Struggling...

I have over the the past couple of months been struggling with this course in terms of defining what I believe about curriculum and what it means to me. Where I began with my rather simplistic definition of curriculum and where I am now is different, but I have yet to conclusively state what it is I currently define curriculum as.

This has become a little clearer to me as I tackle my final paper for this class. I originally was going to question curriculum along students perceptions and feelings about what they are/were taught. I thought before asking my current students their feelings upon the subject of curriculum I would refine my questioning with former students via emails/social networking sites (such as Facebook). The answers I received were not that surprising. However what i also did was send similar questions to former colleagues of mine across Canada to gauge their feelings about curriculum.

This afterthought of mine sopke closer to me as I saw that not only myself, but others, were struggling with idea of what curriculum is. The variety of answers and interpretations came back as startling. As I began to sift through the responses (about 20 in total) I started to understand a little more of what wehave talked about in class (process, product & praxis). By sifting through the responses I challenged myself to group them into the three "P"s. This hands-on work clarified much of what was challenging me.

However I was still struggling with my own personal "ism" of what defines me and my beliefs about curriculum. Through analysis of colleagues' remarks and our chart on "isms" that we developed in class I can tell you what I don't believe in. Hopefully as my paper emerges a clearer belief of curriculum will emerge for me.