I agree initially with the article. Just reading the abstract and knowing the history of schooling in the US, I see schooling now as playing catch-up, rather than one-up. It used to be that an education got you ahead in society; it allowed you to see wider viewpoints, and there was more of a disparity between the uneducated and educated. You were able to get a better paying job, had an advantage over other job applicants, and did better than your parents.
Now, you need an education just to maintain a level of adequacy in society. There's no guarantee that you will do better than your parents; and as a teacher, I feel like I am racing to teach them all the things they should know before I even think of preparing them to handle the possibilities of the future. I no longer start keyboarding in third grade; now I'm told to start it in Kindergarten because by second grade they are set in their ways. In eighth grade, I am now preparing them to pass technology competency tests offered by several of the high schools.
My curriculum is slowly being mandated by the government, NETS, the ISBE, and the Archdiocese of Chicago. I don't seem to have the time anymore to let them see an I Spy game all the way through to the end, even though it helps develop more visual-spatial-language relationships. I don't have the time to teach them the complete history of computers; it's been relegated to an after-school enrichment offering. I am now playing the juggling act of my fellow teachers - finding enough time to teach what they need to know, what is mandated, what they should know, and what they are interested in.
I agree that school is "a political- educational project constituted by a synthesis or an articulation of cultural elements derived from fights, impositions and negotiations amongst different social subjects." (481) Someone once put it simply that it was created to indoctrinate children to the general beliefs of society at the time. And I see that in the past. It was said that Abraham Lincoln wanted to educate all the newly freed slaves to make them more productive members of society. However, education was also seen as freedom, and it was easier to keep the less educated oppressed if they didn't know or understand what they were missing.
I agree that the dividing lines between subjects have been blurred. We are even supposed to teach students their inter-relatedness. However, I see students getting more easily confused by this. Take the holidays, for example. You used to say "the holidays" and it meant Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's, and possibly Halloween, although Halloween used to be a lot more minor than it has become. Now, thanks to cultural contact and the multiple interpellations it produced, Chanukah, Kwanza, Ramadan, Eid al-Fitr, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Birth of the Bab (Baha'i holiday), and Dia de los Muertos are thrown in the mix, just to name a few. And that's only in November and December! You can find places on the net that show daily holidays, like World Aids Day (December 1) and Day Without Art (December 1). Many have several holidays applied to them, confusing things further.
We, as an American society, are trying very hard to be the ultimate melting pot, where no one group is seen as bigger, better or higher than another. We are trying to create a level playing field and allow all groups to fully keep their identity while becoming fully American. Yet this is clashing with education by defining any subject so broadly that it gets lost within itself and the sphere of curriculum as a whole. If it was more partial and less "imperialistic" (487), it can be redefined in a way acceptable to society as a whole.
On the whole, I found this article more confusing than the last! I am hoping I got the gist of it, and the above is my interpretation of what it meant. Please let me know how far I am off the mark. At the end of the article, it sounds as though reworking curriculum subjects can now ultimately change society, while society changes the subjects to fit a larger world view.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Curriculum Integration Reflection
Curriculum Integration
Author(s): J. A. Gibbons
Source: Curriculum Inquiry, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Winter, 1979), pp. 321-332
Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the Ontario Institute for Studies in
Education/University of Toronto
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/
The integration the article is concerned with is "the transformation of knowledge." Transforming it into something more than its original form. The one thing this article talked about, aside from the difficulty of accurately defining curriculum integration and the difficulty of actually doing it, is that interpretation is needed. That word, right now, comes up a lot in education. A teacher's interpretation of the curriculum, how to integrate it, how to integrate real-world problems/scenarios into it, how to integrate technology into it, all without losing the original intent and goal of the lesson. And teaching the students to interpret - lessons, data, how to find what's missing and read between the lines to come up with viable conclusions/solutions.
Modifying the curriculum is big, too, in education, to allow for better integration. Right now, RTI, or Response to Intervention, is all about identifying the differences in learning styles of students and modifying the curriculum to meet the needs of those students. And I agree, that in order to integrate, modification is needed. Look at relationships and marriage, and to some level, simply meeting another person. Modifications in behavior, attitude, speech, etc., are made internally and externally to find common ground and interaction. It is how much modification to make that is debated.
It was hypothesized in the article that curriculum integration "hangs on the meaning of the phrase 'hanging on to complex connections between different domains.'" (Pring, 146) Someone, perhaps a district manager, or teacher, or committee, has to discover the complex connections between two subject areas, and identify what can be modified to integrate them successfully. And quite often, as in the "whole language" teaching approach, it seems very much that education is used more for experimentation than discovering real integration, and that there are no answers to the nature of the concepts and propositions questions posed in the article.
I found that the hypothesis that integration/modification can only take place between two things at once intriguing. Going back to relationships, If you have 3 or more people in a group, I suppose this is still true. Modification still only takes place one-on-one, even if that one-to-one switches between people of the group quickly. I guess that's why educators talk about integration of technology and curriculum, as a separate topic from integrating curriculum subjects with each other.
Author(s): J. A. Gibbons
Source: Curriculum Inquiry, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Winter, 1979), pp. 321-332
Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the Ontario Institute for Studies in
Education/University of Toronto
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/
The integration the article is concerned with is "the transformation of knowledge." Transforming it into something more than its original form. The one thing this article talked about, aside from the difficulty of accurately defining curriculum integration and the difficulty of actually doing it, is that interpretation is needed. That word, right now, comes up a lot in education. A teacher's interpretation of the curriculum, how to integrate it, how to integrate real-world problems/scenarios into it, how to integrate technology into it, all without losing the original intent and goal of the lesson. And teaching the students to interpret - lessons, data, how to find what's missing and read between the lines to come up with viable conclusions/solutions.
Modifying the curriculum is big, too, in education, to allow for better integration. Right now, RTI, or Response to Intervention, is all about identifying the differences in learning styles of students and modifying the curriculum to meet the needs of those students. And I agree, that in order to integrate, modification is needed. Look at relationships and marriage, and to some level, simply meeting another person. Modifications in behavior, attitude, speech, etc., are made internally and externally to find common ground and interaction. It is how much modification to make that is debated.
It was hypothesized in the article that curriculum integration "hangs on the meaning of the phrase 'hanging on to complex connections between different domains.'" (Pring, 146) Someone, perhaps a district manager, or teacher, or committee, has to discover the complex connections between two subject areas, and identify what can be modified to integrate them successfully. And quite often, as in the "whole language" teaching approach, it seems very much that education is used more for experimentation than discovering real integration, and that there are no answers to the nature of the concepts and propositions questions posed in the article.
I found that the hypothesis that integration/modification can only take place between two things at once intriguing. Going back to relationships, If you have 3 or more people in a group, I suppose this is still true. Modification still only takes place one-on-one, even if that one-to-one switches between people of the group quickly. I guess that's why educators talk about integration of technology and curriculum, as a separate topic from integrating curriculum subjects with each other.
INTRODUCTION
My name is Dianne Rowe. I have been the Computer Instructor/Coordinator at St. Alexander School in Palos Heights for 14 years. Apple computers had just gained a foothold in the marketplace by appealing to schools when I was finally able to get my hands on one in high school. Since the typing teacher taught the computer class using IIe and IIgs models, I had to take typing. Resented it then, love it now. Moved to lab assistant at St. Xavier, and moved up to the Macintosh se and beyond. IBM and Windows machines mixed in here and there. I worked for two years at St. Germaine part-time and St. Alex the rest of the week, using Windows 3.11 and IIes again. The other day I was just going through a box of peripherals out of storage, taking a walk down memory lane. If it was out there, I've used it in some way. I moved from just teaching computers, to teaching the teachers, and now I also teach the PITSCO Synergistic Systems Applied Technology Lab - a new way to teach curriculum; self-guided, and geared to reach all types of learners. I have watched technology grow from a novelty to an integral part of daily life, and although I have reservations about a computer in my brain (isn't that already one?) I am excited to see how far it can go.
"Technology Integration is seamlessly incorporating multimedia and other innovative tools to enhance the teaching and learning of subject matter." The definition we created in our TIE 536 class. The definition that defines what I do on a daily basis, not just for my classes, but for all the classes at St. Alexander. I love playing with the latest technology, introducing it to the teachers, and seeing what they can come up with. I love the challenge and juggling act of my job, and as long as it keeps challenging me, I will keep accepting their offers to stay.
"Technology Integration is seamlessly incorporating multimedia and other innovative tools to enhance the teaching and learning of subject matter." The definition we created in our TIE 536 class. The definition that defines what I do on a daily basis, not just for my classes, but for all the classes at St. Alexander. I love playing with the latest technology, introducing it to the teachers, and seeing what they can come up with. I love the challenge and juggling act of my job, and as long as it keeps challenging me, I will keep accepting their offers to stay.
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