Critical Perspective in Curriculum Leadership - Literature review Example

CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE IN CURRICULUM LEADERSHIP Name: Date: Introduction In the year 2005, a report titled The Quality Imperative, gave out a clear framework emphasising quality in the curriculum globally. According to the report, there is a need for development of the existing educational curriculum. This paper has chosen a national initiative for improving the quality of education and teaching. This initiative emphasises the need for focusing on development of teaching and learning globally so as to improve the quality of education as also found out by Ylimaki, R. M. (2012). It emphasises the need to consider issues pertaining the curriculum such as educational management systems, teachers’ professionalism in handling students and finally the materials used in the various education systems. This paper will review recent literature conforming to the national initiative of promoting quality educational curriculum with schools. According to Shohamy, E. (2014) these factors are very essential since they facilitate teaching and learning thus ensuring effective curriculum. Since majority of countries want to revolutionize access to education, the need to reach educationally disadvantaged groups. However there have been many curricular changes in the global education there is a need to understand the impacts of the changes to the curriculum. There are various significances accompanied to this initiative. First, the initiative promotes life skills within the national curricula. Students are able to develop important skills which will enable them solve challenges in their life time. The second significance of this initiative is that it facilitates learner-centred curricula. It supports a more learner friendly education for students. Finally, the initiative will advocate for increased teachers supply, advanced education for teachers and quality materials for teaching and learning in the curriculum. The argument that will be made in this paper is whether input resources and the new technology have impact on the quality of education in our curriculum. The impact of the national initiative in curriculum There are various effects of this initiative of quality teaching and learning in schools. Introduction of this initiative to schools will have a positive impact to the educational curriculum globally. i) Fulfilling diverse learning needs Various initiatives introduced so as to facilitate learner-centred teaching have a positive impact to the curriculum since they enable fulfilment of the wide learning needs required. These initiatives create a friendly environment for learners to learn in as also claimed by Shohamy, E. (2014). On the other hand initiative for quality teaching and learning also embraces the educational leaders to avoid educational discrimination. This is very apparent especially in Africa and South Asian continents according to Ylimaki, R. M. (2012). Many scholars have embraced literature to support and fulfil the needs of girls so as to embrace equality when accessing education. This initiative embraces the need to establish a very safe, girl-friendly environment so as to fulfil the needs of girls in schools. Consider an example like establishment of safe separate toilets for girls. This will not only ensure girls are attracted to school but also ensure they are comfortable in the various schools they are learning in as claimed by Doukas, D. J.(2012). Initiatives supporting safe environment which is free from both violence and sexual harassment need to be harnessed so as to protect girls . This national initiative for quality teaching and learning will also have a positive impact since it will develop gender awareness programmes in the various institutions. This will enable equality in terms of respect for women and even girls. Introduction of this national initiative will support learning materials that are gender-sensitive thus ensuring equality in the curriculum. African nations have lagged behind in supporting gender-sensitive approaches to support initiatives advocating for quality teaching and learning as explained by Ylimaki, R. M. (2012). According to Ylimaki, R. M. (2012), countries such as Mali have not advocated for quality issues regarding girl child education. Instead they have concentrated in supporting boy child education. However, the issue of equality in curriculum has been outlined in recent literatures there have been very few initiatives to support this especially in African countries. Educational needs of special groups such as the disabled and even orphans have rarely been addressed especially in the current global curriculum (Shohamy, E., 2014). Adequate evidence is there to portray the need to address this issue since many of the children have suffered severe educational disadvantages compared to their counterparts. Recent statistics given by UNICEF showed that only four in fifteen children especially in the African countries have sufficient programmes to address the needs of children who are disabled or orphaned. Programmes that have to develop schools in African continent so as to address the educationally disadvantaged children need to be established. Schools need to be developed as centres of care and support especially for the physically disabled and the orphaned children. Recently a model that will enhance schools in Southern African Countries has been established. This model is facilitating the fight against HIV/AIDS education. It is also supporting the care and support of physically/mentally disabled and the orphaned children as found out by Doukas, D. J. (2012). The initiative for quality teaching and learning has fulfilled the needs of orphaned or physically disabled students. The initiative has introduced the policy of inclusion in many countries globally so as facilitate quality teaching and learning for special needs children in their ordinary special schools. In these schools the children have been given special support. Various initiatives such as professional development initiatives have been introduced so as to make teachers learn the need to avoid negative attitudes towards the disabled. From this initiative teachers are able to learn that disabled and orphaned children have still potential in education. On the other hand countries like Ghana have introduced the policy of inclusion in the ordinary schools. This initiative will supersede the old initiative which relies on the different special schools in the country. The Gansu Basic Education Project (GBEP) is a very good example of an initiative that has the aim of improving the quality of teaching and learning in the region of China. This initiative has had positive impacts towards the curricular of the country. First, it has led to the introduction of a new reformed curriculum for the basic education of the country. This introduced reformed curriculum has given significance consideration to the learning methodologies to be used in the country. The initiative has advocated for a child-centred learning which will enhance the creativity and development of the child. The initiative of GBEP has enabled schools to plan on the development of their infrastructure so as to ensure the needs of students are fulfilled. It has also introduced sufficient participatory approaches which will facilitate both teaching and learning of the various children as found out by. The objective of this aspect is to necessarily fulfil the requirements of children as found out by Ylimaki, R. M. (2012) in their education in China. This GBEP initiative has various impacts to the curriculum of the country. First, it has led to teacher training and teacher up-grading. This is because of the rising demand of trained teachers as a result of the introduction of the new reformed curriculum. The second impact the initiative has had to the curriculum is the introduction of strategies which will improve the context of the new curriculum. These strategies also aim at providing scholarships especially for the physically disabled and orphaned children. ii) Curricula to facilitate relevant learning A national initiative of quality teaching and learning will also have a positive impact in the curriculum since it will lead to introduction of curricula that can facilitate relevant learning within the schools globally. Curriculum is very essential in any country since it clearly specifies what children are to learn in terms of time, proficiency or even content as posited by Davis, B. W.et al (2015). It also gives a clear guideline on what the teachers are going to teach and specifies the time and the content to be taught. Curriculum goals Many governments globally have always set targets for their national curriculum which conform to their visions to ensuring economic development and the people’s welfare in their countries. Governments have to come up with initiatives which will globalize the economy. It has also to come up with initiatives which will address the issues of degradation of the environment, the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the new technology in their national curriculum. In order to address issues pertaining to democratization, the government introduces human rights education and civic education to address the issue. Health education has been introduced in many national curricula by governments so as to address the epidemic of HIV/AIDS. This has in turn lowered the mortality rates due to HIV/AIDS deaths in many countries. The introduction of gender-sensitive curricula has helped women and girls to get equality respect from their counterparts. The life skills curricula have made it possible for children to develop life skills to tackle day to day challenges in their lives. Life skill curricula is very essential since it advocates for good social attitudes, knowledge and practical skills to be applied in the children lives as claimed Holm, T. et al(2015). This curriculum has enabled children to learn problem-solving, decision making and critical thinking skills. The life skill curricula have also supported personal abilities for children. Children are taught how to manage their stress. They are also taught how to build strong self-confidence and also self-awareness. Communication skills are also advocated in this curriculum which enables them to negotiate and work as teams. The other impact the initiative of quality teaching and learning has led to in the curriculum is the promotion of equality and social justice. The curriculum has integrated perspectives of equality and social justice so as to teach children on how to live together in good friendly environment (Davis, B. W. et al, 2015). Aspects of sustainable development and environmental conservation have also been introduced in the curriculum. Children have been taught on conservation skills to protect their environment from pollution and degradation. New curriculum frameworks have been linked with health and even legal literacy. Implication of this initiative for educational leaders There are various implications to educational leaders attached to the initiative for quality teaching and learning in our institutions. i) Designing and adjusting curricula for multi-grade settings Educational leaders will have to come up with a new curriculum which will accommodate multi-grade settings for this initiative to be a success. The initiative implies that educational leaders will have to develop two different ways to successfully adjust their grading systems. The first way is by developing materials which will be used by learners in the same class but with different levels. Children will be allowed to work at different levels at the same time. The second way will be by enhancing materials used by teachers for teaching. Teachers will be allowed with sufficient time to plan adequately on the content and time to teach. Remedial activities will be introduced into the learners’ guide to give more time for the learner to engage in self-study activities as also explained by Berry, I., & Dixson, A. D. (2015). The educational leaders will have to come up with programmes to enable the teachers to adequately integrate learners’ use of these materials in their teaching as posited in the curriculum theory. This will not only improve the performance of the children but also enable them to learn civic, democratic behaviours affecting the society according to Davis, B. W. et al (2015). The other implication of this initiative to educational leaders will be to develop new approaches focusing on teachers. The educational leaders will have to develop curriculum teams which will help teachers address different topics all over the grades. The educational leaders will have to come up with complementary teacher teaching materials. There is a need for developing curriculum which incorporates technology in order to introduce multiple-grade cycles. Multiple-grade cycles need to be established globally since they relieve teachers especially the ones working in unfavourable environments. Educational leaders will have to re-organise the curriculum in order to develop multi-grade classes especially for small scale schools. This initiative of quality teaching and learning for quality education also implies that educational leaders will have to deploy more teachers. This initiative will mean that the understaffed schools to be provided with more teachers. The educational leaders have to develop strategies that will attract more teachers for deployment. The strategies include; improving the housing facilities for them and giving more opportunities for the locals in the recruitment process. This will make them find it easy to adapt to the new environment they are to work in. the deployment process will mean that the educational leaders to come up with a training programme to ensure the newbie teachers are acting professionally. Various countries especially in the third world are beginning to support this programme. For instance Kenya has introduced networks to support training of their teachers. It has given opportunity to almost 25,000 untrained teachers to study Basic Education diploma. Educational leaders will also have to come with decentralised support systems for the curriculum to support their students. However the challenge to this is that it requires large cost to be effected. The decentralised support systems in the curriculum will raise the quality of teaching and learning. School based methods of coaching and assessing students incorporating the new technology are very essential since they expose students to competence pedagogies more than the traditional courses. The other implication of the initiative of quality teaching and learning for quality education to the educational leaders will be incorporation of the new technology to the curriculum. The educational leaders need to come up with programmes which will support the integration of IT to the curriculum. Educational leaders will also have to adopt the use of technology in order to support education for teachers (Fletcher, S., & Mullen, C. A., 2012). A good example is the Digital Education Enhancement Project (DEEP) introduced in Egypt and South Africa. This initiative is aimed at developing the profession of teaching by incorporating the new technology in the short-distance course programmes for untrained teachers. IT will not only improve the professionalism for teachers but will also improve their self-confidence and image. However the challenge pertaining this is the fact that some countries especially the developing ones have insufficient or no access to any form of the new technology. The other challenge is that field-based programmes for teachers are still relying on printed materials other than sources from the new technology (Herman, W. E., & Pinard, M. R., 2015). Leaders of education will have to embrace the use of technology by teachers by developing websites where by the teachers will be able to access training materials for distant learning. Multimedia resources can be incorporated to give a clear guidance for the educational leaders and the teachers. A good example of an initiative that has been developed to embrace technology is the Cluster Based Mentoring Programme introduced in Pakistan. This initiative embraced the use of the cascade model for delivering school-based training for teachers. The educational leaders of the initiative had to develop the program which was embracing technology in areas of curriculum content and material development for teachers. The new initiative had various implications to the educational leaders of the country. First it was a way of improving teachers’ knowledge in the curriculum. This enabled them to develop more skills for integration in the curriculum. The second implication for this was that it would make teachers develop teaching materials more easily from locally available resources. Finally this initiative meant that the curriculum of the country would embrace child centred-learning techniques which would enable the students develop more life skills. ii) Enabling more inputs The other implication for educational leaders of this initiative is that they should enable more inputs in the curriculum. Since the educational leaders want quality teaching and learning they have to embrace more input materials in the various institutions. Recent studies on school effectiveness by Berry, I., & Dixson, A. D. (2015) showed that good input materials such as textbooks improved the quality of teaching and learning therefore increasing the level of performance. The availability of good teaching and learning materials is directly proportional to the academic achievements (Herman, W. E., & Pinard, M. R., 2015). the educational leaders ought to take advantage of the recent technological advances and develop websites so as to make it easy for both teachers and learners to access the online input materials. A research done by Fletcher, S., & Mullen, C. A.(2012) in the developing nations portrayed that good textbooks and other writing materials were key contributors to quality teaching and learning. The analysis of the data depicted that students in better resourced institutions attained good academic achievements. Educational leaders ought to learn that the availability of quality learning materials is very essential in attaining the objectives of the initiative quality teaching and learning as claimed by Fletcher, S., & Mullen, C. A. (2012). With the recent technological advancements, they have to develop online learning resources which will have significant positive impact on the quality of teaching and learning. The educational leaders can come up with cost-effective input materials when they use the online platform. iii) Efficiency The other implication this initiative for quality teaching and learning will have to educational leaders is to improve efficiency in the curriculum to ensure quality education. However some scholars have argued that there is no apparent relationship existing between key input materials and the quality of teaching and learning. From this argument it can be deduced that the traditional approach of ensuring quality teaching and learning by just simply giving out more input materials is in most cases ineffective. Herman, W. E., & Pinard, M. R. (2015) claimed that the availability or lack of adequate school resources does not necessarily affect the quality education but the efficiency in the use of the input materials. Student-level differences when it comes to performance are not necessarily attributed to abundances or lack of resources but the efficiency of the various systems which are in place in the schools. Different systems such as the centralized examination system and the school autonomy can be adopted. Bennett, R. E. (2011) posited that Educational leaders ought to come up with policies which will ensure that the input resources in the curriculum are quality. In order to integrate multi-grading system in the curriculum the educational leaders ought to develop quality teaching and learning materials which will form a very key part in the strategy of integrated teaching for quality education. However the different initiatives for improving the quality of teaching and learning vary considerable in nature depending on the country the initiative is undertaken as found out by Bennett, R. E. (2011). A considerable example is the Gansu Basic Education Project in China which provided all the resource centres with quality input materials which was relevant locally. Another example is where by high quality materials contributed to the growth and success of Cluster Based Mentoring Programme started in Pakistan to improve the quality of teaching and learning. The initiative used quality training materials for teachers. It also supported teachers to engage in diploma of Basic Education so as to improve their quality for quality teaching. There is a need to come up with quality input material so as to support desirable pedagogical practices. According to Lim, L. (2015) Educational leaders should come up with plans to ensure almost all schools have good internet access so as to access the online learning and teaching materials. Consequences for me in my current or future contexts There are various consequences this initiative of quality teaching and learning has had to my current or will have in my future settings. First is that i have been able to understand that educational leaders ought to improve learning and teaching resources for both teachers and students. With the introduction of the new technology the initiative will be more effective. From this I have been able to learn that Information Technology can enhance and make the learning activities simple. Dettmer, P. et al (2012) noted that IT based curriculum is very essential in my current contexts since it will lead to quality education. I have been able to understand that IT will empower teachers to use the online tools and resources for teaching and learning activities so as to meet the objective of quality teaching and learning. In my future contexts it will be of much essence to use IT. In the future, the initiative of quality teaching and learning will develop the capacity to integrate IT in the curriculum. Digital resources will be put in place in the education pertaining IT (Pasque, P. A., & Carducci, R., 2015). In the future context, more development programmes for teachers to embrace the new technology will be developed (Fraise, N. J., & Brooks, J. S., 2015). In the current context, I have been able to note that educational leaders are doing enough to ensure capacity building of the curriculum nationally. According to Doukas, D. J. (2012) Capacity-building of the national curricula will have to extend to the wider educational community for it to be more effective. Input resources used ought to integrate the new technology (Elliott, G. 2015). The wider education community comprising of teachers and learners will have to design programmes and initiatives so as to respond to the opportunities brought about by the new technology for successful quality teaching and learning initiative (Davis, B. W. et al 2015). In the future contexts I will be able to access a wider collection of input materials online thanks to the new technology. According to Ross, E. W (2014) Teachers will also be able to access lesson plans more easily online without much strain. Students on the other hand can access learning materials online with papers for their school researches. With the integration of IT in the curriculum teachers will be able to easily incorporate IT in their classes so as improve the efficiency of the curriculum as also explained by Dettmer, P. et al (2012). Conclusion This paper has explored relevant literature on the initiative of quality teaching and learning in our institutions. It has critically interpreted and analysed various initiatives which have been used in different countries. From this paper, it can be concluded that there is a need to ensure equality in order to embrace quality education. From this paper we are able to understand that the initiative for quality teaching and learning need to be inclusive in a way that it fulfils the needs of diverse learners without any discrimination. It should meet the needs of special groups such as the orphaned and the disabled students. Educational leaders should embrace a curriculum that is inclusive (Hallinger, P. et al 2015). An inclusive curriculum is usually leaner-centred and involves various interactive pedagogic strategies. It can also be concluded that quality education does not only provide students with literacy and numeracy skills but also with life skills which will enable them to solve challenges affecting their societies in the future as found out by Leith wood, K. A. et al(2012). An initiative of quality education should embrace skills which will make the students promote peace, democracy and human rights in the society (Dettmer, P. et al 2012). According to Ross, E. W (2014) Integration of IT to the curriculum will also ensure high efficiency for quality education. Educational leaders need to come up with more effective ways to incorporate the new technology in the curriculum so as to improve the quality of teaching and learning in our institutions globally. They should also develop policies which will help integrate life skills into the curriculum as explained by Hallinger, P. et al (2015). More need to be done in the developing countries especially in Africa and Southern Asia to support gender-sensitive curriculum in the various countries (Harlow, B. 2015). Educational leaders need to address any possible gaps in our national curricula so as to move the initiative of quality education for all in the next step. References Ylimaki, R. M. (2012). Curriculum leadership in a conservative era. Educational Administration Quarterly, 48(2), 304-346. Ross, E. W. (Ed.). (2014). Social Studies Curriculum, The: Purposes, Problems, and Possibilities. SUNY Press. Shohamy, E. (2014). The power of tests: A critical perspective on the uses of language tests. Routledge. Bennett, R. E. (2011). Formative assessment: A critical review. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 18(1), 5-25. Doukas, D. J., McCullough, L. B., & Wear, S. (2012). Perspective: Medical education in medical ethics and humanities as the foundation for developing medical professionalism. 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