Curriculum Structures and Frameworks
Curriculum Built on Standards
What Are Standards?
In broad terms, standards fall into three major groups: academic, SCANS, and skill standards.
Academic Standards
First to emerge were academic standards in traditional subject areas such as mathematics, science, and history. Today, there are published national and state standards for more than a dozen subject areas, and several of these have guided further definition among the many emerging state standards.
SCANS Standards
A second area of standards is best represented by the U.S. Department of Labor's SCANS project, which defined "employability" skills. Employability skills are broader than traditional occupational competencies and represent skills that are useful in most jobs. Also within this category are skills that are important for all students to acquire, namely, those having to do with personal education, career, and life planning. These skills, the best examples of which have been compiled by the National Occupational Information Coordinating Committee, speak not only to counselors but also to curriculum designers and teachers. In a new paradigm, career-planning skills are built into the curriculum as an area of knowledge that is important for students to acquire. With the rapid evolution of technology and work and the changing nature of employer-employee relationships, the ability to plan one's career has become critically important.
The know-how identified by SCANS is made up of five competencies and a three-part foundation of skills and personal qualities needed for solid job performance.
Workplace Know-How
Competencies - Effective workers can productively use:
The Foundation - Competence requires:
Skill Standards
A third area of standards, often labeled "skill standards," comprises sets of specifications setting forth the knowledge, skills, and habits of mind necessary to perform in given occupational settings. Unlike the academic and employability standards, which have no clear antecedent in educational practice, occupational skill standards represent an evolution of traditional vocational competencies.
If the development of standards provides a forum for debate and an opportunity for consensus to emerge from divergent viewpoints, the resulting standards should be a useful point of reference in educational reform. Resistance to the use of standards arises from early misconceptions that should be corrected. First, it should be noted that standards, academic or otherwise, do not define the totality of content for courses or curricula. Rather, the standards establish a baseline framework representing a consensus concerning important concepts. These concepts must be considered in defining the expectations of the educational process relating to student accomplishment. Second, standards are in no way intended to define issues of personal or individual choice or infringe on constitutional freedoms that are essential to a democratic society. Standards are appropriate where reasonable consensus exists concerning the universal benefit that will result from their application and where there is a clear understanding that they do not intrude on individual freedoms.
Textbooks, reference materials, teacher expertise, and the many supporting materials used in the educational process are not replaced by standards. The rich variety and myriad details of all the subject fields cannot be captured in standards. Attempts to do so have proven to be cumbersome at best, and the results are not likely to find wide use.
Steps to Reforming Curricula Based on Standards
Standards should represent an essential part of the vision for reform and provide important contributions to reform goals and objectives. Considerable preparation may be necessary for educational institutions, boards, administrators, teachers, and community leaders to be committed to the use of standards as an integral part of the reform effort. In their book on the integration of academic and technical education, Gene Bottoms and Deede Sharpe offer a ten-step process for curriculum integration; five of the steps have to do with establishing the climate within which reform can proceed. Until reform participants share a perception of the value of standards and an understanding of the multiple sources of relevant standards, it is unlikely that progress will be made.
When a commitment to the use of standards has been made, the logical steps to applying standards in curriculum reform are the following:
Step 1: Assemble all relevant standards.
The extent of this step is determined by the extent of curriculum reform being contemplated. If only selected courses are to be reviewed, fewer standards may be relevant than if the entire curriculum is to be reviewed.
Step 2: Analyze and crosswalk the standards.
As is indicated in "Chapter 3, Use of Standards in Curricula" in Tech Prep: The Next Generation, standards have been developed from many perspectives. There is no assurance that they are completely congruent, and it is essential that the various standards be compared if curriculum reform is to be responsive to all the expectations set forth. Bottoms and Sharpe, for example, set forth six sources of expectations, some of which are not published and require local collection of information. The sources include state and national published standards, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) core competencies, and SCANS; but they also include perceived expectations of local employers and institutions of higher education.
This analysis of standards is not a simple task and has proven to be a stumbling block in applying standards to curricula. The temptation is to ignore some of the expectations. CORD has addressed this issue by developing an organized structure and carrying out the analysis for a number of standards in selected areas.
Step 3: Align the standards to the curriculum.
After a comprehensive synopsis of standards and expectations has been developed, it must be compared to the goals and objectives of the courses, course sequences, and the total curriculum. The most effective approach is to look at the curriculum in total, across all subject areas and across secondary and postsecondary technical programs. This broad look at the curriculum accomplishes integration, eliminates duplication, and optimizes use of student time.
Step 4: Identify deficiencies in the curriculum vis-à-vis the standards.
Accomplishing step 3 will reveal where deficiencies exist in the curriculum. In particular, the SCANS skills and the complex skills represented by Integrated Curriculum Standards (ICS) are typically found to be inadequately addressed.
Step 5: Redesign the curriculum to correct the deficiencies.
When the deficiencies have been identified, the structure and sequence of the curriculum can be redesigned to address them.
Step 6: Design teaching enhancements to support the standards.
Both content and teaching and learning strategies can be modified to address the deficiencies. Some of the techniques described in "Chapter 3, Use of Standards in Curricula" in Tech Prep: The Next Generation can be brought to bear.
Step 7: Design assessments that verify attainment of standards.
Verification of student success is essential if the curriculum is to produce student mastery of required skills. The assessment methods and tools must be developed in direct reference to the standards.
Step 8: Develop an implementation plan.
Curriculum design is only part of the task. Professional development must be provided to assist teachers in dealing with the new paradigms, suitable texts and materials must be provided, laboratories may have to be revised, worksites must be established, and projects must be designed and implemented. Plans for all these details should be laid out realistically.
Step 9: Evaluate results.
Considerable effort and resources will go into curriculum reform. The implementation plan should include collection of suitable data to document the effects of the reform on student performance. Not all of the desired changes may be possible in the first effort at reform. The concept of continuous improvement should be adopted with the recognition that reform is an ongoing and never-ending effort.