Curriculum Theory: Conflicting Visions and Enduring Concerns by Michael Stephen Schiro

Synopsis

"The book provides readers with a clear, sympathetic and unbiased understanding of the four conflicting visions of curriculum that will enable them to more productively interact with educators who might hold different beliefs. The book stimulates readers to better understand their own beliefs and also to provide them with an understanding of alternate ways of thinking about the fundamental goals of education" --SIRREADALOT.ORG

"A much needed, insightful view of alternative curriculum orientations. This is an exceptionally written book that will be useful to teachers, curriculum workers, and school administrators."

--Marc Mahlios, University of Kansas

"Curriculum Theory: Conflicting Visions and Enduring Concerns is a thought provoking text that invites self-analysis."

--Lars J. Helgeson, University of North Dakota

Curriculum Theory: Conflicting Visions and Enduring Concerns presents a clear, unbiased, and rigorous description of the major curriculum philosophies that have influenced educators and schooling over the last century. Author Michael Stephen Schiro analyzes four educational visions--Scholar Academic, Social Efficiency, Learner Centered, and Social Reconstruction--to enable readers to reflect on their own educational beliefs and allow them to more productively interact with educators who might hold different beliefs.

Key Features

• Provides a historical perspective on the origins of curriculumideologies: The book places our current educational debates and issues in a historical context of enduring concerns.
• Offers a model of how educational movements can be critically analyzed: Using a post-structuralist perspective, this model enables readers to more effectively contribute to the public debate about educational issues.
• Pays careful attention to the way language is used by educators to give meaning to frequently unspoken assumptions: The text's examination helps readers better understand curricular disagreements that occur in schools.
• Highlights the complexities of curriculum work in a social context: With an understanding of the ideological pressures exerted on them by society and colleagues, readers can put these pressures in perspective and maintain their own values, beliefs, and practices.

Intended Audience

This book is designed as a supplemental text for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses such as Curriculum Theory, Introduction to Curriculum and Instruction, Curriculum Philosophy, and Curriculum Theory and Practice in the department of education.

Talk to the author! schiro@bc.edu

Biography

Michael Stephen Schiro was born in the slums of Washington, DC. During his teenage years he traveled extensively around the world. In the 1960's he worked for school desegration in North Carolina. In the 1970's he worked to improve urban education in Lowell, Massachusetts. He has taught at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. He received his bachelorate from Tufts University and his doctorate from Harvard University. He was chair of the Department of Teacher Education and School Administration at Boston College in the 1980's. He specializes in mathematics education, and has taught courses in mathematics education, curriculum theory, computer education, literacy, and multicultural education at Boston College since 1974. He has published eleven books on such diverse topics as Integrating Children's Literature and Mathematics in the Classroom: Children as Meaning Makers, Problem Solvers, and Literary Critics, Mega-Fun Math Games, Curriculum for Better Schools: The Great Ideological Debate, and Tan and the Shape Changer. He has two children, Stephanie and Arthur, for whom he has created and to whom he has told hundreds of stories.