Adrian Gonzalez
11/17/13
GED510
Curriculum Analysis
What is the context of the curriculum you are analyzing?
The curriculum being analyzed is called It’s Your Game Keep It Real. The curriculum is to be taught in health class and is intended for 7th and 8th graders. The focus of the curriculum is to make students aware of STD’s, dangers and effects of drug use, what are values, how to stick to your values, build morals, and consequences of sex such as pregnancies. By making the students aware of all these issues, the program intends to lower STD’s and pregnancies for lower-income students. The curriculum specifically targets minorities in which all of the previous issues affect them the most.
Description of the philosophical, historical, psychological and social foundations of the curriculum.
- Philosophy: The philosophical foundation of this curriculum is eclectic. One of the philosophies of this curriculum is idealism. It is heavily relied upon morality. There are different activities where students find out what their morals are, and how they can use their morals to make the right decisions. The curriculum also uses videos and plays to show what are good morals and what are bad morals. Some situations that are presented can be unrealistic and ludicrous. For example, the actors in the videos are cheesy and try to act too “hip.” They try to relate to the students, but in reality students do not act the way the students do. Some of the language used within the video is questionable. Such as a disgruntled teenager saying that she is pissed off that her friends do not agree with her. The curriculum is also reconstructive. The curriculum presents scientific facts to empower minorities, such as Latinos and African Americans. The curriculum presents information such as STDs and pregnancies to help minorities make smarter decisions about sex. These issues have a huge impact particularly on Latinos and African Americans. By presenting this knowledge to them, STDs and pregnancies are expected to drop among them.
- Historical Foundation: The historical foundation for this curriculum is modernism. The curriculum is heavily embedded in the daily lives of our students and what they are going through. The students all have different needs and ideas. A lot of teenage issues are addressed and tried to be met. Health is the major emphasis being met, and it is also taught in a health class. The issues that are being addressed are trying to be presented with an opened mind, but does not address the issues well. The curriculum is heavily scripted, so the questions the teacher can ask and the answers the students can give are very limited. It is almost as if there is only one right answer most of the time. Since the curriculum is heavily scripted, the discussions had in class are limited in scope.
- Psychological Foundation: This curriculum’s psychological foundation is rooted in behaviorism. There is very little room for students to do thinking on their own. The curriculum makes it explicit that there are right and wrong answers. If the students come up with an answer that the activity is not looking for, the curriculum demands that the teacher scaffold’s the student until they come up with the “right’ answer. For example, in one of the first activities, the students had to define what GAME meant. The activity was looking for the students to define GAME as “your life.” Some students said it’s something you play, something that requires more than one person, etc. The teacher has to say or infer that those answers are not necessarily right. Everything in the curriculum is very scripted and step-by-step. Basically it goes like this: teacher will do this, students will say this, teacher will say this, etc. There’s very little room for the teacher to do his or her own teaching style. And there is very little room for the student’s to have his or her own opinions.
- Social Foundation: The social foundations based on this curriculum is morality and awareness. Students are encouraged to make decisions based on their morals, and the morals being taught to them through this curriculum. They are taught to stick to “their rules,” which means, their values. If they feel uncertain or uncomfortable about something, the curriculum emphasizes they should not do whatever makes them feel uneasy about a certain situation. The curriculum also tries to get the students to practice safe sex, or abstain from sex completely by using cold hard facts. The people who made this curriculum suggest that teenagers will make better decisions regarding sex the more they know about it and its’ consequences.
Information about the development of the curriculum. Who developed the curriculum? Is it a commercial product or was it developed in your school/district? Was it designed specifically for your school/district or is it widely used?
The curriculum was developed by: Christine Markham. PhD, Melissa Peskin, PhD, Ross, Shegog, PhD, and Susan Tortolero, PhD at the University of Texas Prevention Research Center. It was developed in Texas and it is a commercial product adopted by LAUSD. The research was based off low socioeconomic teenagers in Texas. In those particular areas in Texas, STDs and pregnancies are pretty high. In Los Angeles, the demographics are similar to the ones that were studied in Texas. Since they are similar, LAUSD decided to adopt the program.
Information about the implementation of the curriculum. How and why was this curriculum put into place at your school? Who was involved in the decision to adopt it? Who decided how it was to be implemented?
The city of Huntington Park is greatly affected by teen pregnancy, STDs, and drugs; just like the rest of the low socioeconomic cities of Los Angeles. In order to reduce these issues, the school adopted this curriculum.
A lady from Beaudry, that is in charge of Health Education adopted the curriculum, because she thought it was the most comprehensive curriculum available.
The developers decided how the curriculum was to be implemented. They wanted to have as much control as possible on how the curriculum was to be taught. Since the curriculum is very step-by-step, they want teachers to follow the curriculum as closely as possible; so much so that at the training, they gave us an optional contract of fidelity. The contract stated that we would stick to the curriculum as closely as possible. There were no repercussions for not signing the optional contract.
The goals and objectives for the curriculum. Are they being met? Why/how, or why/how not?
The goals of the program are to decrease pregnancy and STDs among low socioeconomic teens. The program intends to meet these goals by providing accurate information on abstinence and safe sex practices.
As of right now, for LAUSD, we do not know if the goals are being met. The program will not find out until Spring 2014, when they will analyze the data they have been collecting since 2009. They have been collecting data of students from 7th grade up until the 9th grade. Based on the responses of the students of the 9th grade, they can evaluate if the program has been effective in preventing pregnancies and STDs. The data that will be collected will come from interviews and statistics of teen pregnancies and STDs of the surrounding areas that are bein taught IYG.
Besides the grade level, who is taught using this curriculum (e.g., everyone, only general education students, only gifted)? Are some students excluded? If so, why?
Everyone in the 7th and 8th grade are being taught this data. This includes general education students and gifted students. Special education students were not taken into account for this curriculum but, they can be taught this curriculum as well.
Given the context of your school, are there any issues that exist in the way the curriculum was designed/developed and how it was implemented? For example, are there issues of culture, language, ability, gender, SES, etc?
One of major issues with this curriculum is that it completely ignores the homosexual population. All of the activities, videos, and skits, solely focus on heterosexual relationships. It is as if homosexuals do not exist. This further perpetuates the marginalization of homosexuality to our students. The studentts get to see how a proper relationship should be between a boy and a girl, but never of a same sex couple. Homosexuals are ignored and it can make homosexual students feel left out, and feel as if the content does not apply to them. If we do not acknowledge our homosexual students, it can deeply affect their self-esteem even further. At the training, this issue was brought up, and one of the trainers just said to replace a girls name with a boys name, or vice versa, to represent a homosexual couple. This is merely a band-aid over a gash wound.
Another problem with this curriculum is that it requires a computer and internet access for certain activities. The curriculum that this is intended for, is for low socioeconomic teens. Many of these teens do not have access to a computer, and much less access to internet, at home. Of course, the activities may be completed in the classroom. But if a classroom only has 30 computers, and a couple classes have 37 students, such as my class, then there are not going to be enough computers for the whole class to use. Also, in the computers my class uses are nearing, or already at 10 years old. After many years of use, many of the laptops are missing keys, have cracked keyboards, and have horrible battery life. Having these resources or lack there-of, affects how our students learn this curriculum.
The methods used to evaluate the effectiveness of this curriculum.
The developers used a randomized control trial design to evaluate the curriculum. Evidence is collected when the students reach the 9th grade through interviews and surveys.
If you were in control of this curriculum what (if anything) would you change?
One aspect I would definitely change is how tightly controlled the curriculum is. For the teachers and students, the process of going through this curriculum is very robotic. I would allow multiple answers to be accepted as to what the students believe is right. I would have the curriculum more open ended and less tightly controlled than it is now. Another aspect I would change is to acknowledge homosexual relationships. Students need to know that homosexual partners need to practice safe sex just as heterosexual partners do. Lastly, I would completely get rid of the soap opera videos. They are very cheesy and the students cannot relate to them. If the material was represented in a serious, factual, and light tone, I feel the students would respond better to the material.