Monthly Archives: May 2014

Perennialism and Curriculum

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Perennialism is a specific educational philosophy and is derived from ancient Greek philosophies such as idealism and realism. One of the major tenets of perennialism is that knowledge that has withstood the test of time is what is needed to be taught. The goals of education have been the same throughout time. Human nature is constant and mankind has the ability to understand the truths of nature.

Common characteristics of a perennialist curriculum is a subject centered lessons, organized body of knowledge, and a focuses on developing the thinking skills of students. Lecture, question, and answer are common instructional methods. There is no difference among students and everyone learns the same thing at the same speed.  The “three Rs” are one form of this type of curriculum.

A more recent view of perennialism and the teacher is available here

Methods of Collecting Data

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After developing a research question, it is necessary to determine how data collection will take place. There are several different ways and the list below is a partial list of various methods

  • Interview method-Data is collected through a face to face encounter. This is a method associated with qualitative research
  • Questionnaire method-The respondents complete a survey or some other instrument. This method can be for either qualitative or quantitative
  • Observation method-Watching for particular behaviors as they are exhibited by an individual or group. This can be for either qualitative or quantitative as well.
  • Experiment method-This method establishes cause and effect between of variable(s) in controlled conditions. This is a quantitative method.

 

Existentialism & Curriculum

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Existentialism is a post-WWII philosophy that has had influence in curriculum. This philosophy’s tenets include people choices define who they are. For example, I am choose to teach this makes me a teacher. Other tenets of this philosophy is individualism, freedom of choice, and personal fulfillment. Choice is what often leads to self-fulfillment.  Lastly, there is a somewhat strong anti-authority streak in existentialism in which proponents of this philosophy are against group conformity as they are seen as stripping people of choice.

In education, existentialism can be seen in curriculum’s that emphasize study choice in what they study. The arts are a strong component as well as other forms of the humanities. Self-expression is also important and experiences that contribute to individual choice are highly valued.

There are many supports of this philosophy. Among them includes Maxine Greene, George Kneller, and Van Cleve Morris. Interestingly, this philosophy is unpopular with traditional educators because it is sometimes seen anti-group and establishment beliefs.

Sampling Part II

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Random sampling has already been discussed. This post deals with non-random sampling which is a sample that is selected in a deliberate manner.  Below are a few of the more common forms of non-random sampling

  1. Convenience sampling is the selection of individuals who are available for the study.  Whoever is free and willing is a part of the study.
  2. Purposive sampling is the inclusion or participants based on a criteria developed by the researcher. For example, a researcher wants to only include middle age male teachers in their study. Individuals who meet this criteria will be asked to be a part of the study.
  3. Quota sampling is used when a researcher collect data from a certain number of people from several sample units or sub-populations who meet certain criteria. For example, at a university, selecting students from several different departments such as English and Education to be a part of the study. Whoever is from either department may be a part of the study
  4. Snowball sampling is a technique in which the researcher locates one member of the sample population and collects data from them. The participant then recommends other people the researcher can collect data from. An example, would be a detective interviewing various people about a crime. One witness suggest someone else the detective should talk to. This form of sampling is common in qualitative research.

Sampling is normally influenced by circumstances. Random is often preferred to non-random both the context often dictates that a researcher do the best they can and choose a technique that is appropriate for the situation.

Pragmatism

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Pragmatism a.k.a experientialism is in many ways a daughter of realism. This view holds that knowledge changes and are relative. This is in contrast to the tenet of idealism that truth is absolute.  In pragmatism, the learners in their environment are constantly changing and the learner develops knowledge through problem-solving. Everything must be tested to be tentatively accepted.  This concern for testing ideas is derived from the scientific method. Critical thinking is important for people who support pragmatism. In addition, the teaching focuses more on exploring ideas rather than explaining them. The focus of the curriculum is upon the learner’s experiences with an interdisciplinary approach. As they inquire and discover students are having experiences that prepare them for life. The biggest proponent of this philosophy of learning was John Dewey.

There is more to learn about pragmatism here

Sampling

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There are a plethora of sampling approaches in research. Below is a partial list of the more common approaches.  Please remember that the population is the group you are studying. The sample is a smaller portion of the population. Often it is not practical to collect data from an entire population. Therefore, researchers collect data from a sample and make inferences about the population based on the sample.

The sampling approaches below are all forms of random sampling, which is a process in which any member of the population has an equal likelihood of being selected as part of the sample. Non-random sampling will be dealt with in a future post.

  1. Simple random sampling. The sample is derived via random numbers or lottery from the population
  2. Systematic sampling-The selection of every kth element in the population. For example, selecting every fifth student at a school
  3. Stratified sampling. Subdividing the population into subgroups and taking member at random from each subgroup. This helps to replicate the proportions of the population in the sample. For example, if a school is 75% men and 25% women these same proportions need to exist in the sample population
  4. Cluster sampling. Random selecting clusters from a population that is spread over a large geographical area.  For example, subdividing a country into provinces and then randomly selecting some of the provinces to participate in the study

The sampling approach you used is determined by the purpose of the research, finances, and practicality.

Levels of Measurement Part II

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There are four levels of measurement used in statistics. They are nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio. This post focuses on the last two levels of measurement of interval and ratio.

Interval level of measurement is used to classify and differentiate between categories based on how different they are.  The difference is determined by amount and direction.  The difference can also be discrete (finite difference) or continuous (infinite amount of difference). An example of an interval level is temperature. Temperature indicates the difference in hot and cold, you can tell the direction whether it is increasing or decreasing, and it is continuous in that there are an infinite number of potential temperatures.

Ratio level of measurement is the same as interval with the only difference being that it has an absolute zero. One example is weight, it has all the characteristics of a continuous interval variable (there is direction, amount, and infinite amount of difference). The only difference is that nothing can have a negative weight. The temperature, on the other hand, can go negative (for the sake of illustration please ignore that temperature has an absolute zero).

Curriculum & Realism

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Aristotle is credited with the development of realism. Realism is about viewing the world in terms of what a person experiences through their senses. This is almost the opposite of idealism and its focus on the mind. Realist focus on experiencing things through as you may have guessed, experiences. Experiments in many ways are really just experiences people have had that were conducted in a scientific manner.

Within education, realism can be seen through proponents of experimentalism which emphasizes students have various experiences as part of their education. These experiences can be something as simple as a field trip. Hands on activities in the classroom is another outgrowth of realist thinking.  Science is above the liberal arts because of its engagement with the real world in a concrete manner. The goal of realism in education is to encourage active learning through engaging as many senses as possible. Through the avenues of the senses learning takes place.

You can read more about realism at this link

Idealism & Curriculum

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Idealism is a philosophy developed by Plato.  One of the many tenets of idealism is that truth can be found through reasoning, intuition, and divine revelation. There is such as thing as absolute truth and the world is composed of ideas primarily.

For curriculum, idealist concepts come through when people believe that learning is mostly an intellectual process. Teaching connects ideas together when teaching the students. The education is highly structured and one of the best examples of this is the liberal arts education. The humanities are viewed as the most important subjects because these fields deal with ideas. The sciences are lower on the scale because they deal with observation.

Many famous educators supported idealism. Among them includes William Harris, Fredrich Froebel, and William Bennett. A more detailed analysis of idealism and teaching is available here.

Levels of Measurement

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A variable can be measured several different ways. This variety in variable measurement is broken down into four levels. These levels are nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio. In this blog, I will talk about nominal and ordinal and I will address interval and ratio in the next post.

Nominal data is data that is broken into separate and discrete categories. The categories are mutually exclusive which means that no data can be in more than one category. Nominal data is also exhaustive in that all the data must go into one of the categories.  This is one of the weakest forms of measurement because differences within the category cannot be accounted for because all data is forced to conform to a category. Examples of nominal measurement would be gender because everyone who responds must be placed in one category or the other and there is no way for someone to be half male half female when using nominal classifications.

Ordinal measurement is used for ranking data.  At this level, data is still nominal but the order matters. An example would be class standing which is freshman, sophomore, junior,  and senior. The data is nominal in that there are categories but the order matters as a senior is a higher level in comparison to a freshman. There is still no attempt to differentiate within categories which weakens this level of measurement.

What level of measurement to use is dependent on what your research questions are. Research is guided by the question you ask.

Curriculum Development & Philosophy

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Philosophy is the collection of attitudes, beliefs, experiences, and worldview that people have. These perceptions of reality are summarized and defined as a personal philosophy.  A person’s philosophy influences their thinking and actions. Within curriculum,  a teacher’s philosophy impacts how they design and implement curriculum.

For example, a teacher who believes that general knowledge is most important will emphasize this in their curriculum. Their philosophy or belief is that general knowledge will prepare students to handle many different problems in life. Where these beliefs come from is the teacher’s own experiences and the values that were passed down to them from their parents and teachers.

There are several different philosophies that we are going to look at over the next few post. Each of these philosophies continues to impact curriculum not only in the US but worldwide.

Classification of Variables

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In addition to the types of variables, there also several ways to classify variables. Two ways to classify variables is experimental and mathematical.

Experimental classification is used to classify variables by the function they serve in the experiment. In experimental research, we have independent and dependent variables.  Independent variables are variables that are controlled by the researcher and are believed to have an effect on the dependent variable. Dependent variables are affected by the independent variables.

For example, let’s say we want to see how sleep affects GPA. We would manipulate the amount of sleep a person gets, which is the independent variable to see how their GPA changes as GPA is the dependent variable influenced by sleep.

The second type of classification is mathematical. A continuous variable is can assume an infinite number of values. An example would be weight or height.

A discrete variable consists of a finite number of values. Examples include gender and the number of computers. You can’t be half a gender you are a man or woman.

What type of variable to use depends again on the research questions of the study.

Types of Curriculum

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There are many different types of curriculum. Below is a partial list of the many forms of curriculum.

  1. Formal curriculum: The goals and objectives students are expected to achieve as they learn. This is written down and is the basis for most teaching
  2. Informal curriculum: The goals and objectives of the school that students learn but are not written down in an official capacity
  3. Operational curriculum: This is the parts of the formal curriculum that teachers use in their classroom. It is not practical to teach everything and what is taught is the operational aspect of curriculum.
  4. Null curriculum: The parts of the curriculum that are not taught to students. There are many constraints to teaching such as time, testing, field trips, etc. These as well as other factors limit what can be taught, which leads to some concepts being left out.
  5. Hidden curriculum: The values of the teachers and peers that students learn in school. It is not explicit but learned through social observation

This is not all forms of curriculums but it provides some basic information.

Types of Data

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There are two basic types of data and they are qualitative and quantitative. Qualitative data is data that is often put into categories not based on numbers but often some other form of commonality. For example, if a person conduct interviews about student satisfaction, certain concepts, such as good teaching, may be repeated several times by different students. These statements are combined into one category of student satisfaction, which would be good teaching. There is no continuum of data in qualitative it is strictly the development of categories based on a criteria developed by the researcher.

Quantitative data is numerical data that is often based on a continuum. Example of quantitative data is such things as height, weight, and age.  You can treat quantitative data like qualitative by developing categories but this is a discussion for the future.

When to collect qualitative and quantitative data depends on the research questions of the researcher. Neither is superior to the other and it is the context that determines what is best.

 

Sources of Data

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In research, there are two major forms of data, primary and secondary. Primary data is data that comes directly from a source by the researcher usually. Secondary data is data that was collected previously by someone else.

Examples of primary data includes interviews, surveys, and experimentation. Examples of Secondary data includes the use of others data results, government reports, and major studies.

Deciding what type of data to use depends on the research questions of the study. In many ways, it is the questions you are trying to answer that influences where and what data to use

 

Approaches to Curriculum

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A person’s approach to curriculum is really just their philosophy or beliefs about how curriculum should be created. There are many different approaches to curriculum and the same approach could have multiple names. Among the most prominent approaches are the behavioral approach and the academic approach.

The behavioral approach is focused on, as you can guess, behavior.  This approach is grounded in scientific principles. Everything the students do must be observable as this is the evidence that the student has achieved the goals and objectives, which are also based on observable behaviors.  All activities lead to students being able to do whatever the goals and objective specify. Even today, most curriculums are behavioral focus as this is very easy to assess.

The academic approach is a more focused on the structure of knowledge and organization of subject matter into subjects. The training and development of the mind is what is most important. Observable actions are not as significant in this approach. When people adopt this approach they believe in training the mind like a muscle. A strong muscle can be used in many different ways just as a strong mind can be used in many different occupations in life.

Behaviorist focus on training people to develop skills while academics focus on training the mind to think. In reality, these two approaches complement one another and help to make well-rounded individuals. Focusing on one over the other is not the wisest way to develop students.

Population vs Sample

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In statistics, one of the most fundamental concepts is the population and sample. A population is all the member from a group. For example, if my population is the United States, I would have to collect data from everyone in the country. This is to say the least, very challenging.

To deal with this, must studies take a sample from the population. A sample is a portion of the population. Continuing our example, instead of collecting data from every in the US I would collect data from several hundred or thousand depending on the research question of my study.

There are several different techniques to sampling that will be covered later.  For now, the most important thing to remember is that your research questions and circumstances of the study influence what steps you take. There is rarely one way to do this.

What is Curriculum?

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Curriculum comes from the Latin word currere which means to run. In many ways curriculum is used to ran the race of education as demonstrated through learning. Curriculum can be seen in many ways among them includes…

  1. A plan for achieving educational goals
  2. The experiences that an educational environment provides its students.
  3. An organized field of study
  4. As a subject matter such as science and or math, which is the most traditional way to view curriculum.

Regardless of how a person sees curriculum. The purpose of curriculum is to provide some sort of framework in which learning can take place. How that framework is designed and how it works is left to the discretion of the educator.