Session Information
03 SES 05 A, Relevance of the Curriculum
Paper Session
Time:
2009-09-29
08:30-10:00
Room:
JUR, HS 13
Chair:
Uwe Hameyer
Contribution
At the transition from the twentieth to the the twenty-first century, Esteve (2000) stated: "most of our teachers do not present academic material as a means of understanding the world around us, but as a series of separate pieces of information (...) that [the students] are subsequently incapable of using" (p. 12). This problem – lack of relevance of curricula for students' lives outside school – has been considered by European policy makers, for the authors of the Lisbon Strategy acknowledge that the simple accumulation of pieces of knowledge is hardly useful outside school, and call for curricula based on the development of competencies (Bolívar, 2008; Eurydice, 2002), that is, the development of the ability to deploy knowledge to solve problems. These issues have recently prompted the emergence of an action research project in Portugal, which will possibly be soon expanded to other locations(*). That project, entitled "Researching for a Relevant Curriculum" (RRC), aims to respond to some concerns that teachers of basic education have expressed with regard to some students' lack of interest in learning what educational authorities want them to learn. Accordingly, teachers of basic education have come together with a university professor and started formulating the hypothesis that the above-mentioned lack of interest is related to the existence of problems of relevance in the curriculum.
Considering the above-mentioned hypothesis, RRC pursues the following objectives:
- To identify causes of the alleged lack of interest shown by given students with regard to the curriculum in general or to specific parts of it;
- To understand the extent to which different students consider the curriculum in general or specific kinds of it relevant;
- To relate the degree of relevance that different students assign to given content to ways of presenting that same content;
- To contribute to the development of reflective practice in the selection of content and in the design of teaching methods;
- To contribute to the development of teaching methods that lead to learning that is acknowledged by students as relevant.
In this paper, the authors will present a brief summary of RRC and discuss its first outcomes.
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(*) At the moment when this paper is being written, a proposal for the integration of the project into an international partnership is being submitted.
Method
The coordinator of the project has interviewed the other participants in order to generate data about their professional knowledge; all the participants have interviewed students in order to understand the reasons why some of them show lack of interest for the curriculum and the extent to which they consider what they learn in school relevant for understanding themselves and the world around them. All those data have been subject to content analysis.
The team meets regularly and exchanges information through an electronic platform in order to interpret data and decide on teaching strategies inspired by that interpretation. Those strategies are continuously reported, monitored and reviewed.
Expected Outcomes
The data that has been collected and analysed so far suggests that most students whom we have interviewed do not easily acknowledge the relevance of what they learn in school to what they do outside it. Furthermore, even the discourse of the students who most acknowledge that relevance frequently diverges, by shifting the focus from the relevance of curriculum in an extra-school context to the relevance of curriculum in an intra-school context. Given these early findings, the team has designed some strategies through which teachers try to ensure that students will better acknowledge the relevance of the content being taught. Although, at this stage, the impact of those strategies is not fully evaluated yet, some evidence already suggests that they are indeed contributing to making the curriculum more relevant to some students and, therefore, contributing to improve their interest for learning in school.
References
Bolívar, A. (2008). El discurso de las competencias en España: Educación básica y educación superior. Red U. Revista de Docencia Universitaria (2), http://www.redu.um.es/Red_U/m2/ Esteve, J. M. (2000). Culture in the school: Assessment and the content of education. European Journal of Teacher Education, 23(1), 5-18. Eurydice (2002). Key competencies: A developing concept in general compulsory education. Brussels: Eurydice European Unit.
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