Case Study: Hidden Curriculum as It Concerns Science Education
Hidden Curriculum as It Concerns Science Education, the field of TESOL, Post-Colonialism, and Standardized Tests
Anne Garcia
Hongji Gui
Jing Song
Hanqing Zhang
Jinghong Zhang
Purdue University
EDCI 580 – Dr. Jake Burdick
Hidden Curriculum as It Concerns Science Education, the field of TESOL, Post-Colonialism, and Standardized Tests
Introduction
Hidden Curriculum is ever present in today’s schools, no matter the country. From Asia to North America, there are cases of Hidden Curriculum everywhere. True to its name, Hidden Curriculum is hard to detect, hard to evaluate, and even harder to change. Starting with the idea of real life experience in science education, and then delving into racism in the TESOL field itself, and ending with how standardized tests affect students, we will discuss how all of these affect curriculum. Huebner (1975) explains curricular language and meaning and then illustrates five Value Systems that reflects the current ideology in curriculum. The five frameworks as described by Huebner (1975) are: Technical, Political, Scientific, Esthetic, and Ethical. All five systems have merit and have usefulness at the right time. Fully encompassing the five frameworks would probably be the ideal way to express curriculum in the classroom. The classroom can be described as a political arena. Someone has to have the power; so who should have it and when? The Technical Value System “has a means-ends rationality that approaches an economic model” (p. 223). When this idea is used, students are viewed as the end product and the school would be the factory. The idea makes us think of cars or a radio being produced along a conveyor belt. Factory workers (teachers) insert screws, nuts, bolts, and other things to hold the pieces (knowledge) together of the final product (student). If the bolt the teacher is given doesn’t fit into the hole it’s supposed to fit into, the teacher doesn’t know what to do. The teacher doesn’t know what to
Anne Garcia
Hongji Gui
Jing Song
Hanqing Zhang
Jinghong Zhang
Purdue University
EDCI 580 – Dr. Jake Burdick
Hidden Curriculum as It Concerns Science Education, the field of TESOL, Post-Colonialism, and Standardized Tests
Introduction
Hidden Curriculum is ever present in today’s schools, no matter the country. From Asia to North America, there are cases of Hidden Curriculum everywhere. True to its name, Hidden Curriculum is hard to detect, hard to evaluate, and even harder to change. Starting with the idea of real life experience in science education, and then delving into racism in the TESOL field itself, and ending with how standardized tests affect students, we will discuss how all of these affect curriculum. Huebner (1975) explains curricular language and meaning and then illustrates five Value Systems that reflects the current ideology in curriculum. The five frameworks as described by Huebner (1975) are: Technical, Political, Scientific, Esthetic, and Ethical. All five systems have merit and have usefulness at the right time. Fully encompassing the five frameworks would probably be the ideal way to express curriculum in the classroom. The classroom can be described as a political arena. Someone has to have the power; so who should have it and when? The Technical Value System “has a means-ends rationality that approaches an economic model” (p. 223). When this idea is used, students are viewed as the end product and the school would be the factory. The idea makes us think of cars or a radio being produced along a conveyor belt. Factory workers (teachers) insert screws, nuts, bolts, and other things to hold the pieces (knowledge) together of the final product (student). If the bolt the teacher is given doesn’t fit into the hole it’s supposed to fit into, the teacher doesn’t know what to do. The teacher doesn’t know what to
References: Canagarajah, A.S. (1999). Interrogating the “native speaker fallacy”: Non-linguistic roots, non-pedagogical results. In B. Braine (Ed.), Non-native educators in English language teaching (pp. 77-92). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Chi, M Cho, H. (2005). Reading the ‘Korean wave’ as a sign of global shift. Korea Journal, 45(4), 147-182. Clement, J. (1982). Students’ preconceptions in introductory mechanics. American Journal of Physics, 50 (1), 66–71. Dewey, J. (1900). School and society and The Child and the Curriculum. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Dewey, J. (1938). Experience & Education. New York: Macmillan. Duit, R. & Treagust, D. F. (2003). Conceptual change: A powerful framework for improving science teaching and learning, International Journal of Science Education, 25(6), 671-688, DOI: 10.1080/09500690305016. Freire, P Huebner, D. (1975). Curricular Language and Classroom Meanings. In Curriculum theorizing: The reconceptualists (pp. 217-235). Berkeley, Calif.: McCutchan Pub. Jacob, M. (2014, November 18). Overtesting and China: A Cautionary Tale. Boston’s NPR News Station. Retrieved from: http://cognoscenti.wbur.org/2014/11/18/standardized-testing-jacob-murray. Kubota, R Kubota, R. (2002). The author responds: (Un) raveling racism in a nice field like TESOL. TESOL Quarterly, 36(1), 84-92. Michaels, S., A Posner, G. J., Strike, K. A., Hewson, P. W., Gertzog, W. A. (1982). Accommodation of a Scientific Conception: Toward a Theory of Conceptual Change. Science Education, 66(2), 211-227. Ravitch, D. (2014, November 20). The myth of Chinese super schools. The New York Review of Books. Retried from: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/nov/20/myth-chinese-super-schools/. Vosniadou, S., Brewer, W. F. (1992). Mental models of the earth: A study of conceptual change in childhood. Cognitive Psychology, 24, 535–585. Vosniadou, S., Ioannides, C., Dimitrakopoulou A., Papademetriou, E. (2001). Designing learning environments to promote conceptual change in science. Learning and Instruction, 11, 381–419.