Curriculum

 

In formal education or schooling a curriculum is the set of courses, course work, and content offered at a school. A curriculum may be partly or entirely determined by an external, authoritative body. In the US, each state, with the individual school district, or agency, establishes the curricula taught.  Each state, however, builds its curriculum with great participation of national academic subject groups selected by the United States Department of Education, e.g. National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) for mathematical instruction.

Curriculum means two things: the range of courses from which students choose what subject matters to study, and; a specific learning program. In the latter case, the curriculum collectively describes the teaching, learning, and assessment materials available for a given course of study.

Currently, a spiraled curriculum is promoted as allowing students to revisit a subject matter's content at the different levels of development of the subject matter being studied. The constructivist approach, proposes that children learn best via active engagement with the educational environment, i.e. discovery learning.

A crucial aspect for learning, understanding by stimulating the imagination, is absent in the so-called conservative curriculum that stresses the ineffective aspects of knowledge amounts and of logical mathematical thinking, i.e. rote learning.

Crucial to the curriculum is the definition of the course objectives that usually are expressed as learning outcomes' and normally include the program's assessment strategy. These outcomes and assessments are grouped as units (or modules), and, therefore, the curriculum comprises a collection of such units, each, in turn, comprising a specialized, specific part of the curriculum. So, a typical curriculum includes specific skill acquisition in communications, numeracy, information technology, and social skills units, with specific, specialized teaching of each.

In education, a core curriculum is a curriculum, or course of study, which is deemed central and usually made mandatory for all students of a school or school system. Core curricula are often instituted, at the primary and secondary levels, by school boards, Departments of Education, or in our case, the Archdiocese of Boston.

Curriculum needs to be reviewed regularly both to ensure it’s rigor and its relevancy. Here at St. Mary’s School we have provided parents with links to all our major curricula areas.  As we codify each we will post them for you.  Currently, we have completed Reading for your perusal.