Building Potemkin Schools: Science Curriculum Reform in a STEM School

Autor/in	Teo, Tang Wee
Titel	Building Potemkin Schools: Science Curriculum Reform in a STEM School
Quelle	In: Journal of Curriculum Studies, 44 (2012) 5, S.659-678 (20 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0022-0272
DOI	10.1080/00220272.2012.689356
Schlagwörter	Curriculum Development; Educational Change; Science Instruction; Science Curriculum; STEM Education; Change Strategies; Science Course Improvement Projects; Educational Innovation; Active Learning; Inquiry; Case Studies; Semi Structured Interviews; Program Descriptions; High Schools; Educational Strategies; Educational Practices + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Curriculum; Development; Curriculumentwicklung; Lehrplan; Entwicklung; Bildungsreform; Teaching of science; Science education; Natural sciences Lessons; Naturwissenschaftlicher Unterricht; STEM; Lösungsstrategie; Instructional innovation; Bildungsinnovation; Aktives Lernen; Case study; Fallstudie; Case Study; High school; Oberschule; Lehrstrategie; Bildungspraxis
Abstract	"Potemkin schools" is used as the phrase to capture what a US science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) public speciality high school becomes as a result of its institutional branding. By way of an examination of the efforts of one teacher drawn into school branding through his "inquiry-based reform" of an Advanced Chemistry course, this paper illuminates the tensions between the rhetorical intentions to engage in curriculum innovation and the reality of constraints and conflicting goals. The teacher, unable to resolve the tensions, was pushed into formalizing and routinizing his ideas into a reform project without understanding what was behind the rhetoric of the school's self-image statements. The need to find and develop a "language" to talk and think about "inquiry-based" reform and its processes in meaningful terms and not in slogans is discussed. The irrationality and complexity of the reform which emerged from the findings contrast with the rationality of building Potemkin villages, hence illuminating the complexity in curriculum reform in STEM schools. (Contains 9 notes and 1 table.) (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10