Just a few random thoughts that I've been tinkering with as of late, or that I've been tinkering with for a while.
Curriculum as student: students define their curriculum because of who they are today, not because of what they should be. Who does curriculum think you are? Recall Ellsworth's paper.
21st century learning: learning communities whose individuals have differentiated skills, or should everyone have to know the same thing? See a paper by Katerine Bielaczyc and Allan Collins, Learning Communities in Classrooms: Advancing Knowledge for a Lifetime, in the NASSP Bulletin, Febraury 1999.
Justice in education: what's right? Career education first? Maybe show career paths to with detailed presentations of the skills, not just the courses to take, to get there.
A just society, what should it look like? Pierre Trudeau had a vision of one. Did Canada become a better place after Trudeau?
Showing posts with label Postblog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Postblog. Show all posts
Friday, April 11, 2008
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Postblog: March 8, 2008
Just a note on where we are at. Baudrillard's article brought together the threads being woven through the course thus far: the canon, metaphor, simultaneous occurrence, gaps, centrality, difference, social domination, eclecticism, critial theory and simulation. All sounds pretty postmodern to me.
Thought: at a basic level, curriculum is a canon, a set of basis vectors (to use a math term) from which all vectors in a defined space can be constructed. In the case of curriculum, the basis vectors are not specifics, but general lessons. What is common to humanity? Certainly not a common codification scheme (language). Yet, in today's world, we all need to be able to read and write - perhaps the better way to say it is, to be able to construct real meanings with symbols and logic. Basic numerical and combinatorial understandings, and problem solving skills are also important. And, so too are classification skills: behaviour (pattern) recognition. Regardless what is included in the canon, it should address the ability for one to survive in society.
Note: it is possible to change the basis of a vector space, but there is only one absolute basis for any vector space. Many truths vs. absolute truth, again. For a discussion of vector spaces and their bases, see http://mathworld.wolfram.com/VectorSpaceBasis.html.
Thought: at a basic level, curriculum is a canon, a set of basis vectors (to use a math term) from which all vectors in a defined space can be constructed. In the case of curriculum, the basis vectors are not specifics, but general lessons. What is common to humanity? Certainly not a common codification scheme (language). Yet, in today's world, we all need to be able to read and write - perhaps the better way to say it is, to be able to construct real meanings with symbols and logic. Basic numerical and combinatorial understandings, and problem solving skills are also important. And, so too are classification skills: behaviour (pattern) recognition. Regardless what is included in the canon, it should address the ability for one to survive in society.
Note: it is possible to change the basis of a vector space, but there is only one absolute basis for any vector space. Many truths vs. absolute truth, again. For a discussion of vector spaces and their bases, see http://mathworld.wolfram.com/VectorSpaceBasis.html.
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