Chapter 6

Chapter six examines four philosophies of education—reconstructionism, progressivism, essentialism, and perennialism—with essentialism and progressivism considered to have particular significance to our schools. Throughout our country’s history, essentialism, with its focus on subject matter has been the prevailing philosophy. Progressivism, with the child’s needs and interests as its focus, has also had an impact on educational practices and programs.
With this in mind, clarify your own educational philosophy, with the understanding that your vision will most likely incorporate ideas from more than one philosophy.

Chapter 5

Curriculum development is seen as the process for making programmatic decisions and for revising the products of those decisions on the basis of continuous and subsequent evaluation. There are four models for curriculum development discussed throughout this chapter: The Tyler Model; The Taba Model; The Saylor, Alexander, and Lewis Model; and The Oliva Model. A model can give order to the process.

As an administrator, which model for curriculum development would you choose to utilize in your school and why?

Chapter 4

In today’s schools many teachers feel they have no say in curriculum development because of the Standards of Learning. Many veteran teachers state that they no longer have any control over what they teach, while younger teachers define the SOL’s as the curriculum. This perception seems to dampen morale and overtime can lessen the feeling of investment among faculty. Olivia states, “curriculum leaders must try to develop pride in the group as a team organization by promoting team morale…”

In a time where the SOL’s truly do dictate a large part of what we teach, how can we involve teachers more and make all stakeholders feel invested in the curriculum development process?

Chapter 2

As curriculum developers it is important to effect curricular change with the conditions of the educational environment. It is the responsibility of the curriculum workers to seek ways of making continuous improvement in the curriculum. This chapter gives us the following Axioms as guidelines to curriculum developers.

How are the environment of education and the need for curriculum change changing, and how can we apply these Axioms in our quest towards finding the appropriate curriculum for our schools?