Designing Educatice Curriculum Materials to Promote Teacher Learning

I enjoyed reading this article due to its appreciation for the teacher. The authors seem to understand that teaching is not easy and the materials provided to teachers probably does not help the teacher teach the subject.

Since I am not a classroom teacher who deals with classroom materials such as books, I felt I was a little disconnected from some of the information within this article. However, when I student taught high school health and used textbooks I saw what the authors were talking about when they stated one of the key phrases within this article states the curriculum “guides” and “might support teacher learning”. I think most teachers instinctively teach their subject to the best of their ability and are almost always open to new ideas. However those new ideas don’t come around too often because the information usually doesn’t change from year to year so therefore neither does the practices. I was happy to see the author mention that the material would have to be different for different teachers based on experience (beginning vs. experienced).

I like the ideas about how these curriculum materials would make relating subjects throughout the year easier and how it would help “support teachers’ learning of a subject matter”. I am a bit skeptical about the whole idea but I am willing to give anything a couple chances to see if it can help. I completely agree that “professional development is more effective than any one source”. Personally I have always learned more by watching a demonstration then trying to learn from reading about how to do something.

All in all, I enjoyed this article and the ideas it presented. I would be very curious to hear the feedback of some classroom teachers since my perspective is a little skewed by not being a classroom core subject teacher that uses books.