EDU 8672
Instructional Leadership

Bookmarks:

The nature of the curriculum...

The purpose, substance, and practice of the curriculum...

Thinking about instructional leadership...

References

Thinking about..."Curriculum and Instruction":
The Technology of Education

The nature of the curriculum...

Most people believe that the curriculum is comprised solely of the formal series of courses that students take as they proceed through the educational system. These courses include, among others, the sciences, mathematics, language arts, social studies, and physical education. Some other people assert a broader notion of curriculum, including the formal learnings students are exposed to through these courses. These learnings include, among others, reading, writing, and reasoning. Still others posit that the curriculum is less formal, including these experiences students have as they interact with the school's formal curriculum, with their teachers, as well as with their peers.

Undoubtedly, the "curriculum" includes both the formal and informal courses and learnings believed to provide the necessary foundation young persons need if they are to develop into responsible adult citizens. At the same time, however, these formal and informal courses and learnings are not the curriculum, technically speaking. The curriculum includes much more and is much more broad and inclusive than all of these notions suggest.

In its essence, curriculum (in Greek, "a track") is a tool through which the purpose, substance, and practice of schooling interact (Foshay, 2000). Through the dynamic interaction between these three elements, the curriculum provides young persons more than 145,800 transcendent, aesthetic, physical, social, emotional, and intellectual experiences that are purposely intended to enable young persons to develop and mature as human beings and as citizens.

The purpose, substance, and practice of the curriculum...

Foshay (2000) asserts that American culture and society not administrators or teachers in school districts determine the purpose of the curriculum. This viewpoint places takes the purpose of the curriculum outside of the school, as culture and society set the broad and general framework that guides schooling. Culture and society, then, identify what the purpose of the curriculum is, namely, that which will bring a full sense of the self to awareness or realization through the schooling process.

In addition, Foshay defines the substance of the curriculum as all of that which is taught in schools, namely, the intentional experiences enabling young persons to achieve an awareness or realize a full sense of the self. Like the purpose of the curriculum, the substance of the curriculum is external to the school, defined by culture and society, in order that culture and society might be preserved and perfected.

Lastly---and in contrast to the purpose and substance of the curriculum---the practice of the curriculum is internal to the school (Foshay, 2000). Curriculum practice consists not only of what teachers and students engage in together within the school but also, and perhaps more importantly, the professional judgments teachers render about how they will translate what is external to the school---the purpose and substance of the curriculum---into experiences that will effect psychological changes in students (Tyler, 1949) at the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains (Bloom 1984a,b).

Using the lens Foshay (2000) provides for viewing the curriculum, it is readily apparent that the curriculum includes much more and is more broad and inclusive than the formal and informal courses and learnings that are part and parcel of contemporary schooling. Curriculum is the dynamic interaction of the purpose, the substance, and the practice of curriculum as these elements coalesce in schools, especially the concrete educational experiences that make it possible for young persons to become aware of or to realize a full sense of self in its transcendent, aesthetic, physical, social, emotional, and intellectual dimensions.

Thinking about instructional leadership...

The notion that the purpose, substance, and practice of the curriculum is intended to move students toward greater self-awareness and self-realization as members of American culture and society presents instructional leaders at least two substantive challenges.

The first challenge---perhaps the most daunting---is that instructional leaders must endeavor to foster those conditions that will enable teachers to move away from focusing exclusively upon the particular academic discipline or area they teach. While the entire educational enterprise as it is currently structured is designed to focus teachers exclusively upon the content they teach, this move by instructional leaders---away from the systemic conception of teaching as instructing young persons and toward conceiving of teaching as educating young persons to grow in self-awareness and self-realization---is crucial.  If teachers are to translate the purpose and substance of the curriculum into the practice of the curriculum---the concrete pedagogical practices that both form and inform young persons as transcendent, aesthetic, physical, social, emotional, and intellectual beings---instructional leaders must intentionally direct their teachers' attention toward the students they are engaging in purposive learning activities.

The second challenge follows from the first.  That is, instructional leaders must assist teachers to consider this subject which the community of educators seeks to form and inform through their various professional judgments. The subject, however, is not the discipline-specific courses that teachers teach. No, the challenge confronting instructional leaders is get teachers to focus on the students---this is the subject they teach---and how the transcendent, aesthetic, physical, social, emotional, and intellectual experiences that each teacher provides will effect the psychological changes that will enable students to grow toward greater self-awareness and self-realization, that is, a fuller sense of self.

Unless instructional leaders foster a climate where teachers turn the focus of their attention away from disciplinarity and toward the student they are forming and informing, Foshay (2000) argues it is unlikely that young persons will carry their experience of the purpose, substance, and practice of the curriculum into a successful life curriculum.

Accordingly, these two challenges imply that instructional leaders engage in six endeavors:

• Instructional leaders should use the tools of reflective practice to examine the breadth and depth of the curriculum experience offered in their classrooms. Perhaps the best place for instructional leaders to initiate a program of school-wide professional growth and development for teachers is to examine the curriculum experience (Foshay, 2000) they offer students within their own classrooms. It is much easier to tell others what to do than it is to confront the challenges of professional growth and development oneself, to learn about the process of professional growth and development through one's first-hand experience, and to come to a deeper and more personal understanding precisely of what one is asking of others.  The tool of reflective practice (Sergiovanni, 1986) might prove very helpful in this regard. As an instructional leader considers how one's antecedents and theories of curriculum practice inform one's curriculum practice in actual classroom episodes, the instructional leader can begin to see how one's intentions to provide students a broader array of curriculum experiences do not necessarily translate into behaviors and outcomes.
  
  It is at this point---where one's espoused theories of curriculum practice diverge from one's actual classroom episodes---that the instructional leader begins to appreciate what other teachers will be experiencing as they begin to grapple with their own professional growth and development. It is also at this point that the instructional leader can invite other teachers into the classroom to observe and offer feedback about one's performance (Sarason, 1999). Over time, these discussions between the instructional leader and other teachers can forge a culture of inquiry where teachers begins to "read their teaching" (McDonald, 1992), to consider the issues associated with curriculum practice (Foshay, 2000), as well as to propose, experiment with, and evaluate their success in providing students a broader array of curriculum experiences.
   

• Instructional leaders should work with teachers to focus on their own personal experiences of transcendence within their disciplines. The instructional leader's goal should be to help teachers learn how to teach from their own transcendent experiences so that, in turn, teachers will be more capable of awakening within their students an awareness of the transcendent. Teachers can measure success in this endeavor when, rather than simply providing students instruction in disciplinary content, teachers provide evidence that they are introducing students to their discipline's puzzles, using study and drill to facilitate student acquisition of the tools they need to deal with these puzzles, and engaging students in discovering solutions to these puzzles as an emergent reality rather than awareness of a pre-defined realization.
   

• Instructional leaders should work with teachers to introduce their students to what is true, beautiful, and good in their disciplines (perhaps using popular culture as a starting point). The instructional leader's goal is to assist teachers in learning how to introduce their students to the complex of human emotion, intellect, and recalled experiences that enable one to render valid personal judgments based upon a conversation with matter (Foshay, 2000, p. 38). Instructional leaders can measure success in this endeavor as teachers provide data of students making and defending their judgments about what constitutes the true, beautiful, and good. Success can also be measured as teachers provide data of students responding to their experience and formulating aesthetic truths which indicate the realization about how the form, content, and style of things fit exceptionally well or the degree to which they do not.
   

• Instructional leaders should work with teachers to realize that the physical self is a positive aspect of one's humanity. The instructional leader's goal is to awaken teachers to the pernicious evil that threatens many young persons who are growing up in a materialist culture and capitalist society, namely, the need for social approval of one's physical appearance. Instructional leaders can measure success in this endeavor as teachers provide data of students learning to demonstrate that they can reach judgments about their physical self, judgments which indicate that what is truly important to the students is not simply how others judge the physical self but how individuals autonomously assign value to the physical self as an important part of the "whole" self.
   

• Instructional leaders should work with teachers to enable their students to grasp the human endeavors that lie beneath and within their disciplines so as to help their students to engage in healthy, productive, and mature social relationships. The instructional leader's goal is to assist teachers to inculcate in their students an awareness of the mature attitudes that enhance the proper development of the social self. Instructional leaders can measure success in this endeavor as teachers provide data of students exhibiting behaviors that are internally guided by these attitudes and as students bear responsibility for the outcomes associated with decisions that are based upon their attitudes.
   

• Instructional leaders should work with teachers to use their disciplines to promote and encourage the didactic, reflective, and affective dimensions of classroom discourse. The instructional leader's goal is to help teachers to use multiple classroom discourses as propaedeutics for developing their students' emotional maturity. Instructional leaders can measure success in this endeavor as teachers provide data demonstrating them working with students to clarify a vocabulary that assigns accurate meaning and depth to the wide array of responses that students give to their unique and shared experiences. Teachers will also provide instructional leaders data of students who are able to recognize and to name the shades and hues of various feelings and to confront the emotional content associated with the human experiences implicit to and embedded within each discipline.
   

• Instructional leaders should work with teachers to enable their students to make the best judgments possible, given the ambiguity present in the actual world. The instructional leader's goal is to focus teachers upon assisting their students to engage in practical problem-solving as problems arise in human experience. Instructional leaders can measure success in this endeavor as teachers provide data portraying students who are able to solve problems in many ways, but especially as students: state a problem; identify the practical constraints that should be considered; specify the information or knowledge that is required; delineate a plan of action to resolve the restated problem (and adjust as necessary); target intermediate goals (to stay on course); and, evaluate their achievements.

By meeting these challenges and engaging in these six endeavors, instructional leaders foster the development of a professional learning community. These women and men collaborate with one another in seeking to help their students achieve the fullest possible degree of humanity, at least in as far as culture and society have determined what that is. Through the curriculum, these students are able to penetrate reality, to integrate knowledge across the disciplines, to be useful to themselves others, and society, to inculcate valid self-esteem, and to engage in life-long learning.

Such outcomes may appear somewhat tainted by wild-eyed idealism and unfeasible given the current educational system. But, as instructional leaders foster those conditions where teachers render the professional decisions which translate the purpose and the substance of the curriculum into actual curriculum experiences, the probability is greatly increased that such outcomes will be realized. Crucial to success in this endeavor, however, is an instructional leader who enables the community of educators to engage in professional discourse and to collaborate as colleagues in the enterprise of educating young persons.

References

Bloom, B. S. (Ed.). (1984). Taxonomy of educational objectives: Handbook 1 cognitive domain. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Bloom, B. S. (Ed.). (1984). Taxonomy of educational objectives: Handbook 2 affective domain. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

McDonald, J. P.  (1992).  Teaching: Making sense of an uncertain craft.  New York: Teachers College Press.

Sarason, S. B.  (1999).  Teaching as a performing art.  New York: Teachers College Press.

Sergiovanni, T. J.  (1986).  Understanding reflective practice.  Journal of Curriculum and Supervision, 1(4), 353-359.

Tyler, R. W. (1949). Principles of curriculum and instruction. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.