Sorin, Reesa (2006) Practice what you preach: negotiated curriculum in early childhood teacher education. In: Proceedings of the 2006 Australian Teacher Education National Conference. pp. 377-384. From: Making Teaching Public: Reforms in Teacher Education, 5-8 July 2006, Fremantle, WA, Australia.

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Abstract

In my role as a professional studies lecturer, I have been teaching students about a variety of teaching strategies, from transmission teaching to student-centred curricula. They have been given the opportunity to trial these approaches in small groups, where peer feedback and reflection have helped them to consolidate their learning and develop their teaching repertoire. Yet for the most part, I have modeled transmission teaching and group work, which I've planned and directed based on my understanding of student needs. In Semester 2, 2005, I challenged myself to practice what I preach. I am particularly interested in the notion of "negotiated" or "collaborative" curriculum. According to Rogoff (1989, in Hill, Stremmel and Fu, 2005), a negotiated approach means that curriculum is "not solely emergent for the child or from the teacher but is negotiated - it is child initiated but teacher framed" (p. 16). It is an approach taken in the Reggio Emilia movement and recently adopted with the introduction of the Early Years Curriculum Guidelines in Queensland. While the Reggio Emilia movement and the Early Years Curriculum Guidelines address the learning of young children, I feel that it is an approach that can enrich learning for older children and adults as well. In the first week of classes, I went into a 3rd year Early Childhood subject with a skeletal prospectus that contained only the subject description, outcomes and assessment guidelines from the university handbook. I asked students to consider what they understood by the term "negotiated curriculum ", and once we had discussed this and come to an agreement on its meaning, I proceeded to negotiate the curriculum with the students. This presentation relates the experience of a subject taught by negotiated curriculum, based on student feedback collected at the beginning, throughout and at the end of the subject. It includes my reflections of the experience and my thoughts for future directions in my pedagogy.

Item ID:	4282
Item Type:	Conference Item (Research - E1)
ISBN:	0-9775685-0-4
Keywords:	negotiated curriculum; collaborative curriculum; early childhood; preservice teacher education
Date Deposited:	22 Oct 2009 05:48
FoR Codes:	13 EDUCATION > 1303 Specialist Studies in Education > 130399 Specialist Studies in Education not elsewhere classified @ 100%
SEO Codes:	93 EDUCATION AND TRAINING > 9399 Other Education and Training > 939999 Education and Training not elsewhere classified @ 100%
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