Syllabus_TE 940

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TE 940: Curriculum Deliberation and DevelopmentFall Semester (2009)Mondays, 4:10 pm – 7:00 pm275 Giltner Hall

Kyle Greenwalt328 Erickson Hall517-353-0824 (office)612-817-2818 (cell)greenwlt@msu.eduOffice Hours: by appointment

Abandon the notion of subject-matter as something fixed and ready-made in itself,outside the child’s experience; cease thinking of the child’s experience as also something hard and fast; see it as something fluent, embryonic, vital; and we realize that the child and the curriculum are simply two limits which define a single process.

John Dewey (1902), The Child and the Curriculum

Course Description and Objectives

Thank you for your interest in this course.A course dealing with “the curriculum” is necessarily problematic—the fieldof curriculum studies is itself huge, with a very long history. And this is onlyto consider the case of North America. So to even understand a term like“curriculum deliberation” requires a fair amount of historical knowledgeabout the field. This course will attempt to give you that insight.But in looking to the evolution of the field over the past 100 years, we arealso seeking to build our commitment to what Joseph Schwab called the“practical”— Curriculum study will look into the questions of what gamesex-students play; what, if anything, they do about politics andcrime in the streets; what they read, if they do; what they watchon television and what they make of what they watch, again, if anything. Such studies would be undertaken, furthermore, not

as mass study of products of the American school, taken in toto, but as studies of significantly separable schools and schoolsystems—suburban and inner city, Chicago and Los Angeles,South Bend and Michigan City.A course in curriculum should build our knowledge of curriculum theory,then, but it must also give us insight into ways that existing institutionsmight be improved. This was Schwab’s goal, and it is my hope as well.The broad goals of this course, then, are the following:1) understand the history of thinking about the curriculum in its historicalcontext;2) develop strategies for helping teachers design curriculum;3) understand some of the big ideas in curriculum studies; and4) become familiar with the thought of John Dewey.In reaching for these common course goals, my hope is that each of you willmeet your own individual professional goals as well. Please let me know if there is any other way in which I can help you do this.

Organization of the Course

Each week, you are given a set of readings. Generally speaking, the readingsare in order of relative importance, so you should prepare yourself for eachclass session with that in mind.Each week, we will begin the class with any announcements you have for your peers. I will then spend some time answering any general questions youhave about the readings, and providing you with some insight in terms of background and overview. Following this time, we will move intodiscussion. The bulk of each week’s session will be spent in both small- andlarge-group discussion of the week’s texts.

Course Texts

Required Texts. You are encouraged to buy used copies of these texts fromany on-line source, though I ask you try to get the edition specified below toease classroom discussion.

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

(read by October 5)

Flinders, D.J. & Thornton, S.J. (Eds.). (1997). The curriculum studiesreader. New York, NY: Routledge. NOTE: You may get any edition of this book.Optional Texts.Dewey, J. (2001). The school and society & The child and the curriculum.Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc. (Original work published in1902)

We are only reading 20 pages from this book, and I will have a electronic file available of what we are reading. I encourage you to buy it nonetheless.

Jackson, P.W. (Ed.). (1992). Handbook of research on curriculum. NewYork: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.

Like other handbooks, it’s too big and expensive to buy, but you should know about it. Many classic pieces included here, by many important scholars in the field.

Kliebard, H.M. (1995). The struggle for the American curriculum, 1893-1958 (second ed.). New York: Routledge. (Original work published in1986)

The classic historical work on curricular battles in the U.S. If you don’t have it, I recommend you buy and read it in its entirety.

Pinar, W.F., Reynolds, W.M., Slatter, P., & Taubman, P.M. (2000).Understanding curriculum. New York: Peter Lang.

A historical and conceptual overview of the field—especially since the timeof “Reconceptualization.” A giant book, it is especially helpful in itsdescription of the various works that go to make up the curriculum field since the 1980s.

Nodding, N. (1992). The challenge to care in schools: An alternativeapproach to education (pp. 28-62). New York: Teachers CollegePress.

Provocative and important.

Eisner, E. (1979). The educational imagination: On the design andevaluation of school programs. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co.,Inc.

Quite old, but the ideas seem as fresh to me as if they were written yesterday.

Summary of Assignments

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