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CURRICULUM DETAILS
Recommended classroom practice
Textbooks and TLM
Evaluation schem
Details of syllabus
Stage Specific objectives
Aims education
Principles of evaluation
Criteria for good methods
Principles of content selection and organisation
Criteria for good material
CURRICULUM CORE
The curriculum details provide the teacher withactual tools of classroom practices, while the curriculumcore provides a rationale, up to a certain extent, foradopting those practices. Thus, the classroom practicescan be connected with the larger goals of education. It could be plausibly argued that this conceptual structureenables the teacher to create a dynamic ‘discourse’between theory and practice, and between educationalideals and educational practices.
When a teacher starts working with children inclassrooms, he/she has some ‘content’ that he/shewants to teach them. They also have, at least in theirminds, some ‘methods’ of teaching. They also use somematerial, minimal or elaborate, and have some ideaabout what it would mean to ‘have learnt something’and what would be the appropriate indicators of thatlearning. In other words, they have a syllabus,appropriate methodology, a set of teaching–learningmaterial, and a system of evaluation. That is theminimum academic preparation to embark uponteaching.
However, that does not mean that each one ofthese components of classroom practices is welldefined and clear in the teacher’s mind. Very often, theonly thing a teacher has is the textbook. The textbook becomes an embodiment of syllabus—all that is in ithas to be taught, and that is all that is to be taught. It becomesa methodological guide—has to be read and substantialportions memorised through repeated reading. It also becomesthe evaluation system—questions at the end of each chapterhave to be answered orally and in writing, reproducing the textfrom the book itself. Here the textbook is an embodimentof the syllabus and of all aspects of classroom practices.
But this undistinguished way of looking at thetextbook and teaching is totally unreflective. It becomesa very binding, routine, and mundane activity, whichhas very little to do with growth of children’sunderstanding and their capabilities. All because theconceptual model that guides teachers’ practices isincapable of helping them to learn from their ownexperiences, to connect their activity of teaching tohuman life, and to take into consideration children’sexperiences.
It is a necessary (only necessary, notsufficient) condition for the teachers to understand thenature and purpose of their activity to liberatethemselves and their students from the oppressivetyranny of the mundane routine imposed by such anunreflective use of textbooks. Then only can theybecome dynamic decision makers in the classroom andcan be able to engage not only with the textbook butalso with the children’s minds.
Understanding that the textbook is only a tool, aconvenient organisational mechanism to collecttogether at one place what the children are expected tolearn, and awareness of the conceptual differencebetween the syllabus and the textbook are the twoimportant conditions that enable the teacher to lookbeyond the textbook. The possibility of experiencesof children being considered within the classroom getsa little boost with this distinction.
In turn, the possibilityof choice between the textbook and other experiences/resources encourages reflection on the choices madeand, eventually, on the possibility of an improvedtextbook itself. Similar arguments could be madeconcerning conceptual distinction of teaching methods,evaluation, and between textbook and other material.
The point being deliberated here is development ofreflective teaching practices is a necessary condition for learningfrom one’s own experience. Reflective practices necessarilyrequire theoretical models to organise experience intoknowledge that can be shared, publicly examined, andused in situations other than in which this knowledgearises. It can also be argued that there is no teacherwho does not have the ideas of syllabus, pedagogmaterial, and evaluation.
But there are very few whohave them well articulated, rigorously examined, andreasonably justified on the basis of more general andwidely shared principles and assumptions. Also, thereare very few teachers who have rigorously worked outimplications of the ideas held by them for classroompractices. The teachers are neither expected to makethese distinctions nor provided with any opportunityto do so. Introduction of theoretical models, of whichthere is a variety, is a potent way of engenderingreflective practices and encouraging autonomy of theteacher. The question is not what particular model doesone have; it is whether the model an educator has canbe shared with others and debated about.However, linking classroom practices with syllabus,pedagogical choices, variety of teaching–learningmaterial, and evaluation system is just the first steptowards reflective practices. What is being taught, how,with what material, and how the learning shall beassessed can be explained and reflected in terms ofsyllabus, etc.
But what forms the basis for the choicesmade in syllabus, pedagogical decisions, textbooks, etc.?We have seen that what we called curriculum shoulddetail the reasons for these choices. But those reasonsthemselves may require further explanations andgrounds for accepting them. Even at the cost ofreiteration, let us take an example to understand thisissue.
Suppose we want children at the upper primarylevel to notice, as part of their social sciencescurriculum, the difference in treatment meted out togirls and boys in their village. And we want it to be‘learnt’ through an active engagement with observingparents when they interact with their children andinterviewing children themselves.
Suppose one asks theteacher: Why do you want the children to notice this differenceand then keep this information in mind?
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