Curriculum Design Program Critique
by Roseann T. Mesheau
CIT-0609-GR1 (51032)
Special Topics in Curriculum Design I
Nova Southeastern University
June 5, 2009
In 1989, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) published the Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for High School Mathematics. This document was the first of its kind. The only problem was that there were no textbook available to support this radical document. The National Science Foundation funded more than $43 million for 5 pilot curriculum programs designed to follow the NCTM standards for teaching math students K-12. One of the new programs was called Core-Plus. It was identified by the US Department of Education’s Math & Science expert panel (1999) as an exemplary mathematics program (Martin, Hunt, Lannin, Leonard, Marshal, & Wares, 2001). Even when the NCTM updated the standards in 2000, Core-Plus retained its excellent review.
While traditional textbooks used the “teach by telling”, apply definitions, practice the algorithm methods; the reformed textbooks emphasized problem solving, teacher facilitation, logical reasoning, and interdisciplinary references. This was imperative given that the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, 1997) calls for all students to have access to the general education curriculum to the greatest extent possible and accountability for learning the same material as their peers without disabilities( Maccini & Gagnon, 2002).
Both a
blessing and a curse, the Core-Plus textbooks are not compatible with
traditional textbooks. Students would
not be able to switch from year to year between textbooks. Students that are accustomed to the
traditional textbooks will have a learning curve to realize. This may not bode well when the MCAS test
looms in the classroom every year. While
teachers learning cure will need to be addressed also. They may need additional professional
development in pedagogy and content knowledge.
In 2007, research was conducted again. This research compared standards based curriculum with traditional curriculum. They did find that as students took more high school mathematics courses, regardless of curriculum, they were more likely to be recommended to start their college mathematics course-taking with calculus than with precalculus courses (Davis & Shih, 2007).
Because the of the high stakes game of MCAS, I feel that the Core-Plus along with the traditional textbook would work the best. The curriculum in my school designed in units of math, not by specific chapters in a textbook. Both types of books would be great resources for the classroom. The research from Dais & Shih does support the idea that math success is based on more exposure to math topics, not how a student is exposed.
References
Huntly, M.A., Rasmussen, C.L., Villarubi, R.S., Sangtong, J.
& Fey, J.T. (2000). A study of the
Core-Plus mathematics project: Algebra
and functions strand. Journal for
research in mathematics, 31(3), 328-61.
Maccini P. & Gagnon, J.C. (2002).
Perceptions and applications of NCTM standards by special and general
educations teachers. Exception Child,
68(3), 325-34.
Martin T.S.,
