Pugach, Marleen C. (2006). Because teaching matters, (pp. 95-99). Hoboken, NJ: John
Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Due before class time this Wednesday January 13th (this week!).
1. If someone were to ask you “What is curriculum?”, an easy answer might be
“Curriculum is what we teach our students; it’s what they’re supposed to learn”. But
according to this Reading, it’s not as simple as that. Why?
2. Ok, now that you’ve read Pugach’s discussion and thought about some of the
complexity of curriculum, what might you say now if someone were to ask you,
“What is curriculum?” Offer some explanation as to why for now you think this
might be a workable definition. Come to class on Wednesday prepared to share
your working definition of curriculum.
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CURRICULUM: A MULTIDIMENSIONAL CONCEPT
The term curriculum seems like it should be straightforward enough to
understand. According to Eliot Eisner (1979), a respected scholar of curriculum in
education, the term originates from the Latin word currere, which means “the course to
be run” (p. 34). The idea is that there is a set course, or program, of study that students
are to complete in order to be considered well educated. As we noted earlier, the
curriculum represents what is considered worthwhile for students to learn during the
years they spend in school.
The Explicit Curriculum — What It Is and Is Not
We can think of the formal, written academic program of study that guides
teaching as the explicit curriculum (Eisner, 1979). Larry Cuban (1992), another scholar
of curriculum, uses the term official or intended curriculum to describe the formal
academic program of study. These terms convey essentially the same message: the
explicit, formal academic curriculum is a public statement of what a particular school
district or state believes is worthwhile for students to
know in each content area. As such, it sets the broad
Critical Term: explicit
parameters for what you will teach. The explicit
curriculum. The formal,
curriculum is usually a public document or series of
official, public academic
documents, and today these documents can typically
program of study that
be accessed online through school district or state
defines what students are
educational agency websites. It represents the
expected to know as a
endpoint of your teaching — what your students
result of being in school.
should know.
As a general rule, two kinds of documents usually define the formal program of
study or the explicit curriculum: academic content standards and curriculum guides.
Academic content standards are statements of what students should know and be able to
do in each of the major content areas upon completing their P-12 education. This
knowledge is usually assessed in required standardized tests administered by the state.
Building on these standards, curriculum guides give detail and resources regarding how
the various subjects might be taught.
The concept of the explicit curriculum sounds simple. You are handed standards
and curriculum guides, and you develop teaching plans from these materials. Districts
purchase instructional materials, such as textbooks, software, and laboratory equipment,
to support the course of study that has
been identified as worthwhile. As a
Critical Term: academic content
teacher, you can draw on these resources
standards. Formal, public statements of
and materials to help you plan your own
what students should know and be able to
instruction. It is essential for all teachers
do in each of the content areas at various
to know the academic standards for their
points in their P-12 education.
subject and grade level, and curriculum
guides can help interpret those standards. But none of these documents tells you what to
do each day in your classroom. They provide a destination only, a statement of what your
students should know and be able to do as a result of the instructional program you create
and implement for your students. A set of standards and curriculum guides does not
actually tell you how to teach to those goals.
So in reality the concept of Critical Term: curriculum guide. A
curriculum is much more complex than the document prepared at the state or local
sum of a set of documents, however useful district level that provides detailed
they may be. To do their work well, teachers information to help teachers plan
use their knowledge of the standards, the instruction.
subject, and pedagogy to plan instructional
units and lessons that will help them achieve the curriculum goals for that grade
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and content area in relationship to the particular group of students they are teaching.
Therefore, what is stated in the explicit curriculum is not exactly the same as what is
actually taught. In addition, just because teachers teach “the curriculum” does not
necessarily mean that students learn it. Cuban (1992) coined the phrases the taught
curriculum and the learned curriculum to describe how curriculum plays out in the
classroom in terms of what is actually taught and learned.
Finally, it is also important to consider both what is and what is not included in
the explicit curriculum. Eisner calls everything that is not contained in the formal,
explicit curriculum — everything that is left out to begin with — the null curriculum
(1979). The null curriculum, as we shall see, represents those things that are not valued as
important enough to be part of the formal program of studies. In Chapter 5 we will take
up a third dimension of curriculum, namely, the hidden curriculum, which is defined as
all the things students learn by virtue of being in school that are not part of the explicit
curriculum.
Curriculum as What Is Taught
As soon as teachers plan what to teach, they are making choices about how they
will deliver the explicit curriculum. Through their interpretations and choices, teachers
begin to change the curriculum, introducing their own preferences and beliefs (Cuban,
1992) — hence, the taught curriculum. For example, teachers may spend valuable
instructional time on one
aspect of the
curriculum instead of Critical Term: taught curriculum. The another,
or
they may convey to their curriculum that is delivered by teachers students that
one feature of the once they make decisions about how to curriculum is
more important than teach the explicit curriculum.
another.
A
teacher may teach one
part of the
curriculum in an engaging, motivating way but another in a less motivating way. He or
she may use some prescribed curriculum materials and not others. Each such choice
affects the content of that curriculum
for students
and shapes how they understand and The academic curriculum is not learn it.
Making these choices is a just what a teacher is supposed regular part
of teaching and illustrates that teachers to teach, but also includes what have some
degree of autonomy in interpreting the the teacher actually chooses to curriculum
in their own class rooms. The choices teach and what the students
teachers
make about the curriculum let them learn. (Media Bakery)
put
their
own personal stamp on what and how they teach. Teachers often thrive on the freedom to
emphasize the topics and projects that motivate them most — and in turn motivate their
students as well — within the broad scope of the explicit curriculum. The challenge, of
course — and what represents an enduring curriculum dilemma — is to make those
choices in relationship to the goals of the curriculum in a manner that maximizes your
own students’ learning of the
curriculum. As a teacher you
are responsible for making sure
your students learn what they
are supposed to learn at any
given grade level in a way that
is meaningful for your students
and that engages them in
learning. To do that well, you
must first be familiar with the
academic standards — the
goals of the curriculum under which you are teaching.
The concept of the taught curriculum also has implications for the teachers who
will work with your students in subsequent years. Teachers are responsible for preparing
their students for the next level of work they will be expected to perform
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in school. Those aspects of the curriculum you emphasize (or choose not to emphasize)
may or may not lay the foundation for the curriculum in the upcoming grade level. In
other words, you are part of a school community where ideally teachers work together, in
a coordinated way, to foster all students’ learning.
Curriculum as What Is Learned
But as we stated above, what you teach is not always what your students learn. It
is not enough for teachers to be concerned with presenting content; they must also be
concerned with the effects of their teaching on their students. This is what makes the
concept of the learned curriculum useful. The goal of teaching is to ensure that students
learn what you set out for them to learn. How will you know if your teaching has a made
a difference?
What students actually learn in relationship to the explicit curriculum is
determined in large part by the choices
teachers make and the events they enact Critical Term: learned curriculum. What
in the classroom. To be sure, some students actually learn in relationship to the
teachers who teach disregard the extent goals of the explicit curriculum — which is
to which their students are learning, but not always the same as those goals.
these teachers are not carrying out their
professional responsibilities well. That is why Cuban (1992) and other curriculum
scholars are concerned not only with what is supposed to be taught and what is actually
taught, but also with what students actually learn as a result of teaching.
You probably recall at least one class during your own P-12 education where the
teacher simply stood up and lectured each day, expecting you to recall the facts in that
particular content area. You probably also recall that you didn’t learn all of these facts
perfectly — if at all. Your teacher was likely teaching from instructional materials that
were aligned with the explicit curriculum, hoping that there would be a direct transfer of
factual knowledge from him or her to you, the students. Your teacher taught, but what
you learned did not match what was taught.
Teachers may choose to present content in this rote manner, but if they do, their
students may not always learn the material well — despite the fact that it is in the explicit
curriculum. If teachers want their students to learn the explicit curriculum, standing up
day after day and telling students what is in it is not a particularly effective way of
teaching — and certainly not a guarantee that they will learn. To ensure that students
learn, teachers must figure out ways to make the content of the curriculum meaningful to
their students and connect the content to their students’ lives. This might include a good
lecture or teacher presentation of information now and then, but continuously relying on
this approach does not engage students well. Reaching students on a daily basis requires
that teachers make choices not only about what they teach, but about how they will teach
so that their students learn.
The explicit curriculum is meaningless if teachers are not concerned about the
degree to which their students are learning. To determine whether students have learned
what they are taught, teachers continuously assess how their students are doing. By
observing students carefully, by listening to them during discussions, by evaluating
students’ written work, by conferencing with students individually, and also by testing
students, teachers keep track of their students’ learning. The information teachers gain
through ongoing assessment not only enables teachers to document their students’
learning; it also provides teachers with feedback on how well they are teaching.
For example, let’s say that a teacher in a middle school social studies class has
just completed a unit on supply and demand. A follow-up homework essay shows that 80
percent of the class does not understand these concepts. The results of this essay provide
the teacher with feedback on how well the students learned the
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material. Recognizing that the majority of the class did not do well, a teacher might ask
him- or herself, “What can I do differently to ensure that my students ‘get’ these
concepts?” “How can I represent these concepts more effectively?” Teachers who do not
ask themselves such questions and who do not use feedback from students’ work to
improve their own practice are not demonstrating a reflective approach to their work and
are not carrying out their professional responsibilities well. If only one or two students
did not understand the material, the teacher’s response might be to figure out how to
provide additional support to those few students. In either case, assessing students
systematically provides teachers with an understanding of how well the taught curriculum
translates into the learned curriculum.
Figure 4-1 The Relationship among the Intended, Taught, and Learned Curriculum.
Source: Adapted from Cuban. L. (1992). Curriculum stability and change. In P. W.
Jackson (Ed.), Handbook of research on curriculum (pp. 216-247). New York:
Macmillan.
Figure 4-1 illustrates the relationship between the explicit, the taught, and the
learned curriculum and identifies the levels at which each dimension of the curriculum
plays out. These three aspects of the curriculum are in constant interplay
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in the classroom and reflect not only the teacher’s choices about what and how to teach,
but also the interactions between teachers and their students. How to balance the
competing demands of the explicit and the taught curriculum in relationship to pressures
to demonstrate what students have learned is a dilemma all teachers face. Moreover, the
relationship among these three dimensions of curriculum can change over time. When
such changes occur, they can have a profound influence on the day-to-day choices
teachers make about the curriculum. For example, when the pressure of standardized
testing is great, teachers can feel constrained in what they do in the classroom and how
they use their instructional time. As teachers gain greater experience, however, they can
become more skilled in balancing the autonomy they have in the classroom with the
requirements of the explicit curriculum.
What Isn’t Taught — The Null Curriculum
The explicit curriculum does not include everything it is possible to know, nor
does it include every perspective on that knowledge. Rather, the explicit curriculum is
one “take” on knowledge and on what is important to know. By necessity, much is
excluded. Another way to think about what curriculum is is to consider everything that is
not taught in school. As we noted earlier, Eliot Eisner refers to all that is not included in
the public, official, explicit curriculum and is not taught as the null curriculum. What
schools do not teach is also a statement about what is — and is not — valued in P-12
education.
If a high school requires four years of
mathematics,
but music and art are taken only as
Critical Term: null
electives,
then
for many students music and art are part
curriculum. Everything
of the null curriculum. If a school offers only one foreign
that is not included in the
language, then all of the other foreign languages are part
explicit curriculum, and
of the null curriculum. These are the subjects students
thus, is not expected to be
have no opportunity to study in school — subjects that
learned during a student’s
are not deemed to have sufficient worth or value to
P-12 education.
include in the curriculum.
Similarly, if students only read literature and poetry written by European or
European American male authors in their English classes, the null literature curriculum
consists of all of the other works of fiction and poetry by racial and ethnic minority male
and female authors and European or European American females to which students will
not be exposed in school. As a result of defining the curriculum in this way, students who
live in a multiethnic, multiracial society do not have the opportunity through literature as
it is taught in school to gain perspective on the life experiences and issues represented by
the works of a broad range of authors.
A different example of the null curriculum can be found in current views of
history that students often learn relating to Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the
Americas. Until recent years, when teachers taught the story of Columbus, the “null”
curriculum consisted of the native perspective. Today Columbus’s arrival in the new
world, marking the start of major European settlements in the America, is also viewed as
negative because it was destructive to the indigenous people already living here.
Thus, what is not included in the explicit curriculum is just as much a statement of
values in education as what is included. The concept of the null curriculum reminds us
that multiple perspectives exist about what is important to know — more than what may
be included in the official program of study teachers are given. Choices that are made
about what goes into the explicit curriculum are simultaneously choices that are made
about what is not considered important. These choices express values about what is or is
not worth teaching and what is or is not worth having students learn as a result of their P12 schooling.