Curriculum Past and Present: A Learning Sciences Perspective

• In Event: 43.080 - Sheraton Roundtable Six - Osgoode Ballroom
  In Roundtable Session: 43.080-1 - Contestations of the Nation-State: Ownership and Answerability in Curriculum

Abstract

The Department of Education is currently in the process of revising the educational curriculum to align with the Western and Northern Canadian Protocol (WNCP). This change was motivated by concerns that the curriculum objectives had become too numerous and too difficult to teach to. Prompted by this, the present retrospective review explores the ways that the NS curriculum has changed over the past 60 years in terms of: number of curriculum objectives, whether those objectives are well-defined goals according to problem solving theory, and their cognitive characteristics. The frequency and nature of objectives have changed considerably over time. Consistently, those that are ill-defined goal states are more likely to be coded as higher-level cognitive processes (e.g. evaluating, creating).

Authors

• Greg MacLean, Mount Saint Vincent University

• Krista Corinne Ritchie, Mount Saint Vincent University