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Even so, teachers do teach content and use strategies that enrich the lives of students. Their
programs, when carefully planned, do help their students grow toward responsible maturity and
commitment. They do nurture the insights and gifts of students so that those students learn to
balance independence with personal and communal responsibility. True, some students' lives
seem to display little of their influence. But they do affect the lives of many students positively,
often more than they realize. (p. 1)
Is a Neutral Curriculum
Possible?
Philosopher Mary Warnock disputes the two reasons given by those who advocate neutrality in
teaching (p. 1):
Students must draw their own conclusions from their own explorations and
constructions.
But learning would be too complex if students were to investigate everything fully. Often
they cannot understand-let alone assess-all evidence. If indoctrination means giving views
without complete reasons, then most education of younger children involves indoctrination.
(p. 3)
Teachers must present various positions fairly and leave students free to reach their own
conclusions. (p. 3)
Planning groups need to ask several key questions throughout a curriculum development process
(p. 6):
What are the overall aims of schooling?
How can schooling help humanity work toward a more just and compassionate society?
What ought to be done in the curriculum? What is the right thing to do?
How can the curriculum lead students to discover meaning? How can it connect with
their daily experiences? How can it link believing, thinking, and doing? How can it make
them both more discerning and more committed to a principled way of life?
Thiessen shows that every child is necessarily initiated into a particular religious (or irreligious)
tradition. He argues that it is not only desirable but essential that schools deliberately initiate
children into a stable, secure, and coherent tradition. (p. 9)
Christian schoolteachers need to remember three key points as they formulate their classroom
curriculum (p. 10):
They confidently initiate their students into their cultural and Christian heritage.
- Using a supposedly neutral curriculum to which they add a course in religious studies
and occasional value discussions is not sufficient.
They teach with commitment since they want to teach for commitment.
- Their commitment affects how they make decisions in the classroom, how they structure
learning, how they assess learning-and how they plan their curriculum.
What is Curriculum?
Curriculum aims are general goals that provide a framework for action. (p. 14)
PERSONAL REFLECTION:
I get the point of this chapter talking about the development of a Christian curriculum, and
defining what a curriculum is supposed to produce. As I am going to teach in the future, I myself
must know what a Christian curriculum must contain, and I must know how to teach it with my
students. I believe that my personal relationship with God helps me to connect my students with
Christ, and provide them the Christian worldview/ perspective, and I already have this thought in
my mind that, I would probably not end up in a Christian school, and so I must personally know
what Christian curriculum is about.
CHAPTER 2: CHOOSING A CURRICULUM ORIENTATION
World View
A world view is a set of basic beliefs and assumptions about life and reality. It answers what a
person believes about the nature and purpose of life in our world. It provides meaning, and it
guides and directs the thought and action of its adherents. (p.25)
PERSONAL REFLECTION:
Regardless of which category I fall into, I would be a teacher who would emphasize on the word
of God and really incorporate it in my classes. Grace would be given to students, care, love and
concern would be evident in the classroom, and understanding Gods gospel by means of
discovering his truth together day by day.
CHAPTER 3: CHRISTIAN WORLD VIEW AS A BASIS FOR CURRICULUM
World view questions for Curriculum planning. (p. 50)
Four basic worldview questions with the related biblical concepts enclosed in brackets (p. 50):
Who and where am I? What are the nature, task, and purpose of human beings? What is
the nature of the world and universe I live in? [creation]
What has gone wrong? Why do we personally, and as a society fall far short of
perfection? Where do pain and evil come from? [fall]
What is the remedy? Where do we find answers to the human plight? [redemption that
enables us to work toward restoration]
What does the future hold? Where do we find our hope? [fulfillment in a new heaven and
a new earth]
The values embedded in the curriculum are rooted in particular worldviews. Therefore, school
communities need to consider which values their programs ought to foster. People often use the
terms values and morals interchangeably. Values, however, include but are broader than morals,
as shown below:
Spiritual Values
All of life is religious in nature. All that God has given us is to be consecrated to His service.
Secularization is the attempt to push religious faith out of the public domain.
Where successful, a nonreligious faith commitment replaces faith in the God of the Bible.
Christian schools acknowledge their dependence on God through devotions, praise, and prayer.
Also, teachers model the importance of godliness and piety in their own lives, praying regularly
for and with their students as needs arise. (p. 63)
Ethical Values
Many schools have been reluctant to deal directly with not only the spiritual but also the ethical
dimension of life. This is partly the result of society's belief that moral guidelines are nothing
more than individual expressions of taste, with no need for communal acceptance. (p. 64)
PERSONAL REFLECTION:
There should be no distortion of any kind with regards to developing a Christian curriculum,
from many times, we might think that what we are doing is right, but it is entirely contradictory
to what the Bible says, so we must be careful with all the rules, and developments we put into
that Christian curriculum especially in this age now, now that there are many distortions of Gods
word twisted to fit their own personal acceptance/ gain.
CHAPTER 7: PLANNING CLASSROOM UNITS
A unit is a portion of the curriculum that focuses on a particular theme. The theme could center
on a topic and its concepts, or on an issue or problem that requires investigation to find a
desirable solution. An integral unit is a portion of a course or program that has a clear thematic
focus and (p. 168-169):
- Has internal unity
- Has external consistency
- Includes pertinent and meaningful aspects of reality that are related to, and may even go
beyond, the main discipline focus of the unit.
- Formulate your unit focus (e.g., a thematic statement, guiding questions, and intended
learning outcomes; or Egan's narrative structure with binary opposites or transcendent
values).
- Review linkages with state or provincial standards and/or curriculum guides, adding or
revising learning activities accordingly.
- Plan a schedule.
- Plan student assessment. Throughout the unit, consider what evidence will show that
you have met your intents.
- How can the topic advance understandings needed for responsible and responsive
discipleship? How can the topic introduce students to a Christian worldview, biblically
based values, and our Christian and cultural heritage?
- How is the topic relevant for your students? How can the topic expand previous
knowledge and deal with significant issues? Is the topic too general, without a dear
focus? or too narrow, restricting substantive learning?
- Can the topic meet students' learning needs?
- Are sufficient resources available? Topics can focus on themes with important concepts,
problems, or issues: A unit on light may highlight wave theory as an important concept.
- The basic values, dispositions, and commitments that you want to foster
- The enduring understandings, major concepts, and key skills that you want students to
acquire
- Does each learning activity contribute to your unit's thematic statement and ILOs? Does
the set of activities do justice to your overall theme?
- Will the activities help meaningful learning to take place? (e.g., students have the
prerequisite knowledge and aptitudes; the level of difficulty is suitable; activities are
adaptable for special needs)
- An integral unit has a dear thematic focus with internal unity, external consistency, and
meaningful links to related subject disciplines. Your personal curriculum orientation and
aims find expression particularly in the design of integral units.
- You can plan (or adapt) effective units in various ways. One such way uses the following
steps (not always in sequential order):
* Determine the significance and relevance of a topic.
* Brainstorm ideas, possibly using a planning chart.
* Formulate a unit focus and intents. A thematic statement describes the overall approach and
main thrust of a unit. It includes the basic values, enduring understandings, key concepts, and
main skills you want students to acquire. Intended learning outcomes (ILOs) specify and extend
the thematic statement.
* Design and choose suitable learning activities.
* Review and incorporate linkages with government-mandated standards and outcomes.
* Plan a schedule.
* Select your resources.
* Plan student assessment.
* Review the effectiveness of your unit.
PERSONAL REFLECTION:
The unit planning for me is much more complicated than the lesson plan, because I believe I
would be planning out the entire unit which is comprised of different lessons, but I believe
practice makes perfect, and although I may not get it right in the first few tries, but I would
continue on trying.