Professional Development Workshop:
Curriculum Leadership
Catalog Description: Practitioner-based curriculum leadership perspectives,
knowledge base, and methods for operationalizing curriculum specifically for teacher
effectiveness in improving student achievement scores.
Course Purpose: The purpose of this professional development workshop is to
examine and apply theoretical frameworks of leadership and curriculum relative to their
practical applications for the improvement of student academic achievement. The
course is intended to provide participants with an opportunity to analyze and value the
complexities of curriculum within the context of the demands of school reform mandates,
especially improving student achievement. Curriculum leadership as demonstrating
teacher effectiveness will be a central focus. Participants will be asked to apply the
concepts, principles, theories, and ideas of curriculum to developing real-world
instructional practices.
Major Topics to be Covered:
Purposes of schooling.
The role of leadership in curriculum.
The role of Professional development in curriculum.
Critical curriculum and student achievement issues in urban settings.
Distinctions among supervision, curriculum, instruction, teaching, and schooling
Historical perspectives of schooling and curriculum contrasted with reform.
Leadership styles
Economic, social, and political analysis curriculum effectiveness
Critical reflectivity, motivation, and interest
Relations among educative, uneducative, and miseducative curriculum.
Summative & formative assessment in curriculum
Planning, execution, and evaluation of teacher effectiveness.
Texts & Readings:
School Leadership that Works.( 2005 ) Marzano, Waters, & Mcnulty.
Leading in a Culture of Change. (2007) Michael Fullan.
Closed reserve course readings given online.
Grading and Assessment: Final grades are S/U.
20% Attendance and full participation.
30% Personal Curriculum Critique
50% Final project: Detailed Personal Curriculum Proposal.
Instructional Objectives:
The student will:
• Apply the distinctions between training and education to curriculum and professional
development.
• Analyze the intended outcomes of curriculum/teaching in light of the actual.
• Evaluate specific leadership styles as they play out across the activities of teaching
effectiveness.
• Identify the curriculum elements associated with both the process of deskilling and
empowerment.
• Compare and contrast leadership styles views across the range of curriculum
activities.
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Recognize and be able to use principles of critical reflectivity in the development and
outcome of effective student achievement practices.
Understand and recognize the forces and factors affecting the marginalization of the
learners in the process of achievement and curriculum
Apply the matrix of race, class, gender, ethnicity, disability, and life-style preference
to curriculum approaches.
Apply elemental principles of reflectivity and empowerment in critique of student
achievement.
Use fundamental principles of deconstruction to personally engage teaching
analysis.
Understand and value the instrumental nature of professional knowledge.
Apply distinctions between evaluation and assessment (formative-summative) in
collecting, using, and interpreting data.
Understand and apply notions of performative, dispositional, and conditional uses of
content-area knowledge.
Recognize and use distinctions among associative, interpretive, applicative, and
replicative forms of knowledge.
Apply basic tenets of power relations to effective teaching and curriculum.
Utilize the principles of continuity and interaction in the development of the
professional intellectual character of educators.
Understand and apply notions of content and construct validity in the role of
assessment.
Examine and analyze differences in construct validity associated with traditional and
empowering teaching practices.
Understand and use principles of judgment in assessment.
Use principles of motive state, motivation, incoherence, focal situations, and interest
to develop instructional activities in curriculum practice.
Reference List
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Aronowitz, S., and Giroux, H. (1993).
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Aronowitz, S., and Giroux, H. (1991).
Postmodern education: Politics, culture, and social criticism.
Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Beyer, L. E., and Apple, M. W. (eds.).
(1988). The curriculum: Problems, politics, and possibilities. Albany,
NY: State University of New York Press.
Britzman, D. P. (1991). Practice makes practice: A critical study of
learning to teach. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Cherryholmes, C. H. (1988). Power and
criticism: Poststructural investigations in education. Advances in
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Cohn, M. M., and Kottkamp, R. B. (1993).
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