Decker F. Walker (2003). Fundametals of curriculum — Passion and professionalism, 2nd ed. Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah, New Jersey. ISBN 978-113-814579-5
作者 Walker 是美國史丹福大學教育研究院 (Stanford Graduate School of Education) 教授；他出生於 1942 年，1963 年 Carnegie-Mellon 的物理學士，1966 年自然科學碩士；1963–67 之間在 Pittsburgh 擔任高中科學教師，1971 年史丹福大學博士。 他在史丹福負責研究生階段的 Curriculum 課程達三十年。 第一個十年之後，他動念撰寫一本讓自己滿意的教科書； 寫了十年，即為此書的第一版（1990），再十年，修訂為我讀的第二版。 如書名副標題 Passion and Professionalism 所示， 作者認為 Curriculum 是一門專業 (profession) 但相對也表達他不認為 Currculum 是一個學術領域 (academic discipline) 的立場。 而這本書的寫作宗旨是「務實」。
我讀的是中大圖書館的財產，但我在書裡留下了印記。 現在該還書前，我清除黏貼的標籤，記在這裡。
This book is practical in two senses of the term. First, it is focused on currculum practice. Theory, research, and other important facets of curriculum studies are presented as vitally important to practice, but the primary subject of the book is what teachers and others do that students experience. The book is practical also in a more philosophical sense. Philosophers since Aristotle have distinguished between theoretical questions whose object is finding the truth and practical questions whose object is deciding what to do. This book takes the fundamental questions of curriculum studies to be practical questions and the primary task of curriculum inquiry to be informing decisions about what to do.
A curriculum is a particular way of ordering content and purposes for teaching and learning in schools. Content is what teachers and students pay attention to when they are teaching and learning. ... Purposes are the reasons for teaching the content. Among broad reasons for teaching school subjects are to transmit the culture, to improve society, or to realize the potential of individual students. 〔文化承續、社會改善、個人發展〕
If we teach arithmetic in order to develop skill at calculation, students will come away with a certan set of knowledge and skills, a certain estimate of their own ability at mathematics, and a certain idea of what constitutes mathematics....
The curriculum also shapes Americans' identity as a people. A people have a common heritage only if every new generation encounters that heritage.
Mathematics has become the basis of our technological economy, but it is a different mathematics than we have been teaching. It is a discrete mathematics, for instance, rather than a continuous one, and a mathematics of inquiry, problem solving, discovery, and proof rather than one of numerical computation.
[Before 1830] the small fraction of American youth who continued their schooling beyond the primary school attended private secondary schools called academies. Academies offered basic instruction in subjects required for entrance to college.
- Practical studies: modern languages, geography, mechanical philosophy (physics), accounting, surveying, navigation.
- Ornamental studies: classical languages and literature.
The big story of the period between 1830 and the Civil War was the success of the crusade for universal free public education. Inspired by the tireless compaigning of leaders Horace Mann and Henry Barnard, reformers established free public schools in Massachusetts (1827), Pennsylvania (1834), and later in the other states. Massachusetts enacted the first compulsory school attendance law in 1852. [L. A. Cremin (1961). The transformation of the school: Progressivism in American education 1876–1957. New York: Knopf.] 〔這裡只說美國，英國稍早，歐陸更早〕
The progressive era in American education coincided with a period of rapid educational expansion. More students came to school and stayed longer than ever before. Official government statistics report that less than 14 million students, barely 50% of the school age population, attended elementary and secondary schools (public and private) in the United States in 1889. By 1930 the same source records nearly 28 million enrolled, over 70% of the school age population. In 1890, less than 5% of American 17-year-olds were high school graduates. By 1930 nearly 30% graduated. School was becoming the place where nearly all American children spent nearly all of their childhood.
[In 1890 the classics — Latin, Greek, and ancient history — dominated the secondary school curriculum ...] Colleges lowered entrance requiremtnts, sponsored preparatory schools on campus, and even instituted part-time, nondegree programs. Still, every year fewer students came to college able to read Latin and Greek. Soon many colleges dropped classics as an entrance requirement. As early as 1886,under President Charles W. Eliot's leadership, Harvard began to accept advanced mathematics and physics in place of Greek as an admission requirement. ... By 1915 fewer than fifteen major colleges still required four years of Latin for the B.A. degree.〔1930 美國中學課程已經有 General Math, Business Math, Algebra I and II, Geometry, and Trigonometry。〕
The Committee of Ten and the later Committee on College Entrance Requirements combined botany, zoology, and human physiology into a single biology course. They recommended that secondary schools offer a standard sequence of three science courses: biology, chemistry, and physics. The committees reorganized the other school subjects similarly. The NEA virtually coined the term “social studies” when it appointed a Committee in 1917.
Scientific studies had many early successes, but their limitations gradually became evident. They were expensive, time-consuming, and equivocal — so equivocal that they rarely resolved important educational disputes. ... Definitive results required a series of studies, but who could wait years?
〔在 traditional academic and vocational curriculum 以外，所謂 General Education 應運而生〕 General mathematics courses and general science courses were developed. ... In 1947 report of the Education Policies Commission, the leadership of the National Education Association, expressed the rationale for these changes quite well. The report, entitled “The Imperative Needs of Youth of Secondary School Age,” listed the needs of youth that should serve as a basis for curriculum reform. 〔非常接近 Spencer 在十九世紀列出來的建議清單〕
〔在中國也非常出名的道爾頓制，難道在美國只實驗了一學年？〕 The Dalton Plan, organized in the high school in Dalton, Massachusetts, in 1918–19, involved fairly lengthy and complex individual contracts occupying a week or more of students' time and requiring use of the library and sometimes other outside resources....
Eight-Year Study begun in 1933. In this massive study cooperating colleges agreed to admit graduates of an experimental group of progressive secondary schools solely on the basis of their high school records and recommendations. The results, published in 1942, showed the students from the experimental schools to be fully comparable in academic achievement and superior in such extracurricular and cocorricular activities as class offices, student newspaper, and other voluntary student activities. ... But by the time its results were published, World War II riveted the public's attention, and by the time the public was once again free to attend to education, other issues took priority. 〔很多事情都被 WWII 打斷而忘了繼續，例如 Klein 計畫〕
Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, pioneer of the nuclear navy, spoke of education as America's first line of defense.〔這一節 overview 非常精彩〕
Even liberals, such as historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., criticized multicultural education programs ... This controversy put the brakes on what had been a rapidly growing movement ofr cultural diversity (1990s). 〔一直採煞車到川普〕
Using history to make curriculum decisions. 〔這一節發展不足〕
Another early pioneer developed a computer language called Logo, designed for easy learning by children and other novices. 〔即 BCC16 中引進的「青蛙 Drop」小遊戲，李易霖用 Java 做出來〕
A curriculum theory is different from a scientific theory. ... Scientists are supposed to accept or reject theories based on logic and evidence, regardless of their persoanl ideals, values, or priorities. Curriculum theories, by contrast, are about ideals, values, and priorities. They employ reason and evidence, but in the service of passion. ... They are not curriculum theories unless they are about ideals.
In Plato's ideal Republic, early childhood educaion would consist of gymnastics for the body and music for the soul. (Music at that time included reciting of literature and poetry to musical accompaniment.) ... Their teachers would expose them to stresses and temptations of various kinds — pains, pleasures, frightening sights, and challenges to their wit, skill, and character. Those who emerged from these tests whole, unspoiled, and excellent would undergo further training leading toward leadership responsibilities within the state. Those who failed these test would be apprenticed to various trades and crafts depending on their talents and inclinations. When they finished school the young men in the Republic would serve a compulsory 3-year basic military training. As part of their military training, young soldiers were to be taught arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy.
In recent decades criticism has established itself as an independent variety of currculum theorizing. Herbert Kliebard's (1930–2015) critique of the famous and influential Ralph W. Tyler's (1902–1994) rationale offers an excellent illustration of curriculum theory as criticism.
Let us critically analyze Howard Gardner's (b.1943) theory supporting the multiple abilities curriculum as expressed in his book The Disciplined Mind (1999). ... He briefly recounts the main findings of the cognitive revolution in psychology, leaving readers with a strong impression that cognitive science has established a firm foundation of reliable knowledge on which to base new educational practices.
Language and logic, including mathematics,〔數學作為一種語言〕 realy are special among the spectrum of human abilities. If humans were deprived of music and the kinesthetic arts of expression, for instance, civilization and human lives would be much poorer, but civilization would still exist and humans would still be recognizably human.
Challenges to the argument from cognitive science for Deep Understanding. Any fair-minded reader would concede that experts have a deeper, richer, better understanding of their specialty than novices have and concede, too, that students would be better off with the expert's understanding. What is not yet clear is how much we should be willing to sacrifice to achieve what degree of deeper understanding on the part of how many more students.〔是的「犧牲」！此話挑戰 Deep 而尚未挑戰 Understanding，後者亦禁不起追問〕
In the 1960s, Jerome Bruner conjectured that deep understanding of a few topics would transfer, enabling students to learn related material more quickly and easily and thus justifying the extra time. Gardner relies on a similar argument but he does not develop it and presents no evidence for it.
〔也許 transfer 的不是那個 understanding 本身，而是獲得 understanding 的那個歷程的經驗〕
Some other [curriculum] reforms, in contrast, focused on teaching thinking skills. ... Curriculum reforms in mathematics and science focused on achieving deeper understanding of key ideas. The Connected Mathematics Project developed at Michigan State University is a mathematics curriculum for middle school students that is designed to foster deep understnding of key mathematical ideas. Students define and solve authentic mathematical problems themselves in mathematical investigations they do with the guidance of the teacher. ... The Education Commission of the States lists on its website 26 entire-school reform models and 18 skill- and content-based reform models.
In the 1970s, England, Sweden, and several other European countries enacted comprehensive education reforms that transformed their secondary schools from differentiated systems with academic and vocational tracks to comprehensive systgems such as the United States. 〔德國並未跟進。臺灣也想學樣，但是不成，在完中與技高之間擺盪。 中等教育沒有整併成功， 卻轉而把高等教育合流了 — 大幅消滅了高等專科學校〕
When a public demand for a return to basic skills instruction was being heard everywhere in the mid-1970s, the NCTM urged its members not to relax their pursuit of problem-solving and other higher order skills in a rush to cater to the public's demands for the mathematics of checkbook-balancing and change-making. ... Even though these agencies have no official power over the curriculum and are not mentioned in laws or constitutions, they do exercise effective control over their own decisions, and these do influence local curriculums.
Genuine achievements are thrown out along with excesses and failures and new mistakes replace the old. For example, some of the approaches to mathematics teaching developed in the post-Sputnik projects were valuable additions to the curriculum — emphasis on problem-solving, for example, and teaching about proof — while others — set theory, number bases other than 10, terminological fastidiousness — were more esoteric. Yet all were jettisoned when the New Math fell out of favor. Math programs were developed that emphasized drill and practice on number facts, balancing checkbooks, and other everyday mathematics skills. Perversely, the ultimate beneficiaries of the millions spent on the New Math and similar curriculum reforms may be children of other countries. Japan, the Soviet Union, China, and Israel learned from the American experience and selectively incorporated the best features of the new curriculums into their own programs.
Curriculum is a profession, not a discipline, and so research is a secondary activity, as it is in other professional fields such as business, law, medicine, and social work. Professional practice is primary, and research has value when and if it helps to improve practice. Research is vitally important in curriculum, but as a means to the end of improving curriculum practice.
National Herbart Society for the Scientific Study of Teaching (now National Society for the Study of Education) was founded in 1895. German universities were then the acknowledged leaders in studying education scientifically, and many who would later be leaders of the movement in the United States studied in Germany, includig John Dewey (1859–1952) and William James (1842–1910，美國心理學之父). ... Franklin Bobbit (1876–1956) and W. W. Charters (1875–1952) led the way in scientific curriculum-making, but even Dewey, a philosopher, saw his work in education as an application of the scientific spirit.
Philosophy, history, cross-cultural studies, and criticism are the most prevalent forms of humanistic scholarship in curriculum studies. H. Grobman (1968) Evaluation Activities of Curriculum Projects summarizes the evaluations of the post-Sputnic curriculum projects. NLSMA: National Longitudinal Study of Mathematical Abilities, 1968–72, 25 reports by Wilson, Cahen and Begle.
Carleton Washburne's pioneering work-books were developed through a series of small studies that today would be termed action research that he and his faculty carried out in the schools of Winnetka, Illinois. ... Observation of 20 fifth-grade math and social studies classes in the Chicago area for 3 weeks running in 1987 found that activities in all math classes looked similar. Four activities — seatwork, whole class recitations, tests, and teacher-led checking of work — occupied two-thirds of the time in math classes.
You must choose early which tradition of inquiry to steep yourself in. You can learn about other traditions, too, but you want deep understanding and fluent mastery of one tradition.
One indication that we learn from a study is that its findings surprise us. What we learn may be something more than factual knowledge, such as a change in how wo think about something, a change in the questions we ask, or the methods we use.