The University of Calgary
Faculty of Education
Graduate Division of Educational Research
EDER 683 L 50 Curriculum Development, Implementation and Assessment
Summer 2002
Course Purpose and Direction
In putting together this course, I have sought to follow after, and build upon the work done in
the previous course (EDER 681 Studying Curriculum) which some of you may have taken. That
course was developed out of conversations and feedback I received from Dr. Anne Phelan and
Dr. Hans Smits. In this course, then, you may notice some themes recurring. Remaining with us
are key questions such as: what is worth knowing and teaching? For what ought we educators
be striving? How do we assess the worth of our goal and our progress towards them? Try to
keep such central matters in mind as we study together and stand upon the broad foundation
laid in the previous courses in order to wrestle with lived curriculum experience (taken from Dr.
Hunsberger’s course outline).
Our focus this term will be toward curriculum in action – and what happens as curriculum is
developed and implemented. We will seek to explore curriculum ideas always with a clear eye
toward how those ideas pay out in our lived experience in educational settings.
Questions such as those following can be seen both as guides for our inquiry and as significant, if
difficult issues to study. They seem to point directly toward development and implementation
underlying them. To quote Hunsberger and Smits here:
What are the relationships between lived experiences of schooling and other forms of
educational experience? Why do the experiences differ?
How have particular conceptualizations of curriculum played out in our lived experiences
as students and teachers? And to what have we been ‘modest witnesses’?
What images of teachings – and assumptions about teaching – are implicit in different
curricula?
Is curriculum teachers’ work? If not, how are the two related?
Why does curricular reform tend to be difficult? What factors are at play
John Goodlad (1977) held that there are actually five curricula at work in schools: the
ideal curriculum is what scholars suggest ought to be taught; the formal curriculum is
what government bodies mandate to be taught; the perceived curriculum is what
teachers intend to do and think they are doing; the operational curriculum is what
informed observers see happening; and the experienced curriculum is what students
experience and believe they are learning. What is your critique of this conceptualization?
These questions are only a few of many possibilities. You are expected to contribute to the
questions we raise and consider to the direction our inquiry takes and to the quality of our
dialog.
The course will be divided roughly into two interrelated parts. In the first section (approximately
the first half) we will examine various curricular conceptions and frameworks in order to
establish a sense of the alternative possibilities that curriculum theorists have considered or
promoted. Frequently we will need to consider how a particular conceptualization rubs up
against another and what we can learn by comparison and by uncovering the underlying
assumptions implicit in the conceptualization.
In the second part of the course we will explore curriculum implementation implications. If a
particular conceptualization were implemented, what implications would we expect? Included
here are issues involved in curriculum work (e.g. student and teacher perceptions, voice, gender
or race, etc.); you will be invited to identify and issue and take the lead in discussion it in class.
Course Assignments
Given that we are under tremendous time constraints, I am proposing the following assignments:
1. Having 1 or 2 students take on one of the sections in the text and lead the
discussion of that section. In this case I am going to suggest the following order:
a. Understanding curriculum as political text
b. Understanding curriculum as gender text
c. Understanding curriculum as phenomenological text
d. Understanding curriculum as post structural, deconstructed,
postmodern text
e. Understanding curriculum as aesthetic text.
This assignment will be worth 30% and will involve the leading of a discussion
(with handouts) for an evening class. I would also like to see the inclusion of and
article by one of the leading writers in each respective field.
2. Participation 15%
3. A curriculum implementation paper worth 55% due 1 week after the end of the
class. I will discuss this paper on the first night of the class.