JESSICA WIEDEMANN
Innovate | Resonate | Educate

Hidden Curriculum and Inequality

Hidden Curriculum and Inequality

In drawing from my previous post on the Hidden Curriculum there are links to other concepts that can be made. For example, the hidden curriculum can be linked to a theory in education called the Reproduction Theory. This theory is that schools are simply reproducing the status quo, only remaking what is considered a good adult at the time. That there is no room for creativity or deviation from the norm. When I think of this idea, it hits me really hard and saddens me because I have gone through the schooling system. I don’t want to think that I was just a recreation of the status quo, that I am a carbon copy of the perfect adult today.

The link to the hidden curriculum is that the concept comes from within the hidden curriculum. With the separation and the disconnect between schools and its students, there is an atmosphere created that tells students they are only a number or just another carbon copy of their teachers and/or parents. The small things that teachers are teaching students without realizing have a huge impact on their well-being and their academic ability. Teachers may sometimes unconsciously be restricting students to what it is assumed to be their highest potential based on their race, socioeconomic status or their abilities. When this happens the impacts on students can be harmful to their self-esteem or how far they think they can go later in life. Michael Apple, a professor of Education at the University of Wisconsin, talks about the role of schools in reproducing inequalities in this article. There is a big impact of the school in the reproduction of inequalities within society. The status quo that is apparently being reproduced is inequality, bias, and prejudice.

Teachers need to realize the impact their actions have on students and the potential they have to succeed academically, economically, and socially. Taking the reproduction theory into account, who decides the status quo and who decides when it needs to change?

References

Michael Apple on Ideology in Curriculum. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://newlearningonline.com/new-learning/chapter-8/michael-apple-on-ideology-in-curriculum

Featured Photo by Adam Marcucci on Unsplash.

Jessica Wiedemann

Jessica is a student at University of Regina. Her passion for helping others and advocacy for the prevention of bullying in schools has lead her to a career in education. She is a dog lover, photographer, and a food lover.

Make sure to comment below and follow her on social media, she loves to reach out and connect with you!

Curriculum as Place

Curriculum as Place

The article for this weeks reading, “Learning from Place: A Return to Traditional Mushkegowuk Ways of Knowing”, is a study of the Mushkegowuk ways of knowing and interactions between the youth and elders int he community. Much of this article is trying to facilitate communication between the youth and the elders to find more depth in what the land and their river mean in the Mushkegowuk culture and community.

Reinhabitation and decolonization are motifs that are reoccurring in this work. One example is the reintroducing of youth to traditional ways of knowing. With the interviews the youth had with the elders. The sharing of traditions, values, and ways of knowing gave the youth opportunities to learn and develop a better sense of community with their elders and others.

Another example would be the 10-day river trip the youth and the elders took together. This trip was for renaming and reclaiming the land and to have the youth make connections to the land and the river. This was in the interest of decolonization, to take back their culture and their traditions. The value of the land has a big impact on the traditions and the culture of the community.

The idea that culture and tradition depend on place is interesting when reflecting on my own traditions and family values. I have lived in the same house for my entire life, so for me this house is a big part of the history and traditions of my family. Taking this idea into account there is much of this idea that can be applied to the classroom. Connecting a practice or tradition to a place causes a deeper connection with that practice or tradition.

Being a budding secondary biology teacher there is already a connection to land and place within the subject with learning about environment and animals in their ecosystems, etc. Bringing in the connection to place could be making connections to student’s homes and places they love to go. The interest would be to preserve those places by caring about the environment or preserving nature and valuing the natural state of the environment.

Bringing in a connection to land into the classroom could increase the student’s connection to their own places, but how does a teacher foster the deepening of those connections to place or tradition in the classroom?

References

Restoule, J. P., Gruner, S., & Metatawabin, E. (2013). Learning from Place: A Return to Traditional Mushkegowuk Ways of Knowing. Canadian Journal of Education, 36(2), 68-86.

Featured Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash.

Jessica Wiedemann

Jessica is a student at University of Regina. Her passion for helping others and advocacy for the prevention of bullying in schools has lead her to a career in education. She is a dog lover, photographer, and a food lover.

Make sure to comment below and follow her on social media, she loves to reach out and connect with you!

Hidden Curriculum and its Impact on Schools Today

Hidden Curriculum and its Impact on Schools Today

The content in classrooms taught by the teacher is from the formal curriculum. This curriculum is written down in a formal and attractive document made by the provincial or federal government. Outside of this curriculum, there is much else that is learned within the classroom. The proper way to act, how to socialize, and things like dress code and organization are part of the informal curriculum called the hidden curriculum. This can affect the development of students more than the formal curriculum. Many of the rules in schools condition students to act in ways that are consistent with social norms. There are examples of dress codes, emphasis on punctuality, hard work, and following instruction. These types of underlying teachings prepare students for the work world. So, in the interest of creating citizens, workers, and fully formed adults this works quite well, sometimes. On the other hand, if teachers are to help students find who they are and realize their true potential and where they fit in society, how well do these types of structured teachings give students the freedom to explore their options as people?

Structures like those above were not always in the educational system. There is lots of history in the Canadian education system that has influenced the schooling of today. One of the parts of history that are still involved in the educational system today is an underlying idea of the factory model of schooling. This concept is that schools are machines to make young students into a perfect copy of the ideal adult in society. The structured rules and guidelines above shape students into the ideal adult for society. Following instruction and hard work are taught to create students that are good for the working world where there is a hierarchy of workers and with a boss of a company managing the work being done.

As a developing teacher, I am forming my own opinions od how schools should run and how the curriculum should be taught. With the roots of these structures still influencing schools today, will change be able to occur in these structures and will society still be similar to today’s standards for the ideal adult or will it be chaos?

Featured Photo by Hunters Race on Unsplash.

Jessica Wiedemann

Jessica is a student at University of Regina. Her passion for helping others and advocacy for the prevention of bullying in schools has lead her to a career in education. She is a dog lover, photographer, and a food lover.

Make sure to comment below and follow her on social media, she loves to reach out and connect with you!

What Types of Citizens Have We Created?

What Types of Citizens Have We Created?

Something I remember from elementary school and junior high is that during holidays like Christmas or thanksgiving there was always a food/can drive at school. We were in many ways required to bring something. In elementary school, it was more to teach us the act of giving to others and to help in our community. In junior high, there was more of a competitive vibe that went along with the community service we were supposed to feel the need as citizens to do. If we were the class who brought the most food or cans to school the reward was a pizza party for the class. I never really saw these acts to be self-less or to be for the greater good of my community. It didn’t click in that we were doing these things for others to become a better citizen. It just seemed to be something we did without thinking, I don’t distinctly remember an explanation for the actions we were doing, it was just exected. One of the only times where I did that type of community service was when my mom and I decided to try delivering packages for Santa’s Anonymous. I was young and I didn’t understand the actual meaning behind the act of doing the community service. The main focus of the community service that I was taught in my younger years was the personally responsible stage. There wasn’t any look as to why these people were hungry or didn’t have money for food. Even some of the places where the actions wanted of us came from were not from places of actual want or feeling to do it. Making something like the competitive took away from the feeling of wanting to help someone or to take your time and give it to someone else to help them. I don’t feel as though I was taught to help others because of solidarity or being a giving individual, that message did not come across in the requirements of my education to do charitable acts for others.

In curriculum, there is focus on academic and logical thinking where the topic of self, giving and spirituality of becoming part of the community. The idea of citizenship is personal and is different to each person individually. WIth the curriculum being so focused on the academic part of education there is very little room for the development of a citizen and exploring what that means for every person individually. Obviously, there cannot be parts of the curriculum made for each student individually but there can be areas of the curriculum where students can explore what being a citizen or being apart of the community and the world means to them. This would create the type of spirit of a person, outside the rigidity of Taylor’s want to make the perfect adult. Taking more time in the curriculum and education to explore what being a citizen means and how individuals want to be involved would increase the self of self in students. Understanding where one fits in society and the world creates a direction to where one sees a need for them to fill.

Featured Photo by Don Ross III on Unsplash.

Jessica Wiedemann

Jessica is a student at University of Regina. Her passion for helping others and advocacy for the prevention of bullying in schools has lead her to a career in education. She is a dog lover, photographer, and a food lover.

Make sure to comment below and follow her on social media, she loves to reach out and connect with you!

How Curriculum is Developed: Before and After

How Curriculum is Developed: Before and After

Before:

I have not really thought about the way that curriculum was developed. It always seemed to be this list of things that just appeared in teachers hands or their mailboxes when we talked about it in past education classes. There has to be someone or more than one someone who develops curriculum and makes the decisions on what students are to learn. I think some sort of panel or committee of people educated enough to know what should be taught makes a list of the things they value and that they want to have students learn. After that there is deliberation and the needless topics and pieces of information are weeded out. The order in which the topics of the curriculum are probably vaguely in order of what is most important to least important so that if only the first few points are read the more important information is seen.Cultural, political, and religious biases are most likely injected into the importance and weight put onto some topics and not others. The document is then worded and polished into a mess of words that really don’t have a clear vision of what is to be taught. Fancy letterhead is added to make it official and after that, it is deemed the new curriculum for that age group of students in that specific place. It is handed out to every teacher in that specific place and is taught even though it doesn’t entirely make sense. Since it is now the curriculum it cannot be argued and there can be no clarifications for points that are too ill-defined for teachers to actually know what it is they are to teach.

After:

the curricula for schools is created by positions in the federal government system. People in cabinet positions specialized in education are tasked with developing the curriculum but there are others who may have a say in the content of the document. other political leaders may input their ideas into what should be on the list of things to teach or if there is a deliberation process more people may see the workings of the curriculum. Implementation of the curriculum is the job of the education administration

In reading this chapter I gained a new understanding of how the curriculum is created. It changed my view of the process. The creation of curriculum has a little more substance than just one individual impacting the learning of an entire country or province. The influence of government and politics is overwhelming to me because I am not one to get involved in politics due to the sensitive subject matter involved. Due to the heavy linkage of curriculum to policy and politics, there is an aspect of curriculum that is always changing. Teachers will need to be able to adapt to these changes that come into the curriculum with the changing of political leaders and As I progress into my teaching career my goal is to become more involved with political topics and to become more of an activist for changes I believe in involving education.

What are the most worrisome aspects of education changing with the tides of politics? How much can curriculum change with the ringing in of a new politician?

Featured Photo by Jazmin Quaynor on Unsplash.

Jessica Wiedemann

Jessica is a student at University of Regina. Her passion for helping others and advocacy for the prevention of bullying in schools has lead her to a career in education. She is a dog lover, photographer, and a food lover.

Make sure to comment below and follow her on social media, she loves to reach out and connect with you!