level.
Ideology
Hegemony
Power relations
What are the elements of politics and curriculum theory?
Origins of the Curriculum as a Political text: Conceptual Framework
Reproduction theory = “Principal of Correspondence”
Bowles and Gintis , “schools prepare students to enter the current economic system” (p. 164)
Apple and Giroux Schools “reproduce the class structure of the workforce” (p. 165)
Ideology = Apple & Giroux , ideological views (ideas , values) of dominant class reflect the content of school curriculum.
Politics of Curriculum: Origins, Controversies, and Significance of Critical Perspective
Frankfurt School (Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Jurgen Habermas, etc).
Emphasize culture
Hidden Curriculum (unintended outcome)
To uncover the ideologies and interests embedded in the classrooms routines.
Michael Apple (1970) – Concept of Hegemony,
Curriculum= social stratification
Antonio Gramsci (1971/1972) – Role of the Superstructure as the hegemonic power
Ruling class exercise political control
Force and ideology in reproducing class relations
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Came out as the despair from Reproduction theory
Call for an analysis of social practices that continue the class-based experiences
Giroux (1981) Empowerment & Change
Paulo Freire – Theory of Radical Theory
Resistance Theory
Language of Possibility
Giroux - Educators – Transformative Intellectuals
Apple (1980) –- Pedagogy & Politics
Race, class, and gender.
Concept Praxis – critical/reflective practices
Pedagogical Implications
Conceptual Isolationism
The import of the scholarship for the school community
The salient concept of race
Self-referential scholarship of Critical pedagogy
Relative silence on ecological crisis
Concerns
Dewey, J. (1980). Democracy in Education. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
Laundra, K. & Sutton, T. (2008). You Think You Know Ghetto? Contemporizing the Dove “Black IQ Test.” Teaching Sociology.
Oliva, P. (2009). Developing the Curriculum. (7th ed). Boston, MA: Pearson Education
Macleaod, J. (1995). Aint no making it: Aspirations and attainment in a low-income neighborhood. Boulder, CO: Westward Press.
References
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