12 The Taught Curriculum - Strategies for Teaching Today’s Students
12 The Taught Curriculum - Strategies for Teaching Today’s Students
The needs of the child and the demands of the curriculum are mediated by teachers. –John Dewey
Introduction
The “taught curriculum” is defined as that which teachers actually teach day-by-day (Glatthorn, 2000). In practice, the written curriculum guides the taught curriculum, but in many cases, it is the textbook, assessments, and/or teacher preferences that influence what is taught. This is compounded by the fact that standards may vary from state to state, and textbooks do not often match the written curriculum because textbook series are written for markets that are nationwide. In addition, students come to classrooms with varying needs, abilities, and interests. These factors, coupled with changes in culture, make it apparent that to be effective, curriculums must change to be responsive to the students and to the teachers.
Essential Questions
- What is the “taught curriculum,” and what influences impact this dimension of curriculum?
- Why are changes in curriculum inevitable?
- What is the “hidden curriculum?”
- How and why has the learning curve gotten steeper for educators?
- What are the characteristics of effective professional development efforts or programs?
Inquiry-Based Learning: Developing Student-Driven Questions–Elementary
Student-Centered Learning—Secondary
The Essence of the Taught Curriculum
The deep structure of the taught curriculum–how concepts and ideas connect and contribute to understanding a subject area—is not obvious to students as they learn (Darling-Hammond, et. al, 2005). The “hidden curriculum” of the classroom (Anyon, 1980) explains how teachers create conditions that enable or disable certain kinds of learning and identify construction for students. This is often invisible to students and novice teachers (Darling-Hammond, et al, 2005).
The hidden curriculum is not written or taught as a part of a course or subject, but it can heavily influence the values, norms and beliefs expected of students. The hidden curriculum usually begins early in children’s education. They learn to form opinions and ideas about their environment and their classmates, and the accepted ways of acting at school, which leads them to be either accepted or not accepted by the teacher or other students. Some teachers encourage banter and humor; others do not. If there is a high-stakes, testing environment, students pick up on the fact that year-end test scores are what really count. Kids absorb and internalize the hidden curriculum through observation and participation in the classroom and social activities.
To maximize student learning that is in the written curriculum, teachers must have a thorough knowledge of their discipline and adapt this to the students so they can build concepts, connect ideas, and unravel misconceptions. To do this effectively, teachers need to understand student differences in culture, abilities, and approaches to learning. Teachers need to inquire s