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“Curriculum Theory: Conflicting Visions and Enduring Concerns” by Michael Schiro (2013) introduced me to the four main curriculum ideologies or theories. It allowed me to compare and contrast the different elements and carefully and analytically examine my current philosophy. I’ll be discussing all four ideologies: scholar-academic, social efficiency, learner-centered, and social reconstruction and how they have influenced my teaching today.
Scholar Academic ideology is defined as the process of preparing kids for society, to be productive citizens through academic disciplines. (Schiro, 2013) Academic Scholars believe that all students should have an equal opportunity to a quality education. It’s intended to spark interest and encourage excitement in an academic discipline or area of study. Scholar Academic ideologists believe that academic knowledge is gained by learning new content through a Hierarchical Community. A Hierarchical Community is a group of people whose main objective is gaining meaning in a specific subject area. The scholars are at the top, the teacher disseminates the new knowledge and the students are learners, all involved are considered “active members” in the learning process. Scholar Academic’s purpose is to continue the teachings of the academic discipline to the next generation. The educator’s role is to take academic information (teachings from scholars) and disseminate the information to students. This is accomplished through didactic discourse, supervised practice, and Socratic discussions, and strong content, curriculum, and pedagogical knowledge are necessary. Students are encouraged to behave like scholars or experts, in the discipline; “to have the ability to think, understand, know, reason, reflect, remember, question and ponder.” (Schiro, 2013) This belief has not gone without criticism throughout history. It has been scrutinized as being “traditional”, having an overemphasis on standardized testing (ranking), and too much focus on the child’s mind rather than the child.
Scholar Academic ideology has a strong presence in my current teaching position beginning with obtaining my Wyoming teaching certificate, especially with my Middle School endorsement expectation of “Highly Qualified Teacher”. Next, through my instruction which is often taught through the gradual release of responsibility; direct instruction (TO), supervised practice (WITH), and checks for understanding (BY). Scholar Academic ideology is also present in our State Assessments which are intended to demonstrate understanding in an academic discipline, primarily the “Back to Basics” subjects of reading, writing, math, and science.
Social Efficiency Ideology is defined by providing students with the necessary skills to become productive members of society. The focus is the learning over obtaining the knowledge or content. To prepare students to become adults requires behavior objectives or changing behaviors. Behavioral objectives require defining an educational purpose or goal, determining how the student achieves the goal, and the sequence, and then ascertaining if the goal was attained or achieved. These objectives must be observable, measurable, and broken down into their smallest parts (Atomism). Behavioral engineering (creators of curriculum) shapes learners through the use of stimulus, reinforcement, and response systems along with extensive practice, feedback, and assessment. Social Efficiency focuses more on learning and preparing the child for the future, a “functional education”. The teacher’s role is to deliver information based on curriculum developers and prepare the learning environment with enthusiasm. It’s not a collaborative approach and doesn’t allow for flexibility and making “in-the-moment” adjustments. It has also been criticized for having little teacher input and less consideration of student’s learning styles, disabilities, or backgrounds. Social Efficiency has resurfaced at times in history when there’s been a need to hold teachers, schools, and districts accountable for student performance and teacher instruction. An extension of teacher accountability is the importance of an evaluation system. An evaluation system is used to determine the effectiveness of curriculum, students, and teachers, not to rank.
By definition, Social Efficiency ideology is often used in a school’s mission and vision statements “productive members of society”. I also hear Social Efficiency when referring to our national standards of “College and Career Readiness” skills. This includes vocational education and college-bound students. I used components of Social Efficiency during my extensive training from Robert Marzano’s Highly Effective Schools and Dufour’s Professional Learning Communities. Both encourage holding teachers accountable for their instructional practices, assessments, and analysis of student data.
Learner-Centered Ideology has been coined the “school of tomorrow”. Its focus is centered around the student promotes cheerfulness, and individual acquisition of knowledge (concrete to abstract), and treats children as children rather than mini-adults. According to Schiro, Learner-Centered ideology is experience-based through hands-on learning, multidimensional units rather than academic subjects, and teachers as facilitators. It’s a joint partnership between curriculum developers, teachers, and students. The teacher’s role is to guide student growth through teaching rules and procedures, providing curriculum and materials, and organizing the learning environment using dramatic play, building, drama, and music and movement. This is accomplished through Organic or integrated schools. An Organic school has developmentally appropriate curricula, a belief that learning evolves through “stages”, and students are actively engaged based on their needs and interests. Both Organic and Integrated schools believe that knowledge happens organically or naturally through experiences. The learner, in a Learner-Centered philosophy, is in an active learning environment that allows exploration and makes meaning, with the guidance of a teacher. The teacher’s role is to observe, collect information and gather evidence, record and analyze data, and then make necessary curriculum decisions. The teacher is an observer, diagnostician, and interventionist while fostering a relationship of openness, trust, and mutual respect. Evaluation is formative to allow for student growth and grades are elaborative narrative reports rather than letter grades. Grading can include portfolios, teacher notes, checklists, learning logs, self and peer reflections, and anecdotal notes. The Learner-Centered ideology has received pushback throughout history with the “Back to Basics” movement and the No Child Left Behind Act.
As I read this ideology I found myself thinking of colleagues who fit this philosophy, my first mentor in education, an amazing Kindergarten veteran. While teaching Kindergarten I was a proponent of focusing on learning and felt that knowledge came organically. The students had choices and “buy-in” which allowed them to move freely around the room. I was able to accommodate all learning styles by nurturing their love for learning. However, it has its drawbacks; requiring more preparation time to create the learning environments, often noisier and less structured. I found I was a stronger Learner-Centered teacher when I taught Kindergarten, a little less when teaching second grade, and even less when teaching 4th grade. However, reflecting on this ideology made me reconsider the need for 4th graders who are still kids and not mini-adults.
Social Reconstruction Ideology is a philosophy that society is unhealthy or imperfect and asserts that education is the place to solve societal or social problems. According to Schiro (2013), Education can influence the future by studying and understanding social issues, discussing and sharing ideas, and creating a shared vision. This vision moves us toward an “utopian” or idealistic society offering oppressed people hope for a better future. Social Reconstructionists feel education can positively change social attitudes and behaviors through discussion and experience methods. Discussions encourage students to adjust their knowledge through sharing personal experiences and discussing accuracies or inaccuracies as a group, therefore, reconstructing their knowledge. The second teaching method used is the Experience method. The experience method may be a first-hand or personal experience or simulation. Both methods use language and communication and are relevant topics to the students. The teachers’ role is to reconstruct society by stimulating students’ thinking (making meaning), perceiving a social event, developing a vision, and confronting a social problem. Teachers must have a progressive attitude, be capable of reflecting, and be cognizant of social injustices. Social Reconstructionists value subjective rather than objective assessments. It’s a real-world assessment where the teacher evaluates the student’s performance outside of school using constant feedback. As with other ideologies, Social Reconstruction has not gone without scrutiny. It has had peaks and valleys throughout history, often peaking during social unrest like the civil rights movement, Vietnam protests, and more recently environmental pollution and energy crisis.
Social Reconstruction has less influence in my current position although is still important to an improved society, encouraging more tolerant adults. Living and teaching in Wyoming has limited exposure to exceptional students. My most recent teaching assignment had 20 students, of which, 5% were special education, 0% ELL, and 10% performing well below grade level (Tier 3) on formative and summative assessments. I often refer to diversity or social injustices during our ELA resource that has heavy Social Studies content and during my self-selected read-aloud texts.
According to Schiro (2013), an educator changes their ideology every 4 years and is influenced by changes in school, grade level assignments, and societal and occupational changes. I have found the former two reasons to be true and would add current social events. My current ratio of ideology is 35% Social Efficiency, 30% Social Academic, 20% Learner-Centered, and 15% Social Reconstruction. I, too, have found my position to change according to my teaching assignment. However, I believe there is a place for all ideologies (maybe it’s the Libra in me, needing to have balance or even distribution). In my first decade of teaching, I taught Kindergarten. It was my first teaching job out of college and I was heavily influenced by the Learner-Centered ideology. I taught in an extended day program (9:00-2:00) that allowed for some academics but was mostly loaded with activities and experiences. I was fortunate to have administrators recognize the planning that goes into a Learner-Centered environment and had 2 hours of planning daily! As I moved to my next teaching assignment, I taught in the same building but in second grade. I held on to many Learner-Centered ideologies but soon moved toward a bigger emphasis on Social Efficiency. Our district was heavily indoctrinated on Understanding By Design by Wiggins & McTighe (1998). This educational backward planning approach supported the Social Efficiency ideology by using behavioral objectives including “I can” statements, and planning appropriate activities and assessments. My instruction was determined by the student’s needs and included conferring to provide individual feedback. According to Schiro (2013), Social Efficiency aims to design an effective and efficient design of curriculum, the focus is not on what is achieved but on how well and an emphasis on the end, not the end itself. This is the philosophy of UBD. Last, my teaching assignment took me to fourth grade, in the same building. During this time, I held on loosely to Learner-Centered ideology and tightly to Social Efficiency and Social Academics. I had a change in administration (another cause Schiro explains for changing ideologies) so we added to our UBD approach. The new approach that was also supported and funded by the Wyoming Department of Education, was Robert Marzano’s High Reliability Schools. This educational approach has an emphasis on instruction through the use of selecting priority standards, unpacking standards, writing learning progressions, and assessments. It also includes analyzing common formative assessments and making intervention decisions. Our district and state also support the thinking of Professional Learning Communities by Richard and Rebecca Defour, which also supports the power of instruction and assessing through collaboration. These two movements have placed me on our Guiding Coalition team and have trained others on collecting and analyzing data. I also have a recent spike in Social Academic ideology with our state assessment (WY-TOPP) that ranks us by district, school, and teacher. As I’ve reflected on the four ideologies, I’ve also realized that each subject area lends itself to a different ideology. My current math instruction is Social Academic and Social Efficiency because of the behavioral objectives and “I can” statements while ELA is Social Efficiency and Social Reconstruction based on content and skills. I’ve also been allowed to participate in our district evaluation system adoption. It also follows the characteristics of Social Efficiency and Scholar Academics through demonstrating growth in content knowledge, and instruction, helping students deepen knowledge, and assessing, the educator’s professional responsibilities. All the grade levels I’ve taught have a sprinkle of Social Reconstruction throughout all academic areas.
As I think about the different elements of the ideologies, I often think about colleagues who possess the traits of characteristics. It made me think of identifying the different personality traits on a team and how discussing different ideology philosophies may be equally important to understanding each other. I also found it interesting that a historical and current social crisis uplifts an ideology, as with the recent Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter movements. At the risk of sounding cliche or not wanting to take a stance, I feel there is room for all ideologies, each bringing a different lens to education. The element that stands out to me the most is accountability; holding districts and teachers accountable for students learning. This is only possible through collaboration, professional learning, reflection, and feedback through the teacher evaluation process.
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