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Teacher Participation in Curriculum Revision: An Historical Case Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Gary L. Peltier
Gary L. Peltier*
Affiliation:
University of Nevada
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Extract

In recent years scholars representing the various academic disciplines have taken over the task of curriculum revision. These committees of scholars have produced such nationally influential and widely adopted curriculum revisions as the School Mathematics Study Group's modern math and the Audio-Lingual foreign language revisions. Is it advisable to wrest the task of curricular revision away from committees composed of teachers in the local schools? Should the teacher be involved in the curriculum-making process? The historian of education can help to answer these questions by examining how the classroom teacher first acquired the responsibility for planning the curriculum. In what follows the school system of Denver is taken as an historical case study of teacher participation in curriculum revision.

Type
State and Local History of Education II
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , Summer 1967 , pp. 209 - 219
Copyright
Copyright © 1967 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1. It was the duty of the board to fix the course of study, exercises, and the kinds of texts used. See General Laws, Eleventh Session of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Colorado, 1876 (Denver: W. N. Byers Company, 1876), p. 142.Google Scholar

2. Biggs, Mary E. “A Study of Modern Foreign Languages in Denver, 1874-1934“ (Unpublished master's thesis, University of Denver, 1934), p. 59.Google Scholar

3. Newlon, Jesse H. “John Dewey's Influence in the Schools,” School and Society, XXX (November 23, 1929), 1–10. This article was Newlon's address at the celebration of John Dewey's seventieth birthday, October 18, 1929.Google Scholar

4. “Does the Curriculum Need Pruning?” Address before the Texas State Teachers’ Association, Dallas, Texas, November 1925. University of Denver Library, Newlon Papers MS, p. 3.Google Scholar

5. Denver Public Schools, The Denver Program of Curriculum Revision (Denver: Denver School Press, 1927), Monograph No. 12, p. 66.Google Scholar

6. Ibid., p. 11.Google Scholar

7. Ibid., p. 12.Google Scholar

8. “Minutes of the Board of Education of School District Number One, the City and County of Denver, Colorado,” March 26, 1917. Hereafter cited as “Board Minutes.”Google Scholar

9. Ibid., June 13, 1923.Google Scholar

10. Newlon, Jesse H. and Threlkeld, A. L., “The Denver Curriculum Revision Program,” Twenty-sixth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part I (Bloomington, Illinois: Public School Publishing Company, 1926), p. 231. Hereafter cited as Twenty-sixth Yearbook. Google Scholar

11. “Board Minutes,” July 8, 1925.Google Scholar

12. Threlkeld, A. L. “Curriculum Revision in Denver,” National Education Association Proceedings (Washington, D.C.: The Association, 1925), p. 827.Google Scholar

13. Newlon, Jesse H. “Curriculum Revision in Denver,” Journal of Educational Research, IX (March 1924), 262.Google Scholar

14. Ibid. Google Scholar

15. Denver Public Schools, Bulletin, I (January 1928), 9.Google Scholar

16. Denver Times, November 19, 1924, p. 4.Google Scholar

17. Newlon, Jesse N. and Threlkeld, A. L., “The Denver Program of Curriculum Revision,” Twenty-sixth Yearbook, pp. 229–41.Google Scholar

18. “Revision of Curricula,” Address before the Superintendent's Meeting, Minneapolis, Minnesota, April 17, 1924. Newlon Papers MS.Google Scholar

19. One of the more significant of these speeches, no doubt, was that of a Denver teacher, Marie D. Murphy, who spoke on teacher participation in revision before the National League of Teachers, Washington, D.C., July 1924. Her speech was published in the Colorado School Journal, XL (October 1924), 16-20.Google Scholar

20. Superintendent's Report, Denver Public Schools, 1926-1927, p. 24.Google Scholar

21. Denver Public Schools, Bulletin, I (December 1927), 7.Google Scholar

22. Rugg, Harold and Counts, George S. “A Critical Appraisal of Current Methods of Curriculum Making,” Twenty-sixth Yearbook, p. 425.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23. Gayle Waldrop, A., “The Denver School Curriculum,” Dallas Morning News, May 2, 1926, p. 10.Google Scholar

24. Rugg and Counts, op. cit., p. 424.Google Scholar

25. Superintendent's Report, 1926-1927, pp. 23-24.Google Scholar

26. Newlon, Jesse H. “Revision of Curricula“ Address, p. 20; Ellwood P. Cubberley, “City Courses of Study,” Cyclopedia of Education, ed. Paul Monroe (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1911), II, 224.Google Scholar

27. Newlon, Jesse H. “Practical Curriculum Revision in the High School,” North Central Association Quarterly, I (September 1926), 258.Google Scholar

28. Newlon, “Revision of Curricula“ Address, p. 21.Google Scholar

29. Newlon, Jesse H. “The Teacher and the Community,” Colorado School Journal, XXXIX (October 1923), 8. An address given to the teachers of Denver, September 4, 1923.Google Scholar

30. Denver Public Schools, The Denver Program of Curriculum Revision, p. 3; Denver Public Schools, Superintendent's Circular Number One, 1923-1924, August 8, 1923.Google Scholar

31. Denver Public Schools, The Denver Program of Curriculum Revision, p. 3.Google Scholar

32. Changes in the program are traced in Hollis L. Caswell and Associates, Curriculum Improvement in Public School Systems (New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1950), pp. 151-69.Google Scholar

33. Changes since 1950 are explored in Lloid B. Jones, “Denver, Colorado: Curriculum Development in the Public Schools,” Improving the Quality of Public School Programs, eds. Harold J. McNally and A. Harry Passow (New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1960), pp. 190-216.Google Scholar