General Curriculum
The heartbeat of a school is the teaching and learning that occurs in the classroom. The real stuff of schooling is what happens when the classroom door closes and a teacher engages students in the lively, invigorating, complex process of teaching and learning. In the thousands of instructional hours—about 10,000 for grades kindergarten to high school graduation—that teachers have with students, all kinds of schooling results will occur. The curriculum of the school, where curriculum is appropriately identified as the planned instructional program that is to be delivered to the students, gives guidance to the teacher about what he or she should be doing with those 10,000 hours.
Wiggins and McTighe in Understanding by Design (1998) note that there is an intended curriculum, which is what the school has determined should be taught. There is also the implemented curriculum, which is what teachers actually do with the instructional hours in the classroom. Then, there is the achieved curriculum, which are the measurable outcomes that result from schooling. We can call these expected student outcomes or school-wide learning results. These are broad, life-oriented ends that the school wishes to see develop in the lives of its students.
Instructional planning by administrators and teachers aligns the expected results into the curriculum for the classroom. In essence, it takes the student-expected outcomes and connects them to the grade levels and subjects by distributing them across the instructional program. This school-planned learning program identifies goals, objectives, grade levels, subjects and instructional time and further divides content into strands, units or manageable pieces of instructional activity. These planning tools are typically identified as scope and sequence and instructional maps.
To this point, the word textbook has not been mentioned. That is intentional. Educators misuse the term textbook when they use it as a synonym for curriculum, and schools further misuse it when they, in an ongoing manner, utilize textbooks to establish the instructional program. No highly effective school allows textbooks to determine the curriculum. The United States tends to be instructionally more textbook-driven than most of the world. This may, in part, result from the absence of a national curriculum or national standards for credentialing teachers. Most of us are aware that, educationally, the United States tends not to produce students who compete well in international academic settings. This is a challenge to which the Christian school has a great opportunity and great potential.
Publishers develop materials on a content consensus model and are appropriate to be used as a tool to assist teaching and learning in the classroom. But as everyone who has taught more than one year knows, each year, the pupils in the class will have different needs from the previous year. That is why the instructional plan must be nimble and adjustable so that the curriculum of the classroom can adapt to the needs of the students. Teachers must know what content and skills are required for all students and what is optional.
The foundation of a school is its philosophy, vision, mission, core values and expected student outcomes. The staff is hired to maturely model the intended results and to teach so that they are emergent in the lives of the students. To assist teachers in this process and to help them be both efficient and effective, schools provide books and instructional support materials for students and teachers. The plethora of materials available to schools can make selection a daunting experience, but there are some basic principles and process steps that make it both invigorating and manageable for the school staff.
Schools have a basic orientation, and perhaps a policy, in regards to curricular resources. Some decide that only products from Christian publishers may be utilized in the school. Others have a mix of products from both Christian and secular publishers, and some schools use only books from secular publishers. In a 2006 ACSI study, 54 percent of 2,631 schools use only Christian textbooks in the elementary school, while a mix of secular and Christian predominates (70 percent) in the middle and high schools. Whatever the policy or practice, the fundamental assertion should be that teachers and students use the most effective resources in support of the desired learning outcomes.
Selecting instructional materials should primarily be a function of the school’s professional staff. That is not to say that there should not be involvement of others in the process. This is particularly true when delving into areas that are sensitive within the Christian community. If, for example, a school is adding a health education component to their physical education program that is going to deal with sex education, then it behooves the school staff to utilize the advice and counsel of some parents, pastors and board members. The process of selecting materials should be on a timeline that allows for counsel and input, as well as allowing the staff to prepare for the use of new resources.
Most effective schools have a planned cycle for curriculum review and textbook adoption. A typical timeline for this effort would be to conduct a curriculum review and assessment during the first semester and then proceed into a textbook review and selection process in the second semester. This then gives teachers the break between the school years to adjust lesson plans and unit maps to reflect the new materials. Many schools have found a five-year cycle, with each year being given to the review and adoption of materials for each of the major content fields. For the Christian school, core subjects would include Bible, language arts, mathematics, science and social studies. In addition, each year would include the review of other subjects offered, such as computer and information technology, physical education and health, foreign language, and the fine arts.
There are six important elements to consider when selecting textbooks for the school.
1. Subject Matter Content
Subject matter content addresses how the publisher has approached the information in the book. It answers the question about what philosophical strands have controlled what is included and excluded in the book. Academic integrity and intellectual honesty should mark any book that is selected. Content also includes the attitudes that are expressed in the information, as well as how the book would tend to stir students to think, question and reflect. In addition, it would address the quality of thinking that is required and if that quality matches with the prior knowledge of the students who will be using it. The content should provide a stretching amount academic rigor that is appropriate to the pupils.
2. Social Content
Social content relates closely to the subject matter content and the philosophical approach to worldview, social and religious issues. The book should set the table for the kinds of discussion, assignments, and worldview and spiritual development that the school desires. There should be a cultivation of topics that challenge small thinking and bring students into a wider view of the world and the place of the Christian in it.
3. Readability
Readability is critical to having materials that extend the learning level of the students. Books that are simplistic and do not challenge the development of ideas, concepts and vocabulary should not be put in the hands of the pupils. Readability includes reading rate, (speed), comprehension (understanding), and word knowledge (vocabulary). The content should be written with a readability index just above the average score of the class. Questions for students should also be reviewed for a range of readability from moderate to challenging.
4. Instructional Design
Instructional design is the plan the publisher intended the teacher and pupil engage in utilizing these materials. The critical question in the review process is if that plan is appropriate, effective and reasonably flexible in producing the emergent qualities of an educated person. It is clear from varied research in mathematics that concept mastery and increased computational skill includes extensive use of manipulatives by all students. That is an example of an instructional design element.
5. Production Quality
Production quality deals with the quality of the process that put the book together. It should be made well and bound suitable for its intended use. It should be visually attractive, and the illustrations, pictures and setup of the pages should be appropriate for a wide range of students. Pictures and illustrations should support the content on the page and be relevant to the students. Ethnic diversity is a part of this relevance. Font sizes, word count and distribution of text across a page should add to its readability and general utility.
6. Support and Supplementary Services
Support and supplementary services includes additional resources that the publisher provides to teachers and or students who will use their materials. Are posters, kits, black line masters, transparencies, CDs, DVDs and the like available to enliven instruction? Are trainers and training, a help desk and other resources available to teachers over the phone or via the Web? The quality of these supplements often makes or breaks an adoption of new materials into the school. Change of curriculum and its support materials is quite traumatic for many teachers, and these services can smooth the bumps associated with the change and the attitudes of teachers toward it.
The purpose of Christian school education is to produce a particular kind of educated person—an educated Christian person. Education is also the preparation for living a particular kind of life—a Christian life. These are not separate from each other; they are linked, woven and fully integrated if our understanding is biblical and holistic. Curriculum is the thoughtful plan and strategy of a school to accomplish this process of developing spiritually formed thinkers. Christian school education is preparing young people to live, as Paul instructed Timothy, “so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.” (I Timothy 6:16 NIV).
Derek J. Keenan is the vice president of academic affairs of the Association of Christian Schools International.
