Monica Taylor
Professor Michael Savage
EDUC 4P06
October 3, 2012
Examining the Ontario Curriculum Front Matter
This
paper takes two curriculum documents; the Grade 9 and 10 Canadian and World
Studies and the Grade 9 and 10 Arts and will be showing how its content, skills
and values demonstrate the Ministry’s attempt to create well rounded and
critical thinking citizens. Although the content and skills are different in
the two curriculums, the underlying values and life skills are similar. These
along with the similar teaching practices outlined provide clues to how the
Ministry of Education wants secondary students to think about and interact with
the world around them. At the end of
this paper, the criteria for assessment for the two curriculums will be
analyzed in order to shed light on the role the teacher plays in the success of
the delivery of the curriculum. This paper will be a reflection of personal
views on the belief that the Ministry’s attempt to assist students into
becoming well rounded and critical thinking citizens is a positive venture.
The
Grade 9 and 10 revised Arts Curriculum has brought the courses of dance, drama,
integrated arts, media arts, music and visual arts into the 21st
century. The importance of the arts curriculum is outlined as “nourishing the
imagination while providing opportunities to gain insight and appreciation
about the world around them” (The Arts 3). What is unique about the
Taylor 2
arts curriculum is the students
will be taught how to plan, produce and assess artistic work they will create
alone or in groups.
There are four underlying ideas that are
presented as the main skills for the
arts curriculum, they are; developing creativity, communicating, understanding
culture and making connections. The Ontario Skills Passport is a bilingual
online resource provided to teachers in the curriculum and online that will
assist in teaching the skills in the curriculum to the students. The Ontario
Skills Passport is a resource “that enhances the relevance of classroom
learning for students and strengthens school – work connections” (The Arts 43).
This resource provides descriptions of the skills being taught in the arts
curriculum that are transferrable into the work, academic and general life
fields post-secondary. The document highlights that these skills being taught
in the art curriculum are; reading text, writing, computer use, measurement and
calculation (for the Math curriculum), and problem solving.
The
Ministry is putting an emphasis on content
that can be transferrable to life outside of the school systems. The content
provided in each section of the courses in the document are mostly skill based
in order to produce the art expected and taught, which is unique to the
creative process of the arts curriculum. To give some specifics to assist in
understanding the content expected of teachers to teach are as follows;
challenging and inspiring work, imagining and generating, planning and
focusing, exploring and experimenting, producing preliminary work, revising and
refining, presenting and performing as well as reflecting and evaluating.
The values that are underlying in the
curriculum help to weave together the skills and content provided. Outlined in
the curriculum are; ethics, health and safety, critical thinking,
Taylor 3
equity and inclusive education.
Ethics of living in a technological world is a value that is exceptionally
important to students as we move forward into the future. The distinction is
made between being inspired by others’ work and reproducing others’ work as your
own. Health and safety is a value and a skill that is taught using planning
learning activities that tie what is happening in the classroom to future uses
of skills learned in post-secondary life.
The
Ontario Curriculum Document: Canadian and World Studies Grade 9 and 10 provide
insight to how the Ministry views the content and its values. The Ministry says
that by studying these subjects (Geography, History, Law, Economics and
Politics), “students will learn how to interact with and within their social
and physical environments today, and how they did so in the past” (Canadian and
World Studies 3). The Ministry outlines four main content goals of the Canadian and World Studies curriculum which
are as follows. Gaining an understanding of the basics in these courses will
allow students to continue learning during their post-secondary experiences and
later in life because they will be taught practical skills. These practical
skills (such as critical thinking, research and communication skills) will be developed
throughout The curriculum is based around a set of fundamental concepts;
systems and structures, interactions and interdependence, environment, change
and continuity, culture and power and governance. The different courses within
the broader subject of Canadian and World studies (Geography, History, Law,
Economics and Politics) provide insight to the previous set of fundamental
concepts and are followed through and built on from Grade Nine to Grade Twelve.
The skills that are learned and built upon
within this curriculum are important to the students’ success in the Canadian
and World Studies curriculum but can also be applied to other curriculums
within the secondary school system as well. These skills include literacy
skills that
Taylor 4
involve the use of written,
oral and visual communication abilities. Using the language with greater
accuracy and care is transferable to other subjects and will be an asset to
further learning if the teacher enables students to build upon these skills.
Numeracy skills are linked with the Mathematics and Science curriculums but
Canadian and World Studies’ use of graphs, diagrams, charts and tables to
organize, interpret and present information. These literacy and numeracy skills
are essential in strengthening the skills outlined in the Achievement Chart for
the curriculum. The Ministry puts an emphasis on having students demonstrate
their; knowledge and understanding of the material, thinking skills,
communication skills and application abilities. It is noted that the Ministry
is putting an effort towards having the students apply the content and skills
learned to the real world and to think critically about the spaces, people and
practices around them. This is important in order for students to make informed
decisions and become active citizens within the community.
Becoming
a contributing and positive citizen is a value
that can be read through this curriculum. This concept of helping to build
contributing and positive citizens is evident in the Arts curriculum as well.
Especially with the content studied, which is focusing on people’s interactions
with their communities both on the local and global scale, the choices a person
makes can have an impact on the people and processes around them. An example of
this is the value of anti-discrimination within this curriculum. Students will
be asked to “demonstrate understanding of the rights, privileges, and
responsibilities of citizenship, as well as willingness to show respect,
tolerance, and understanding towards individuals, groups and cultures in the
global community and respect and responsibility toward the environment”
(Canadian and World Studies 24). This value is an example of the positivity and
awareness that the Ministry wishes
Taylor 5
students to possess. The
curriculum highlights many of these types of values which shows that the
Ministry not only believes that the content students learn are important but
what they do with the knowledge and how they interact with the world around
them is just as important.
The assessment that is provided in these documents is the
way that the Ministry can be sure that the material is being delivered and
assessed the same way across the province the Ministry relies on the assessment
being valid and reliable. The section called “Assessment and Evaluation of
Student Achievement” is in both documents and outlines the same basic
principles of assessment: knowledge and understanding, thinking, communication
and application. The Ministry of Education provides teachers with materials,
such as the Achievement Chart, that will assist and improve their assessment
methods and strategies. In order to ensure that students are getting the best
of the curriculum and learning and growing into critical thinkers, teachers are
encouraged to assess and evaluate using strategies outlined by the documents.
Some of these strategies include; addressing both what students learn and how
well they learn, ensure that each student is given clear directions for
improvement, promote students’ ability to assess their own learning and to set
specific goals, and are varied in nature, administered over a period of time
and designed to provide opportunities for students to demonstrate the full
range of their learning. Ensuring the validity and reliability of both the
delivery of the curriculum and assessment and evaluation of the expectations
allows all students to have a fair and equal chance at success as both a
student and as a growing member of both a local and global community as a well-rounded
and critical thinking citizen.
Taylor 6
Works Cited
Ontario Ministry of Education. The Ontario Curriculum,
Grades 9 and 10: Canadian and World Studies,
2005. Toronto: Queen’s Printer for Ontario, 2005.
Ontario Ministry of Education. The Ontario Curriculum,
Grades 9 and 10: The Arts, 2010. Toronto: Queen’s Printer for Ontario, 2010.
No comments:
Post a Comment