Social Forces and Their Impact on Curriculum

As Dr. Williams mentioned in this week’s screencast, we, as teachers, have inherited a system that is not adequately designed to get kids to function in the world. In today’s society, most people need more than a high school education to be successful. Even getting into college proves difficult as universities are feeling the strains of increasing enrollment. Dr. William’s commentary proves that education is a product of social forces.

Several of the readings this week hit on different aspects of social forces that impact education. These social forces, as outlined by Parkay, Anctil and Hass (2010) are: “increasing ethnic and cultural diversity, changing values and morals, the environment, family, changes in technology and the work force, gender equality, crime and violence, questions of purpose and meaning, and global interdependence.” For just one example of how technology and the media have impacted education, examine how news articles and popular media influence the opinions of parents, teachers and students regarding the implementation of Common Core state standards.  common core press feelings Just look at some of the headlines under this search and you will see my point.

Now that we have identified the forces that impact education and curriculum, what can we do practically to respond to these social forces?

Action Items

• Make an effort to include families in discussions that help teachers get to know the home culture, and families get to know the school culture. Communication with families must be a two way street, not just one-way written communication from teachers (Joshi & Konzal, 2010).
• Teach with an eye on the social forces of the future. We can teach children to adapt to changes, to be open to new ways of thinking or doing things, to question the morals/ethical choices involved with new changes (weighing costs and benefits) and to be creative so they can contribute to some of the changes ahead.
• Cultivate an awareness of social forces so that we can adjust our planning and thinking. This means getting to know our families, looking into pop culture to see what kids of today have access to, are listening to, or are learning from outside of the classroom.
• As technology increases, teach our students how to be media literate. Scheibe (2010) gives an abundance of practical ideas for how to introduce media into the elementary classroom. Below I have listed some core questions to use when evaluating media sources with my students, gleaned from Scheibe’s article:

1. Who made this message and what is their purpose?
2. Who is the target audience and how is the message tailored toward that audience?
3. How current, accurate and credible is the information in this message?
4. What is left out of this message that might be important to know?

Overall, this week I learned a lot about how to be sensitive to social forces and their impact on curriculum and classroom culture.

Joshi, A., Eberly, J., & Konzal, J. (2010). Dialogue across cultures: Communicating with diverse families. In F. W. Parkay, G. Hass, & E. J. Anctil (Eds.), Curriculum leadership: Readings for developing quality educational programs (9thth ed., pp. 63-71). Boston, MI: Pearson.

Scheibe, C. L. (2010). A deeper sense of (media) literacy. In F. W. Parkay, G. Hass, & E. J. Anctil (Eds.), Curriculum leadership: Readings for developing quality educational programs (9thth ed., pp. 63-71). Boston, MI: Pearson.

Implementing Understanding by Design

The Wiggins and McTighe text has continued to provide a huge amount of information that will change my practice as a curriculum designer.

As I mentioned in my discussion posts, I learned a lot about how to create assessments that really get at the heart of the standards, and how to set clear criteria to evaluate these assessments.

I also found the WHERETO model of planning for learning to be a good system of checks and balances to run my lesson plans through to make sure that I have designed effective learning experiences.

Yet another aspect from the text (p.253) that I felt was powerful was the difference between teaching and coaching and how important it is to be more of a coach. Often times I find myself restating a concept in different words, when I really need to be coaching kids through the practice of the strategy. I especially want to implement this in my reading block. Rather than focusing so much on the mini-lesson, I want to make sure that I spend enough time planning guided reading and strategy groups where I actually get to help students practice using the strategies I have taught them.

I can really see how the UbD as a curriculum framework is going to be hugely effective in changing my instruction. Chapter 12 gave lots of tips on creating scope and sequence and stressed the importance of properly sequencing learning activities. Chapter 13 was also very helpful because it talked about issues that are very real for educators today, such as teaching to the test, and how educators can change their thinking and practice to best meet student need.

I know that this text is going to continue to be a resource for me as I create unit plans.

 

Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (2005).  Understanding by Design (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Module 10: What’s Next for Teachers and Technology?

It is clear that change is coming for education. The Horizon report lists technologies that are up and coming for educators, separating them out into categories based off of how soon teachers can expect to be using the tools: “One Year or Less, ” “Two to Three Years,” and “Four to Five Years.” This report listed numerous resources and examples of how mobile apps, mobile devices, games, personal learning environments, and augmented reality can, will, or do impact education. As I was reading, I found myself taking copious notes of possible resources to bookmark for later use, or to peruse over the summer. One of my favorites was a link to the Edmodo site, where you can watch the short video that gives an overview of how Edmodo can be used: https://www.edmodo.com/ (however I am not quite sure if this site would be useful for second grade students). I’m eager to start looking into more ways to incorporate technology at home and at school.

It is unclear to me how education systems can and will respond to growing technology. There is not a lot of funding to support new technology so teachers will have to rely on acquiring outside grants to gain iPads or other tablet devices. There are also limited professional development opportunities for teachers to learn about technology and plan for its use in the classrooms. It is unclear to me how teachers, especially digital immigrants will be able to keep up with how quickly things are changing. Finally, it is also unclear to me just how much education is going to change in the next few years. It seems that we will not only be learning new standards as Common Core continues to roll out, and summative national assessments are developed and implemented, but also completely changing the way content is presented. It is up to teachers to juggle all of these new changes so they can meet the needs of their students and prepare them to be proficient and responsible digital citizens outside of the classroom.

 

Johnson, L., Smith, R., Krueger, K., Conery, L., and Haywood, K., (2012). The 2012 Horizon Report. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.