Professional Development Schools
Financial Aid and Student Employment
Focuses on contemporary curriculum and school organizational forces that influence the development, organization, and purposes of secondary schools.
This course aims at preparing prospective secondary school teachers to be knowledgeable about contemporary issues related to curriculum and school organization. Students explore issues related to secondary curriculum and school organization. This issue analysis focuses on secondary education topics in the context of national, state and local standards and perspectives. These issues are also analyzed from the standpoint of policy making and implementations, and teaching practices. Students pursue this learning through individual and small group processes including readings, writings, clinical experiences and individual and group presentations.
This course is designed to prepare prospective secondary school teachers to be knowledgeable about and conversant with foundational and the emerging contemporary issues related to curriculum and school organization at the secondary high school level. It introduces and examines these issues so students can make reasoned, educated responses to each construct and topic area related to secondary school curriculum and organizational structure issues. These issues are further explored through clinical experiences, which allow students to begin to develop and enhance appropriate professional perspectives about the ways in which curriculum and school structure affect instruction and learning outcomes for secondary high schools.
One of the focus points for the course is the standards movement that drives much of what is occurring in schools today. Students first become familiar with state and national teaching standards, and then discuss how each impacts the classroom. A second focus is classroom diversity. Students discuss the impact of diverse learners within schools citing recent research, teaching and learning standards, and the moral and intellectual virtues. A third focus examines the dynamics of present day schooling, including the increasing role of technology within schools. Finally, students will engage in a systematic study of the ways in which a high school curriculum framework affects the mission, educational goals and objectives, academic program curriculum and courses, and co-curricular decisions, leading to the creation of a performance-based curriculum project for the course. Through the instructional content and class activities of the course, students acquire a broadened perspective of their roles in 21st century schools as envisioned, in part, by the Illinois State University conceptual framework, Realizing the Democratic Ideal, and state and national standards.