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Table of Contents for GER Online Edition: Vol. 5 (2007, Fall)

SPECIAL FEATURE: Learning the Art of Curriculum Deliberation: One Professor's Story

by Livingston, D. (LaGrange College)

Abstract: This paper uses narrative methodology and theoretical sources found in the field of curriculum studies to tell the story of the author, who, while in his doctoral program, dismissed learning about the practical aspects of the field as being insipid time wasting activities. During this time, he chose to concentrate only on the theoretical aspects of the curriculum field in his doctoral studies. Yet, when he found himself in charge of two major efforts to change his department’s curriculum as well as reconceptualize a college-wide seminar program for first year students, those aspects of the field once perceived as insipid suddenly became critically important to his career.

Fortunately, he was attentive enough in his classes to remember one old time scholar, Joseph Schwab (1970). Schwab made an attempt to bridge the Tylerian world of prescriptive curriculum with the reconceptualist’s notion of curriculum as a racial, gender and political text. Although it was Schwab who proclaimed the field of curriculum studies as moribund in the late sixties, he also offered a resurrection for the field that was not in the least prescriptive, but was instead a process grounded in deliberation. For Schwab, and scholars such as Decker Walker and William Reid, the process of deliberation was central to curriculum development (Pinar, et al). Walker (1975) considered deliberation to be a natural method that others involved in the process could readily understand. Thus, the role of the university-base specialist is not to prescribe, but to advise. Through the lens of Reid (1978), curriculum development becomes a moral undertaking rather than a technical blueprint. Legitimate curriculum development depends on many voices that are woven into the fabric of the end product. What becomes clear after reading about the deliberative art of the practical is that the role of the curriculum specialist should not be as an expert, but as an advisor who promotes full participatory democracy through the deliberative process. Once the curriculum is viewed as a messy, indeterminate process, the university-base curriculum specialist can begin to facilitate a conversation that results in a text that is both rich and rigorous with regards to concepts and content (Doll, 1993).

What this author learned through this experience is that a prescriptive curriculum surely does not solve a curriculum dilemma, nor will an indeterminate philosophy by itself enough to get the practical aspects done. What is needed is an amalgam of perspectives that congeal into a cogent pathway for others to use as they navigate the deliberative process.

A Multivariate Analysis of Educational Productivity in Urban Georgia High Schools

by Agunloye, O. O., Sielke, C. C., & Olejnik, S. (EduVision & University of Georgia)

Abstract: Most education production studies use univariate methods, thereby compromising the very essence of the multivariate nature of education production. This study employed multivariate methods to examine and explain the relationships between three educational inputs and two outputs using a data matrix from 71 highs schools in six schools districts in the metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia area. The findings indicated statistically significant differences between districts on the composites of inputs and outputs. When the variables were grouped as multivariate functions, the economic background of students, the fiscal context of the schools, and the achievement measures occurred in this order of importance respectively. Canonical analysis indicated significant multivariate relationships between the composites of inputs and outputs. Linear multivariate production models were constructed to express the nature of the relationships between the multiple inputs and outputs.

Challenges to Teacher Control in the English Laptop Classroom

by McGrail, E. (Georgia State University)

Abstract: When teachers develop successful instructional strategies and efficient classroom management, they establish control and assert authority so that learning can take place in the classroom. The teachers’ experiences with wireless laptop technology in this study, however, demonstrate that ubiquitous access to this technology in the classroom can sometimes create challenges for teachers, from managerial, curricular, to communicative perspectives. Exploring these challenges and their complexities in this report is meant to present a more balanced picture of technology integration in education, the one that takes into account not only the affordances and the possibilities but also the challenges and the constraints of it for teacher pedagogy and student learning. The analysis concludes with implications for professional development and policy.