Where does our curriculum come from?

When I first began this degree program I was very curious as to who wrote the NB curriculum and how they decided which direction to take it in.  I noticed that a colleague of mine (one of our district math mentors) was listed as an author on the Math 4 curriculum.  When I asked her about it, she said, “Yes, geometry, that’s me”.  She shared that part of the process is being knowledgeable about the lastest math research and dialogue in the field.  This concept was reinforced to me in Oliva and Gordon’s text in Ch. 2 when they referred to curriculum being a product of its time, Axiom 2 (Oliva and Gordon, Developing the Curriculum, p. 23). 

Another colleague of mine was involved in the process of creating the Music Curriculum in NB for K-5.  She shared with me (some time ago) about the work that was done to build upon foundational skills of music in the curriculum and grow them each year.  I can see this reflecting Axiom 6, “curriculum development is basically a decision making process” (p. 29).  She, and other music teachers have the knowledge and experience in the field of music to determine which skills are most important to know (basic knowledge of music) and how to grow them in our schools.

Knowing teachers who have actually been involved in the process of creating curriculum documents has taken away some of the mystery of how we arrived at the documents we have.  I am glad to know that teachers have been part of the process, that they can look to the document and say, “yes, that’s me”.   This relates to the Null reading where he describes the sources that Ralph Tyler believes curriculum devlopers should ‘take into account.  He explains for example, that curriculum makers should draw upon the knowledge of learners, the insight of subject specialists…”(Null, Inquiring into Curriculum, p. 480).  Both of these ladies are specialist teachers in their field.  They have practical classroom experience in teaching their subject area.  Conversations with them and the credits inside the curriculum documents has led me to believe that the government does take the work of our teachers and acknowledge their expertise in the field into account when creating these documents.