Problem-based curriculum development for leaders.

Abstract

This article describes one way to solve the seeming dichotomy between teaching theory and teaching skills in an educational leadership curriculum development course. The course aims to develop understandings of how k-12 leaders can help to create curricula at the school level by developing understandings of the constructs in all curricula. That is, K-12 curriculum development may take into consideration state standards and tests, and their alignment with school and classroom curriculum; but in this class we go beyond this to understanding the underlying assumptions about knowledge, learning and teaching in every curriculum. Using assignments that utilize theory and practice--such as creating curriculum development processes, generalizing beyond the K-12 curriculum, and analyzing a curriculum--accomplishes this.

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The relationship between teaching skills and teaching theory in preparing K-12 administrators and education leaders is an old and troublesome puzzle and this is particularly true in the field of curriculum. Some university faculty, many administrative practitioners, and those aspiring to be administrators, often argue, either explicitly or by their actions, that how-to knowledge is the most important. After all, the argument goes, a master's of educational administration is a professional, not an academic, degree. Many scholars, however, argue that administrators need an understanding of the theoretical constructs underlying the field of education and leadership. When this argument is applied to curriculum, it is argued that theory enables administrators to analyze and evaluate curriculum for its various effects, and not simply to understand how a particular curriculum prepares K-12 students for standardized tests. The various effects might include encouraging the knowledge, skills and dispositions that cannot be assessed by standardized tests, such as participating in a democratic society, developing social skills, learning how to learn and others.

Curriculum development has long been the province of teachers and teacher educators because of their need to develop classroom curriculum. Increasingly, however, it has become important for principals, central office administrators, and state department of education leaders to be instructional leaders, and to be able to develop curriculum at the district and school level. These leaders need to be able to align various teaching tools such as unit and lesson plans; textbook materials; district, school and classroom assessments, and pedagogy, with the content and skills of the various disciplines and subject matters as represented in state standards and tests. Beyond this, their judgments about pedagogy and pedagogical tools would be well served by understanding more than the process of alignment. Their judgments would be enhanced by understanding the constituent parts of the curriculum, and how curriculum is made, so that they can customize the curriculum to their local environment, fully aware of what is lost and what is gained when they do this. Their judgment may also be enhanced by developing a larger definition of curriculum to include how it plays out or is enacted between teachers and students.

In short, holding a leadership position requires more than aligning curriculum materials with the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act (2002). It requires the craft knowledge of curriculum development, the ability to reflect on the underlying constructs of curriculum, and the ability to understand the implementation or enactment of curriculum--how it plays out between teachers and students. This allows leaders to work with teachers and others in developing and enacting a thoughtful curriculum.

Developing this kind of knowledge in addition to all that is required of leaders and manager is a tall order. One way professors of educational administration and leadership can contribute to the learning of would-be administrators, is to teach curriculum theory and practice in the same curriculum development class, indeed, within the same assignments. In a curriculum development class I teach every Thursday evening during the school year, I reconcile theory and practice, not in a separate, seriated fashion, but rather simultaneously. My ideas have their roots in problem based learning (Bridges & Hallinger, 1995; Evensen & Hmelo, 2000; Schartz, Meninin & Webb, 2001), and authentic or performance based assessment (Luongo-Orlando, 2003). This might be thought of as the third way as discussed in Freeland's (2004) Atlantic article in which he describes the trend toward practice-oriented education. Freeland argues that there is a better way to educate young people than to separate liberal arts from professional schools. Yet, it is far easier to espouse this practice-oriented trend that integrates the two than to design it. Practicing it in a graduate class of aspiring administrators is more difficult still. My students hope to develop skills of running a school or district, and for some there is little tolerance for theory.

Yet, my students are quite responsive to curriculum theory when they understand its applicability. My hopes are that the class assignments enable students to develop content and process knowledge. Content knowledge may include understanding that the word curriculum may mean more than an official curriculum that they might find in a district office. Process knowledge may include how to create curricula at the school level by drawing on the constructs of teaching, learning and knowledge.

I conceive of the class as taught in themes that stretch across the semester, rather than as objectives that can be covered one by one, and assignments that encompass one or more of these themes. I pose the themes as questions, here. One, what is curriculum-is it a product or a process or both; and, if it is both, which products and processes does it represent? Another question concerns how one develops a curriculum. If curriculum is a process, what are its elements? What essential elements must be included, or what questions answered, to construct and enact a curriculum? Third, what are the underlying constructs of any curriculum, not just those in K-12 public schools but across fields such as higher education, business or some other sector? Fourth, how has the history of the American curriculum affected what it is today? That is, how have the purposes and emphases of curriculum changed across time, in ways that influence our multiple purposes of curriculum today? Fifth, is curriculum development best left to the teacher in the classroom, or is it better that multiple layers of the governance structure have a hand in developing it?

Early in the semester, I ask students to tell one another all the words they associate with word curriculum, and then ask them to define it. They usually create quite different definitions, including those that theorists have defined such as the hidden curriculum, the classroom curriculum, and the official curriculum, though they may not use these words. Quite often students mention as the class is nearing completion that they are still puzzling about exactly what curriculum is, and those same students attempt to define curriculum as a class assignment, using what they've learned in the class and elsewhere. I move on to a definition of curriculum development, and how it might be developed. For both of these exercises requiring a definition, I often have them create conceptual maps.

In many classes, though not all, students focus on K-12 state standards and tests, and these will be a large part of their definitions and maps. Students come to class, especially in this No Child Left Behind era, quite knowledgeable about state standards, tests and accountability systems. To address these issues, there are multiple readings in the course pack that concern the strengths and weaknesses of state standards and tests, and their effect on pedagogy, schools, and school and district leadership. But in the early part of the class, I hope to help them focus on considerations other than policy instruments that can be taken into account in developing curriculum. I point out that those who created the standards and tests had to create at least some rudimentary aspects of curriculum, and question aloud how the creators of such standards developed these aspects.

Early on, I also introduce Tyler's (1949) traditional curriculum development steps, which I present as a cycle, with one step leading to the next and the last step leading back to the first. Tyler's classic steps were posed as the following four questions: (a) What educational purposes should the school seek to attain? (b) What educational experiences can be provided that are likely to attain these purposes? (c) How can these experiences be effectively organized? And (d) How can we determine whether these purposes are being attained? I then ask students to include other steps that either Tyler chose to ignore, or that were not a part of the educational landscape in 1949. If the students did not mention such elements as state and district standards, state and district tests, texts, professional development, and other elements of curriculum when defining curriculum and curriculum development, they do so now. Students begin to define the underlying elements of the curriculum, which may be prompted by Tyler's questions. For example, the students tend to refine Tyler's process as federal, state, district and school policies are mentioned.

The students also often point out how Tyler's cycle, or the more refined cycle that we create as a class, does not match their experiences developing curriculum in their classrooms, schools and districts. They'll point out that often parts of the cycle aren't addressed, that curriculum development is sometimes driven by fads, and other observations. They sometimes express anger, surprise or disappointment that their schools or districts or both have done nothing like the processes we discuss. Others express that their schools or districts have attempted something like Tyler's method, but that it has been utilized; or that once they've conducted a Tyler-like process, they aren't sure what to do with it. I encourage them to think about what they might do in positions of leadership, not just at some future point, but now, as teacher leaders.

Last semester, one student volunteered that the process he uses doesn't look like Tyler's process because his classroom curriculum was often written "on the fly" as he was teaching, and was highly dependent on the students' interests and questions, and his knowledge base. This opened the opportunity to point out the rational assumptions underlying Tyler's cycle, and how many would argue that curriculum isn't developed in a rational manner, but rather responds to multiple needs and purposes. Also, I was able to point out that planning and enactment of curriculum is often dependent on teachers' knowledge and skill, a point I brought back to students over the course of the semester.

One activity that enables the students to generalize about curriculum beyond the K-12 environment is developing a curriculum that is common to us all--a Master of Arts curriculum in educational leadership. My classes are made up of elementary and secondary teachers, in multiple subject matters, as well as of others students who don't work in the K-12 system. So, to develop curriculum that isn't necessarily about a specific K-12 subject matter, we work on developing a curriculum that may position them to become administrators. I build on the ideas we've already been working with. I encourage them to think about the who, what, when, where, why and how of this curriculum. That is, what do they need to know and be able to do before becoming school principals? Who decides on the curriculum for their masters' programs, where might some curricula work and others not, why is one curriculum chosen over another, and how curriculum is planned and enacted?

Last semester, I invited my department chair to class to discuss the history of our master's curriculum, and how we developed it. I did this because I know that faculty members conducted several focus groups of superintendents, principals, teachers, business leaders, graduates of the program and others in writing our present curriculum. I also ask them to decide what they need to learn not just by asking me, or my department chair, but also by asking others in their schools and communities. Others they've asked include their principals, neighbors, colleagues, and spouses. I ask where else they might look to for guidance in deciding this.

At different points in the semester, I bring in different elements to consider when creating this Master of Arts curriculum--some that our own faculty may struggle with. One week we talk about higher education's accountability system, and how it is both alike and different from the K-12 system. I bring in the National Policy Board for Educational Administration standards that we use for accreditation with the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) and how we use these to shape our program. This enables students to generalize about how curriculum is made, as well has how it is alike and different from the K-12 curriculum constraints and processes. A bonus in this particular activity is that students seem keenly interested in the standards that they are to be taught, as well as what is required of colleges and universities.

Another bonus of this exercise is that students can think about the political, epistemological, developmental, cognitive, and pedagogical aspects of the curriculum that make up the who, what, when, where, why and how of curriculum development. I begin to use these theoretical constructs and students do not shy away from them, perhaps because they are participating in its development. This enables me to move toward a more theoretical approach to curriculum and curriculum development.

I use history and in particular, George Posner's (2004) book Analyzing the curriculum to explore theory more explicitly. Posner argues that the American curriculum has been influenced by five large curriculum movements over time that he refers to as traditional, progressive, structure of the disciplines, behaviorist, and constructivist. By reviewing the different macro level curricula over time, it is my hope that students see that curriculum has been influenced by the changing beliefs of what America needs from its public schools. It also allows students to see who has influenced the definition of that need and the political aspects of the curriculum. We discuss how important beliefs about learning and teaching are to a curriculum. One underlying aspect that we generally discuss is what K-12 students need in instruction. We often discuss whether teachers ought to teach from conceptual problems to skills, or from discrete skills to problem solving, or both. This is often the most contentious part of our discussions, as students wrestle with questions of equity when arguing that some students need discrete skills while others can participate in problem solving skills of a more ambiguous nature. This review of the history also shows that we as a country, and as a profession, continue to embrace multiple needs and understandings in our curriculum today.

My students analyze a curriculum of their choosing, as Posner encourages. These analyses enable me to highlight that at different times in the history of our curriculum, we have favored various philosophies and ideologies underlying curriculum. In these various philosophies and ideologies, various elements of the curriculum are favored: the child, disciplinary knowledge, the teacher or others. After they have done some analyses, they work together on their analyses in groups with those working on the same type of curriculum. For instance, those that are conducting analyses of science curricula work together to compare and contrast the various elements.

Throughout the semester, we discuss top-down and bottom-up curriculum development, and whether teachers should follow curricula others have created or develop their own Meier, 2000). In the final weeks, we read Fullan's article concerning top-down and bottom-up curriculum development titled Coordinating top-down and bottom-up strategies for education reform (1994), to get an understanding of the need for both top-down and bottom-up input into curricula.

In these assignments, defining curriculum and curriculum development, designing a master's degree curriculum, analyzing a curriculum for various curriculum concerns such learning and teaching, and historical trends, I enable students to work with the theory and practice of curriculum development. My hope is that students will come to understand both the practice of curriculum development, such as identifying purposes, texts, assessments, and lessons that align with those purpose; and the nature of knowledge, learning and teaching that go into making up a curriculum. In this way, students learn to bridge the gap between theory and practice.

References

Bridges, E. M., & Hallinger, P. (1995). Problem based learning for leadership development. Eugene, Oregon: ERIC Clearinghouse on Educational Management.

Evensen, D. H., & Hmelo, C. E. (2000). Problem-based learning: A research perspective on learning interactions. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Fullan, M. (1994). Coordinating top-down and bottom-up strategies for education reform. In R. F. Elmore & S. H. Fuhrman (Eds.), The governance of curriculum: 1994 yearbook of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) (pp. 186-202). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Freeland, R. M. (2004). The third way. The Atlantic, 294, 141-147.

Luongo-Orlando, K. (2003). Authentic assessments: Designing performance-based tasks. Markham, Ontario: Penbroke Publishers Ltd.

Meier, D. (2000). Will Standards Save Public Education? No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, Pub. L. No. 107-110, [section] 1111-1112, 115 Stat. 1425 (2002).

Posner, G. J. (2004). Analyzing the curriculum (third ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc.

Schwartz, P., Meninin, S., & Webb, G. (2001). Problem-based learning: Case studies, experience and practice. London: Kogan Page Limited.

Tyler, R. W. (1949). Basic principles of curriculum and instruction. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Sue Poppink, Western Michigan University 

Sue Poppink, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of educational leadership in the Department of Teaching, Learning and Leadership.