Complexity, Challenge And Creation
In Curriculum Design
Author(s)
S. Mecca & J. Thompson
Abstract
Schools today are faced with both the internal and external imposition of
standards or benchmarks, which we will term BKs, that are expected to drive
curriculum. Benchmarks, such as those of Project 2061 from the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, are often structured on multiple
levels representing a complex network of standards. Furthermore, schools are
expected to demonstrate student accomplishment of benchmarks through
effective assessment strategies. The instructional landscape in which curriculum
is played out is painted with experienced teachers, who have generally been
responsible for working in the context of their own grade and their own
classroom with teaching-learning units, projects and activities, which we can
term Curriculum Activity Blocks or CABs. CABs have become a part of a
teacher’s resource inventory, a repertoire so to speak, and while these often
address one or more of a school’s benchmarks, they are assembled in ways that
may not address hierarchical benchmarks in optimum ways, leaving gaps that
can result in students being left behind for lack of an adequate curriculum. This
paper addresses these issues with both technical and experiential analysis of the
complexities and challenges involved in the broad area of curriculum design and
documents important fundamental lessons for those who have the responsibility
to develop curriculum in the face of multiple demands.
1 Origins and structure of hierarchical standards
Curriculum in US public education has generally been viewed as specific
information that gets taught during a designated period of time. This specific
Keywords
Related Book
Other papers in this volume
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