The Curriculum Bridge
From Standards to Actual Classroom Practice
- Pearl G. Solomon - St. Thomas Aquinas College
Curriculum Theory & Development
"Comprehensive in scope, this book thoroughly lays out what a classroom teacher or curriculum developer needs to do to create an effective curriculum that can then be adapted into actual classroom instruction."
—Stephen D. Shepperd, Principal
Sunnyside Elementary School, Kellogg, ID
Translate standards into classroom curriculum that fulfills accountability requirements and meets students' learning needs!
Meeting the individual needs of students and the requirements of federal mandates is a challenge that educators face every day. This third edition of an award-winning book focuses on curriculum, content standards, teaching, and testing and provides teachers with solid guidelines for best practices.
In this detailed, comprehensive guide, Pearl Gold Solomon discusses the bridge between the written and the taught curriculum and gives readers a big-picture overview of how the current political environment and public opinion affect standards and curriculum. The book offers:
- An up-to-date review of educational research, including how learning takes place
- Ways to connect curriculum and standards to best teaching practices
- Information on traditional, alternative, and high-stakes assessments
- Expanded coverage of how best to plan and implement professional development
This information-rich resource is an indispensable tool for all educators who want to make informed and meaningful decisions to promote standards-based instruction, improve student outcomes, and create the best possible environments for learning.
"This book provides good, practical suggestions and ideas, and shows their connections to educational research."
"Comprehensive in scope, this book thoroughly lays out what a classroom teacher or curriculum developer needs to do to create an effective curriculum that can then be adapted into actual classroom instruction."
Contents of book did not clearly align with curriculum leadership course. The text is well written, but would be better suited for master level course.
The third edition of The Curriculum Bridge begins its history of the status of American education with George W. Bush's 2008 "State of the Union" address, an event that took place seven years later than the onset of NCLB in 2001, the period of time that began the second edition. The new edition then looks back at the events of the previous three decades as they relate to the many current and historical influences on the schools of America. It also introduces some international comparisons. An intensive new update on the implementation of NCLB legislation is included. The pros and cons of federally mandated actions and their attached assessments are presented from the different viewpoints of teachers, researchers and the public. Descriptions of the impact of changes in the economy and an expanded media are also elaborated
The new edition presents emerging ideas of educational philosophy and the rapidly expanding findings of cognitive and neuroscience research. It delves deeply into the tools and findings of brain function research and how they may affect the science of teaching -- the theories of learning, and the practices that incorporate them. The specific connections of the research findings to the standards of curriculum as they are enacted in classroom practice are presented within the context of the curriculum products of agencies such as NCTM (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics), the National Research Council, and the prescriptions of the states of California, Connecticut and Michigan. Precise examples of curriculum design in the current terms of content and performance standards are given. The need for explicit knowledge of embedded concepts and the frustration of teachers with the disparities and language of standards issued by the different agencies are also discussed.
The chapter on assessment in this edition expands on the methods of constructing formats and items that measure student knowledge of the matching curriculum. It also offers updated results on the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) with comparisons to state test results. It reports on the reactions of teachers and the public to high-stakes tests as well as on their accomplishments and deficiencies including the tendency to "teach to the test." The benefits of disaggregating results and "value added" analyses are also addressed. The final chapter discusses the recent call for applications of test results to measures of teacher quality and the extensions and evaluations of research methods, including mixed-method approaches that combine quantitative and qualitative data.