Curriculum Metaphors

Curriculum Metaphors

By. Dini Irawati

Abstract

Metaphor is understanding and experiencing one thing in terms of another. It is a way of expressing one’s understanding and experience in terms of another. Metaphors as linguistic expressions are possible precisely because there are metaphors in a person's conceptual system. Various curriculum metaphors are used to portray the multifaceted images. Curriculum metaphors represent the developing images of curriculum from antiquity to post modern era. They are curriculum as subject matter, programmed activities, agenda for social reconstruction, cultural reproduction, discrete task and concepts, intended learning outcomes, currere, and experience.

Keyword: curriculum, metaphors

A.Introduction

Metaphor is for most people a device of the poetic imagination and the rhetorical flourish a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language. Moreover, metaphor is typically viewed as characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than thought or action. For this reason, most people think they can get along perfectly well without metaphor. We have found, on the contrary, that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.

Metaphor is for most people a device of the poetic imagination and the rhetorical flourish a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language. Moreover, metaphor is typically viewed as characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than thought or action. For this reason, most people think they can get along perfectly well without metaphor. We have found, on the contrary, that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.

Talking about metaphor that metaphor is understanding and experiencing one thing in terms of another. It is a way of expressing one’s understanding and experience in terms of another. For example, the term “teaching” is like “journey” or “teaching” is “planting”, the two different domains of experience are compared. We know teaching is different experience from that of the journey or planting. But, there are some similarities in experiences that make these concepts comparable.

The most important claim we have made so far is that metaphor is not just a matter of language, that is, of mere words. We shall argue that, on the contrary, human thought processes are largely metaphorical. This is what we mean when we say that the human conceptual system is metaphorically structured and defined. Metaphors as linguistic expressions are possible precisely because there are metaphors in a person's conceptual system. Therefore, whenever in this book we speak of metaphors, such as ARGUMENT IS WAR, it should be understood that metaphor means metaphorical concept.

In the learning is a journey metaphor, knowledge objects are at various locations on the knowledge landscape. Teachers bring students quickly across this landscape, encourage them to build the concepts until they have obtained those concepts all and arrived at their final destination. Teachers make sure that students possess the concepts acquired during the journey. We might think of the journey as the teacher is driving a car carrying full of students at full speed along a predefined road to reach the destination. If a teacher believes that learning requires students to interact with their environment, the trip becomes a journey of discovery.

Herbert Kliebard (1972) characterized three root metaphors found in curriculum literature and practice: production, growth, and journey. Production provides an industrial model that envisions the student as raw material to be transformed by a skilled technician who uses rigorously planned specifications, avoids waste, and carefully sees to it that the raw materials are used for the purposes that best fit them. The growth metaphor perceives the teacher as an insightful gardener, who carefully gets to know the unique character of the plants (students) and nurtures their own special kind of flowering. In the travel metaphor, the teacher is a tour guide who leads students through a terrain rich in knowledge, skills, ideas, appreciations, and attitudes. The tour guide knows that each traveler will respond differently to the trip because of his or her unique configuration of background, ability, interests, aptitudes, and purposes.

Examining the roles inherent in a teacher’s metaphor can provide remarkable insights on these problems. If reforms are to succeed, teachers must actively explore these critical components of their thinking. The unconscious cognitive processes of both theorists and teachers must be brought into consciousness if there is any hope of creating a meaningful change in education.

Various curriculum metaphors are used to portray the multifaceted images. Curriculum metaphors represent the developing images of curriculum from antiquity to post modern era. They are curriculum as subject matter, programmed activities, agenda for social reconstruction, cultural reproduction, discrete task and concepts, intended learning outcomes, currere, and experience.

B.Various Curriculum Metaphors

Curriculum as subject matter is Curriculum which is equated with the subjects to be taught. It focused on the subjects not account for other planned or unplanned activities that are a major part of students' experiences in schools. Educators who use this image intend to explicate clearly the network of subjects taught, interpretations given to those subjects, prerequisite knowledge for studying certain subjects.

Curriculum as programmed activities is focusing on a comprehensive view of all activities planned for delivery to students. This curriculum incorporates scope and sequence, interpretation and balance of subject matter, motivational devices, teaching techniques, and anything else that can be planned in advance. This emphasizes on outward appearance rather than inner development. It values only outcomes and neglects the learning process.

Curriculum as Intended Learning Outcomes is curriculum that focuses directly on the intended learning outcomes. The curriculum designs all the materials, plans, and arrangements that will enable students to do. All the students in a class may demonstrate that they have acquired the intended learning outcomes. Curriculum as Cultural Reproduction is curriculum that reflects the culture. The job of schooling is to reproduce salient knowledge and values for the succeeding generation.

Curriculum as Experience is the curriculum that consists of a set of activities or predetermined ends. The curriculum is the process of experiencing the sense of meaning and direction that ensues from teacher and student dialogue. Four commonplaces of curricular experience are set forth by Schwab (1973): teacher, learner, subject matter, and milieu. Curriculum as Discrete Tasks and Concepts is the curriculum consists of as a set of tasks to be mastered, and they are assumed to lead to a prespecified end.

Curriculum as an Agenda for Social Reconstruction is the curriculum holds thatschools should provide an agenda of knowledge and values that guides students to improve society and the cultural institutions, beliefs, and activities that support it. Curriculum as "Currere" is the curriculum that emphasizes the individual's own capacity to reconceptualize his or her autobiography. Pinar and Grumet (1976) stated that the individual seeks meaning amid the swirl of present events, moves historically into his or her own past to recover and reconstitute origins, and imagines and creates possible directions of his or her own future. The curriculum is the interpretation of lived experiences. It is difficult to be done in schools by teachers and students. It requires the intense expertise of a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, or other professional therapist. The following is a scheme of the curriculum methapor`s as described above.

C.My Curriculum Metaphor

One of the most important aspects of a metaphor is the roles. When we say if teaching is like farming, so the teacher is a shepherd and students are cattle. If the teacher is a gardener, the students are plants. What unconscious expectations do these metaphors create in the mind of the teacher? Must the cattle be docile, feeding complacently in the pasture chosen by the teacher? Is the gardener tending a field of rice, where every plant receives the same care?

Teaching is like farming, so the teacher is a shepherd and students are cattle. The shepherd wants the cattle to be healthy, fat, and good performance. They are ready to be consumed by himself or by other people, to be sold at high price.  So, he brings them to the pasture with high quality grass. They themselves choose the nice grass to be enjoyably fed. Then he checks (assesses) them for their health, fatness, and performance. In teaching case, the teacher brings students quickly across the learning activity, encourages them to build the concepts until they have obtained those concepts all and arrived at their final goals. Teachers make sure that students possess the concepts acquired during the curriculum-learning activity by doing assessment.

In designing curriculum, the teachers/planners should identify what the students/society needs, formulate the objectives, and provide materials needed to bring the students meet the objectives, select the learning experience as the way of how they achieve the objectives, and determine the assessment/evaluation.

For example, as Language teacher is going to teach ‘writing’ and ‘speaking’. The teacher identifies the students’ need in their real life—getting the job. Then the teacher formulates the objective, for instance,”The students are able to write application letters correctly”, “The students are able to do interview in getting a job”. Next he provides the advertisement taken from the newspaper used to be example, and then selects the learning experience by setting a play some students to be employer and interviewers and the others are applicants.

The teacher uses the factory that needs some employees as his/her metaphor. In the setting the teacher appoints the students who become roles of employer, interviewers and applicants, and gives direction and brief explanation about how to apply for the jobs before the students do the play. To some students who become employer and interviewers are set to have a meeting to formulate the positions to be filled and write the advertisement, and the others who become applicants are set to read advertisement made by the employer and interviewers and write applicant letters. Then the students do the play. The role of the teacher when the play is going on is as facilitator. He also records what and how the students are doing in a play.

Assessing is done whilst and after the play has been done. When the play is going on, the teacher assesses the students’ speaking. After they finish doing the play the teacher gives reinforcement to them and assesses their writing applicant letters and advertisement.

By doing this, what the teacher expected to achieve in his/her teaching activity—learning outcomes—will come true. This teaching activity focuses on the learning outcomes. So, that is why I dream Curriculum as Intended Learning Outcomes is curriculum for future. This focuses directly on the intended learning outcomes. The curriculum designs all the materials, plans, and arrangements that will enable students to do. All the students in a class demonstrate that they have acquired the intended learning outcomes.

But it doesn’t mean that the others are bad. It depends on each individual. In fact curriculum knowledge as a whole is problematic, but it contributes to conceptual richness to have several extant images of curriculum. Different images are needed for different purposes. We should be able to state a practical situation in which each of the images will be useful. Image is appropriate to some aspects of the curriculum realm but not to others. Hopefully, we continue to cultivate a variety of images in an effort to move closer to an understanding of the whole picture of curriculum.