Purposes of Education
This progressive educational theorist believes the purposes of education include preparing students for citizenship, creating educative experiences, and creating the “power of self-control.”
Who is John Dewey?
John Dewey, Experience & Education, 2015, p. 64.
This term describes unstated norms in school as well as structural, societal influences on education. Four Arrows writes that this term also describes “educational hegemony” that “can socialize a population so that it will come to believe that the interests of those in power support the public good even when they in fact do the opposite.”
What is the hidden curriculum?
Four Arrows, Teaching Truly: A Curriculum to Indigenize Mainstream Education, 2013, p. 8.
Seeking to create a “partnership” between mainstream curriculum and Indigenous perspectives, this curricular theorist believes teachers should help students overcome fears and find ways to “weave courage, generosity, patience, fortitude, honesty, and humility into all coursework as a priority focus.”
Who is Four Arrows?
Four Arrows, Teaching Truly: A Curriculum to Indigenize Mainstream Education, 2013, p. 246.
Referring to previous educational reforms—such as the No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and Teach for America reforms—as “hoaxes”, this educational scholar calls for a number of changes to public education, including higher pay for teachers, less standardized testing, and an end to the privatization of public schools.
Who is Diane Ravitch?
Diane Ravitch, “Hoaxes in Educational Policy,” 2014.
This influential scholar developed the following four questions as a practical guide for “developing any curriculum and plan of instruction”:
1) What educational purposes should the school seek to attain?
2) What educational experiences can be provided that are likely to attain these purposes?
3) How can these educational experiences be effectively organized?
4) How can we determine whether these purposes are being attained?
Who is Ralph Tyler?
Ralph W. Tyler, Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction, 2013, p. 1.
This author acknowledges that all institutions have multiple goals and purposes, but if schools have one main purpose, it should be “to promote the growth of students as healthy, competent, moral people.”
Who is Nel Noddings?
Nel Noddings, The challenge to care in schools: An Alternative Approach to Education, 2005, p. 10.
This term describes topics that are intentionally left out of curriculum, often for political or social reasons to maintain dominate cultural narratives. Ladson-Billings might refer to this term as the “distortions, omissions, and stereotypes of school curriculum content.”
What is the null curriculum?
Gloria Ladson-Billings, “Just what is critical race theory and what's it doing in a nice field like education?” 1998, p. 18.
According to this scholar, one important role of the teacher is to ask the right questions at the right time, and to provide settings for students to “raise the right question for themselves.” When this is done, students will “tax themselves to the fullest to find an answer.”
Who is Eleanor Duckworth?
Eleanor Duckworth, “The Having of Wonderful Ideas” and Other Essays on Teaching and Learning, 2006, p. 9.
Advocating for significant change to the structure and goals of education, this theorist claims that “curriculum revision cannot be an adequate response to the social problems that face schools.” “Tinkering with the standard curriculum,” this theorist argues, “is futile, but drastic change may contribute to a new environment in schools.”
Who is Nel Noddings?
Nel Noddings, The challenge to care in schools: An Alternative Approach to Education, 2005, p. 3.
This theorist advocates for teaching multiple literacies and allowing students space to represent their learning in different ways. One example of this in the classroom might be “the use of curricular group tasks that call for different kinds of intellectual skills.”
Who is Elliot Eisner?
Elliot W. Eisner, Cognition and Curriculum Reconsidered, 1994, p. 80.
This curricularist does not argue for a particular purpose of education, instead claiming that multiple sources should “provide a basis for wise and comprehensive decisions about the objectives of the school.” These sources might include learners themselves, contemporary life outside of school, subject specialists, philosophy, and psychology.
Who is Ralph Tyler?
Ralph Tyler, Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction, 2013, p. 5.
This term describes a secondary curriculum that can be unrelated to the primary curriculum, but is often taught in a tangential way. This term is similar to what Dewey calls “collateral learning” that can form lasting attitudes and be even more important than the primary, intended curriculum.
What is complementary curriculum?
John Dewey, Experience & Education, 2015, p. 48.
This educational theorist claims that instruction is an important task for teachers, but “instruction is not their main task.” For this theorist, the role of the teacher should instead center on “establishing caring relations” with students.
Who is Nel Noddings?
Nel Noddings, The challenge to care in schools: An Alternative Approach to Education, 2005, p. xv and p. 10.
This educational scholar points out that education reforms tend to search for “some innovation that works in the existing school structure,” rather than change the structure of schools themselves. Instead, this theorist claims, school reform should be approached “systemically” with holistic attention to the curriculum, to the structure of schools, to teaching, and to forms of assessment.
Who is Elliot Eisner?
Elliot W. Eisner, Cognition and Curriculum Reconsidered, 1994, p. 9 and p. 11.
This educational scholar encourages “the virtue of not knowing” and “productive wrong ideas” by suggesting activities that help students feel clever for thinking unconventionally. One example is a spelling lesson in which students think of all the different ways they could spell a word.
Who is Eleanor Duckworth?
Eleanor Duckworth, “The Having of Wonderful Ideas” and Other Essays on Teaching and Learning, 2006, p. 29 and p. 67.
Seeking to expand upon the narrow aims of traditional schooling, this theorist argues that “one of the major aims of education is the development of multiple forms of literacy.”
Who is Elliot Eisner?
Elliot W. Eisner, Cognition and Curriculum Reconsidered, 1994, p. x.
This term describes the concept that the identity of each individual teacher is essential to curriculum and instruction. It may be summarized best by Krishnamurti’s claim that “the nature of the teacher rather than the actions of the teacher are key to facilitating the needed learning. Teachers teach what they are more than what they say or do.”
What is deep curriculum?
Scott H. Forbes, “Krishnamurti’s Approach to Education,” p. 108.
According to this preeminent educational scholar, the teacher should organize learning experiences that build on each other toward a larger educative purpose. This scholar claims that it is “the business of the educator to see in what direction an experience is heading,” and to “help organize the condition of the experience” of students.
Who is John Dewey?
John Dewey, Experience & Education, 2015, p. 38.
These two advocates of the Common Core standards believe schools should shift toward a more “coherent curriculum” where students build content knowledge across subjects and grade levels. They see this as essential for students to “comprehend spoken and written language.”
Who are E. D. Hirsch Jr. and Lisa Hansel?
E. D. Hirsch Jr. and Lisa Hansel, “Why Content is King,” 2013, p. 30.
This scholar offers several practical ideas for how to “indigenize mainstream education” in traditional academic subjects such as English, history, math, and science, as well as advice for non-Native teachers who wish to “teach about Indigenous cultural understandings.”
Who is Four Arrows?
Four Arrows, Teaching Truly: A Curriculum to Indigenize Mainstream Education, 2013, pp. 76-77.
According to this scholar of the holistic tradition, the concept of Ultimacy—a state of “fullest possible human development”—encompasses all other aims of education.
Who is Jiddu Krishnamurti?
Scott H. Forbes, “Krishnamurti’s Approach to Education,” p. 99.
This term describes the evaluation of learning experiences to determine whether the implemented curriculum had the intended outcomes. This term could also describe the “Tyler Rationale’s” final step: an evaluation to identify “the strengths and weaknesses of the plans.”
What is the assessed curriculum?
Ralph Tyler, Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction, 2013, p. 105.
This educational program aims to create an education system where all children receive the same quality of education, in part by implementing “a required curriculum for all, with the elimination of all particularized job-training and of all electives.” This educational program views the teacher as an “instrumental aid, assisting the [learning] process by occasioning and guiding the mental activity of the learners in their charge.”
What is the Paideia Program?
Mortimer J. Adler, The Paideia Program: An Educational Syllabus, 1984, pp. 4-5.
Decrying the influences of the “disimangination machine,” which undermines “the ability of individuals to think critically,” this scholar of the radical tradition argues for schools to “invent modes of pedagogy that release the imagination, connect learning to social change, and create social relations which people assume responsibility for each other.”
Who is Henry A. Giroux?
Henry A. Giroux, “The Disimagination Machine and the Pathologies of Power,” 2013, p. 263 and p. 264.
This theory of education focuses on critiquing the power structures and inequities of contemporary schooling, which can make it difficult to find practical examples of this theory of education in schools. Cruz provides one example of how this theory might look in schools, however, by examining “a video poem curriculum for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) students of color” that values students’ personal narratives over dominate cultural narratives.
What is the radical (or social justice) theory of education?
Cindy Cruz, “LGBTQ Youth of Color Video Making as Radical Curriculum: A Brother Mourning His Brother and a Theory in the Flesh,” 2013, p. 441.