I was looking forward to reading this chapter in the Pinar book. I have very little background knowledge of international curriculum or educational environments around the world. However, I finished the chapter dissatisfied. Whereas, in my opinion the curricular understandings in rest of the book did not suffer from 20+ year old content, this chapter did. There have been too many major historical events in the last 20 years that must have affected curriculum in the regions discussed- for example, historical events in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, South Africa, etc. In my opinion, An update to this chapter is needed.
Interesting… If anyone can add quick summaries, links, and/or other resources, it will be quite helpful. If anyone knows any educators from other countries who may want to join in this conversation, please invite them to join the wiki.
I agree that the chapter did not contain the most recent developments, but I've had firsthand experience with a small portion of the international educational community in recent years. New Zealand and Australia, long considered havens for education because of their focus on the needs of the child, use of multiage education, and small group strategies are now "following the leader." Both countries are moving away from the strategies that have made them so successful, and copying the American form of standardization. We had one administrator in New Zealand actually say their government mentioned the United States as the model for education, and that their country needed to follow our lead. In Japan, elite track students are sent to "cram schools," where they literally rote memorize loads of data for a test in epic fashion. I wrote a paper on special education in Japan when we visited a few years ago, and was amazed to see that in traditional Japanese schools, children with special needs sat at the back of the classroom, and were completely ignored. Even though some countries like New Zealand and Australia are looking to the U.S., we are copying the model of Asian countries like Japan and China, except for the fact that we test everybody, which is unheard of in those countries we are copying. President Obama in his 2011 state of the union address mentioned that China has the model for education due to their year-round schedule, increased school hours, and impressive test scores. His deal was to win the "race to the future," but what does that mean? I was quite impressed with the European Educational Reform Movement in early 20th century Germany, which focused on the needs of individual children, and advocated more experiential activities for students. However, that movement was totally destroyed by Nazi Germany and the socialist regime under Hitler. I was also surprised to see that the information processing model of educational thought derived from post-world war II Germany.
Just as a side note, we're going back to Australia this summer, so it will be interesting to see how they have progressed since 2007. Back then, their national standardization was a fledgling movement.
Look at the September, 2011, issue of Smithsonian. It may be one of very few countries that doesn't use standardized tests, have a few broad goals, and trust teachers to make the appropriate educational decisions. And, they've been very successful.
I have heard that some of the Asian countries such as Japan and China are getting concerned about the creativity (or lack there of) in their students, due to many years of the "traditional" model. Anyone have any further information?
I know that Singapore expressed interest in adapting an Israeli innovative program of "creative thinking" aimed for secondary level. Israeli developers introduced the program in Singapore, but I am not sure if the project was carried on and if any research is associated with it
Hi Nena, I found this artilce on curriculum changes on 10 different countries. However, I am trying to post the link and a pop up message is saying visitors cannot post links. I will email link to the class.
The information in this chapter was good new knowledge for me. Especially since I come from such a different educational culture. What I mean by that is I deal with teeth all day (no standardized testing, etc.). As I began reading the chapter I thought about Mexican curriculum and standardized testing. I remember there was a large group of people protesting in Mexico City regarding a new exam, mandatorty, that students had to take in order to continue on to high school. I am pretty sure it was around 2006 because my daughter wasn't born yet. The protesting went on for weeks. I thought it was funny that all the community had to do was protest to get rid of standardized testing. As a result of the protesting, standarized testing was only allowed in certain schools.
Hey, I'll post more about the chapters here soon, but I just want to make sure we are not meeting again until the 3rd, or did we decide to fit one more time in?
I don't think we are. From our last conversation, we were to use this wiki to communicate.
Hi,
I am a science educator from Israel invited to join this forum by Jeff Bloom. I have experience in developing science curriculum both in Israel and in the US, and read the chapter understanding curriculum as international text. I'd like to share some of my thoughts with you:
1) I think that in sciences and Math the idea of curriculum as international text is more acceptable than in the humanities and social sciences. There is growing similarity is standards, learning goals and teaching strategies for science and Math curricula. Local issues such as national Nobel Winners are not in the heart of the curriculum.
However, it becomes more difficult when it comes to history - for example in Israel the issue of the Holocaust is a major curricular topic, while there is no reference to the American civil war.
2) In humanities - A curriculum as international text must include various and conflicting points of view. For example, a history book written in Israel that presented both our war for independence in 1948 and the Palestinian Nakba can be considered as a good international text. However it is widely criticized and almost not used - not among Jewish or Arab teachers. In this context - I found the Canadian Peace curriculum as a very interesting example and would like to know more about it.
3) An interesting point of view would be comparing curriculum according to two criteria that were not mentioned in the chapter:
a) similarity and differences in design principles of the curriculum
b) Meta learning goals - Can we identify what are the curriculum goals that goes beyond knowledge of subject matter? Is it to develop critical thinking? environmental responsibility? a sense of democracy? etc.
Hope you find my reflections helpful
Yael,
Thanks so much for joining in. My suspicion from years in the science education community, was that most science educators were working towards similar goals even though there is a wide variety of specific research interests. However, I also suspected that curricular focuses in other disciplines were not as cohesively aligned. It would be interesting to hear from educators in other countries, as well.
However, science teaching, as it is implemented in schools in the this country, tends to either gloss over or avoid certain topics, such as evolution. I haven't really heard of this happening in other countries, at least not to the extent found in the U.S.
Well. as for evolution - in Israel it is an optional unit for high-school biology. Orthodox schools never teach it. However there is growing interest in the science education community in Israel in presenting ethical issues regarding the use of innovative technologies such as - what are the "rights" of a frozen embryo, what are the pre/cons of specific uses of our ability to track individuals genome etc.