Abstract
When teachers understand their own “curriculum style,” they can make conscious decisions about incorporating other styles into their practice.
Most of us approach life with a certain style. A comfort zone, philosophical stance, or belief system influences or motivates many of our actions and decisions. These behaviors are so entrenched by habit and convention that we often don't give them much thought, but to deconstruct this behavior might shed considerable light into corners where bias or even unawareness lurks. After all, how can we know that our way, our idea, or our belief is the best if we don't learn about anything else?
These tendencies to act may influence us at a subliminal level, so unless we bring them to light, we may never be able to give name to our actions. Employers, curious about leadership and personality styles and wishing to build effective teams, survey potential employees to maximize efficacy. They use measurement instruments like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to identify manifestations of perception and judgment, making cognitive behavior more understandable and useful. When it comes to curriculum development, similar sorting terms exist, and taking a survey like that on page 36 can identify one's approach to teaching others. Such instruments don't purport to label or to evaluate but to provide feedback; they illustrate how behavior, which seems random, is actually motivated by preferences.
FOUR CURRICULUM STYLES
Four common schools of thought in the curriculum arena are the linear, holistic, laissez-faire, and critical theorist approaches.
LINEAR THINKERS
Generally, to be linear means to favor structure, order, and maximum control of a particular environment. The linearist wants education to be as efficient as possible, both fiscally and empirically. In essence, this model mimics scientific management in the way that Frederick Taylor used science to manage business. Franklin Bobbitt transported Taylor's ideas into schools, where they were further refined by Ralph Tyler (1949). Tyler outlined a curriculum plan that included selecting objectives, identifying useful learning experiences to further those objectives, organizing learning activities into a sequence or hierarchy, and evaluating the behavioral change. Diversity is not the ultimate goal in this model; this is a system that values procedure, routine, and the best way to do the job. Under the influence of such a design, standards control human effort, and predetermined outcomes require mastery, encouraging the worker or student to perform like a well-oiled machine. To establish such targets, one simply asks questions like “What constitutes the equivalent of a diploma?” or “What does a prototypical finished product look like?” Programs then provide the training to produce that outcome or meet that standard.
We don't need to look far to see these influences in schools. Scope and sequence charts, bell schedules, grade-level designs, and Bloom's Taxonomy all reflect linear characteristics. Furthermore, the prevalence of how-to books, social tendencies to rate performance against ideals, and our competitive spirit prove that linearism has permeated multiple aspects of life beyond school. Many of us find comfort in specifying content, articulating goals, following routines, and controlling variables. The more we value these elements, the more linear we are on the continuum.
Holists believe that as long as an object of study captures students' interest, moving on to another subject makes no sense.
HOLISTS
While holists can also work within a schedule that devotes time to instruction, such practice cuts against their ideology. Holists believe that as long as an object of study captures students' interest, moving on to another subject makes no sense. Interest drives the learning experience, with consideration for whether an experience will open or close a student's world. Under such an organic design, curriculum emerges from negotiations among the student, teacher, and environment. Pragmatic in a Deweyan sense, the teacher arranges the environment to stimulate students to respond. By making suggestions, asking questions, and prompting student concern, teachers entice students to join an educational experience. Implied objectives become explicit through negotiation, and content emerges from students' curiosity. Such a design demands teacher awareness and knowledge in a wide variety of content to meet diverse interests. A teacher must also pay attention to each student and how that person encounters or interacts with the lesson. From such observations, teachers monitor lesson appeal or attraction and then devise ways to invite learning, making the experience palatable, meaningful, empowering, and significant. Holists don't divorce emotion from intellect; therefore, those espousing this philosophy honor a greater variety of learner preferences. In this model, power is more or less shared, boundaries are often crossed, and integrated learning experiences involve a quest for meaning. The holist pays attention to the emotional and creative components and to the aesthetics of learning, hoping to create citizens who are “productively idiosyncratic,” a term coined by Elliot Eisner (1990). Such a focus assumes that enjoyable and enlightening experiences lead to learning. Fun is not their goal. Instead, they want educational experiences that are expansive and substantive. The holist wants students who become masters of their environment and citizens who are equipped to live in a democratic society. This belief explains their desire to share power; they wish to provide practice in engaging in genuine conversations to negotiate rules, to influence policy, and to effect change.
LAISSEZ-FAIRE ADVOCATES
The laissez-faire philosophy takes this freedom to act to another level. Hoping to maximize individual freedom without precipitating chaos, laissez-faire principles espouse no official curriculum. Freedom is at the heart of such schools, since the laissez-faire program wants to protect students from being violated by evaluation, coercion, and power paradigms that impede learning or work against individual readiness. This philosophy endorses other fundamental premises: All people possess natural traits, like curiosity, that predispose learning; the most enduring and profound learning occurs when initiated and pursued by the learners; all people are creative if allowed to develop unique talents; and freedom is essential to developing personal responsibility. Children are encouraged to explore their interests and passions, learn through play, and develop expertise in areas that suit them. Capitalizing on the enjoyment of seeing and searching, these philosophers align their thinking with Piaget, who suggested that we don't learn something until we recognize that we need to know it. With this approach, children freely explore ideas they wonder about. Learning stations provide students with options while allowing students to decide what they should do or why they should do it. The key word here is access. Students have access to books, tools, and other resources that enable them to pursue their interests. In this “participatory democracy” (Gray and Chanoff 1984), students initiate all their own activities and create their own environments.
CRITICAL THEORISTS
Finally, the critical theorists focus on the pursuit of social justice. Rather than deny the presence of power relationships, the critical theorist believes in talking about the elephants in the room. The teacher's job is to guide students to see social injustices, to make the chains visible, and to uncover subliminal messages. Once students are aware of these external, constraining forces, knowledge might help them combat the hegemony. Any curriculum, then, would invoke critical consciousness, advocate for social and educational transformation, and promote the demonstration of respect, understanding, appreciation, and inclusion. With an equitable and rigorous curriculum design, teachers help students enter the world independently, preparing them for leadership. Lessons maximize student and teacher interaction, center on authentic caring, and provide cultural and historical relevance. In this conspiratorial investigation, the teacher poses problems, and students encounter multiple points of view to enlarge their understanding of the world. Because the ultimate aim is social action outside the classroom, the curriculum encourages habits of mind and behavior norms that will enable students to both survive in the world and be agents of transformation. Because critical theorists believe current schools reproduce the status quo — preserving race, gender, class, and social stratifications — they wish to offer an alternative vision through a pedagogy of hope (Freire 1994) that instills the will, desire, knowledge, and skills needed to disrupt official meta-narratives and increase social justice.
IMPLICATIONS
Labeling and describing curriculum ideologies does little more than provide a glimpse at a possible explanation for behavior, since people and philosophies are much too complex to be summed up clearly in a few words, and generalizations generally omit someone. Besides, none of us are so tidy, so pure, or so easily identified that a label defines every part of us. Most of us possess a little of each of these habits of mind, but we generally espouse preferences that subconsciously or explicitly govern our actions.
But we should all know that there are many ways of seeing. Each has an element of truth, but none may be the whole truth. If we limit ourselves to one way of seeing and one truth, we not only limit our own intellectual development, but we limit our students' access to learning experiences. A competent thinker strives for a multifaceted vision since wisdom depends on adapting and examining multiple perspectives, even if one claims a purist stance. As we encounter new truths and research different ways of knowing, we must remember that those truths are always incomplete. Besides admitting that we can never know all there is to know, we must accept that all incoming data is refracted and discolored by the prism of our own personal understanding and experiences. These facets reflect a limited viewpoint. Although an alternative opinion may not be wrong, but simply different, such anomalies often lie so far out of our frame of reference that we reject them as faulty notions. Survey instruments help us validate our own behavior and facilitate our understanding and appreciation of differences in others.
Self-examination may also produce intellectual satisfaction because it makes one aware of personal curriculum style preferences and illuminates values and beliefs about teaching. Participants can reflect on their findings to consider possible explanations for their actions. Noticing how we form decisions and giving name to how we design curriculum may prompt some change in our teaching practices. Our discoveries may lead to a more productive focus and may take some of the mystery out of teaching.
Footnotes
Miller Curriculum Style Indicator
The following survey can provide insight about individual curriculum styles.
A large A total indicates a linear predisposition, while a preponderance of B's suggests a predilection for the holistic style, C's prefer the laissez-faire approach, and D's lean toward the critical theorist's style.
None of these styles is right or wrong, best or worst. The goal is to recognize one's inclinations so that decisions can come after conscious thought, not simply from personal preference or habit. Awareness often guides us to make more informed decisions, increasing the likelihood that we act in the best interests of students and programs, not controlled by what suits us personally. Instead, we can style-flex to ensure maximum benefits. For some learning situations, the most educationally virtuous approach is sequential and controlled; other situations call for more organic methods or even demand that we question the status quo and challenge the meta-narratives that surround policy.
Because students vary in their learning styles, educators must make adjustments in their curriculum designs. Not every student will respond to the tidy, seven-step process for tying a shoelace; the linear approach doesn't produce learning for some, so we style-flex to accommodate those differences.
This process of empirical self-examination offers opportunity for reflection. The importance or value of such introspection may come in the discovery, in the naming and the acknowledgement of personal style, and of philosophies that influence judgments. Noticing how we form decisions and giving name to how we design curriculum may prompt some change in our teaching practices. Our discoveries may lead to a more productive focus and take some of the mystery out of education.
The author grants permission to educators who wish to photocopy this survey for nonprofit educational purposes, provided that the author receives credit for the development and design of the instrument. Any other use would require written permission from the author,