A Brief background history: Hilda Taba was born in Kooraste, a small village near Kanepi in the South-East of Estonia

on December 7, 1902. Ass. Professor of Education and director of curriculum laboratory at the University of Chicago (1939-1945) Director of the Intergroup Education Project in New York City (1945 -1948) Director of the Intergroup Education Center at the University of Chicago (1948 1951) Professor of Education at San Francisco State University (1951 1967)
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American scholars who influenced the development of Tabas educational ideas

Edward Lee Thorndike (1874 1949) Paul Monroe (1869 1947)

Karlton Boyed H. Bode (1873 - 1953)

Washburn (1889 - )

William H. Kilpatrick (1871 1965)

John Dewey (1859 1952)

The Dalton Plan

is an educational system in which students accept as individualized contracts the work assigned to them. These contracts are actually monthly assignments. Students work at their own rates and do not depend on close guidance from their teachers, although they confer individually with the teachers. The plan is named for the Dalton, Mass., high school where Helen Parkhurst devised and, from 1913, perfected it
(New Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia - Release 6, 1993).

Four Taba Strategies

Concept Development Interpretation of Data Application of Generalization Resolution of Conflict

Questions teachers should as themselves To ensure learning:

How should facts be identified for mastery?

What knowledge is the most lasting?

How is content to be used for application? How can achievement be best assessed?

Some Hilda Tabas philosophical ideas of curriculum development **The development of new curricula and programs is more effective, if it is based on the principles of democratic guidance and on the well-founded distribution of work. The emphasis is on the partnership based on competence, and not on administration. **The renovation of curricula and programs is not a short effort but a long process, lasting for years.

Development of curricula.
An underlying idea in Tabas curriculum model is the notion of a spiral curriculum. Believes inductive teaching strategies should be used to develop concepts, generalizations, and applications. three levels of content organization 1. key ideas, 2. organizational ideas 3. facts

Her contributions still being used include

Intercultural education through her work on the Intergroup Education in Cooperating Schools in the 1940s. She advocated planning for coherent programs, She broadened the scope beyond race to include religion and class (but not gender). *Her general strategy for developing thinking through social studies curriculum have significantly influenced curriculum developers of 1960s and early 1970s. *Also, many general principles and ideas of curriculum design developed by Hilda Taba belong to the foundations of modern curriculum theories, and are frequently referred by other authors.

http://www.mith2.umd.edu/WomensStudies/ReadingRoom/BookReviews/ bending.html

Tabas works on curriculum development are not obsolete as they deal with the fundamentals of curriculum design still in practice today.

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