Curriculums

As part of my new venture into the world of education, I've started to learn quite a lot about curriculums. A curriculum is a collection of knowledge and skills organized by topic and then sequenced by grade. Although a curriculum mandates the things that must be taught, it allows teachers the freedom to teach them in whatever way they prefer.

I've begun my analysis of curriculums by studing those from Virginia, Texas, California and England. It has been an eye-opening experience; there are many similarities and differences which I plan on writing about in a future article. And from a semantic web perspective, it's a very challenging area that is rife with a myriad of taxonomies.

Seeing the variation in curriculums made me wonder:

• What effect does the choice of curriculum have on the success of an education system?
• Will curriculum designs converge over time?
• Does a curriculum contain intellectual property that can be patented?
• Why did each state in America develop its own curriculum?
• Would a school system feel proud or threatened if its curriculum was adopted by others?
• How do developing nations create a curriculum?
• How many schools in developing nations have a formal curriculum?

In addition, here are some of my thoughts on curriculums:

• I think it's good to have a selection of curriculums to choose from.
• Individual schools should be free to select whichever curriculum they choose.
• An online global database of curriculums would accelerate their evolution.
• Home schooling is likely to be the most fertile source for new curriculums.

Last of all, there's a particular interesting discussion on Lawrence Lessig's blog about the future of curriculums, although the comments seem to focus more on free lesson material.

Comments

[Bill Eisenhauer]

While not directly on the subject of your post, I did want to suggest some interesting reading to you. If you haven't read Freakonomics, you might enjoy the sections where they talk about the effect of the "No child left behind" policy. They analyze student test data to discover cheating teachers. I, at least, found it interesting and thought you might as well.

[Chris]

My wife and I have been homeschooling for about 4 years. We have spent a considerable amount of time investigating/discussing curricula. Currently, there is an explosion of curricula in the homeschooling market allowing the studious parent very customised materials. If one can afford it -- both in personal time and finances -- homeschooling can be an excellent alternative to public/private school. I am interested in your new venture as I think there is a tremendous need in this area. Your work at OSI and TME suggests that you will come up with something good -- so I will be watching.

[Tom Hoffman]

Hi Graham,
I've been following your blog since you made the leap into the education world, and I think it is time for you and I to talk. A couple years ago I arrived at the point you are now, except from a different direction. That is, I was trying to model curriculum and eventually realized that Sem Web technologies were the only thing that would capture it in all its complexity. I managed to create and test for one semester a completely RDF-based system for managing curriculum and assessment before funding for my research position dried up. SInce then (for the past year) I've worked as the manager of SchoolTool (http://schooltool.org). We'll eventually be able to fold these ideas into SchoolTool.

Anyhow, there's more on my blog, particularly here: http://tuttlesvc.teacherhosting.com/blog/blosxom.cgi/labor/technology/sem_web

--Tom