MEDD6128 Chap.4 Key Design Principles from Competing Ideologies
Key Design Principles from Competing Ideologies
Same readings, different task
This session and the one before it share their reading list entirely, and the sharing is a signal about what changes between them. The material is identical; the task is not. The previous session asked you to recognise a position in somebody else's document.
This one asks what follows once you adopt one, which is exactly the step your group presentation has to perform when it develops a framework based on one or two ideologies.
Most weak frameworks fail here rather than earlier, because naming a position is easy and deriving a design from it is not.
Four rungs, and the two that proposals skip
The procedure runs from the position held, to the design question actually in dispute, to the principle that position supplies for that question, to a decision a named actor at a named level could take.
Each rung narrows, and every narrowing is a commitment somebody could contest. The middle two are the ones usually missing.
A proposal that jumps from a general statement of purpose to a specific recommendation has hidden the commitment a reader would want to argue with, and a framework nobody can argue with has not proposed anything.
The vocabulary problem, and the only reliable fix
The four positions appear in the published literature under many names, and the review reading for this session sets nine classification schemes side by side to show it.
Curriculum theory, curriculum beliefs, curriculum ideologies and curriculum orientations all get used for one another, as does the longer phrase about educational value orientations, with no source establishing that they mean different things.
Two traps sit inside the translation: a name can point the wrong way, as when a scheme uses humanist for a position centred on liberal education and tradition; and one category in the literature concerns how curriculum decisions should be reached rather than what should be taught.
A principle has to forbid something
The scholar academic position asks that a course mirror the structure of its discipline, and treats a sequence that is convenient but false to the field as a defect.
The social efficiency position asks that the client be named and that every element trace to a stated need. The learner centred position asks that the environment rather than the content list be designed, and treats a prescribed sequence overriding a learner's direction as a cost to be justified.
The social reconstruction position asks that the design start from a named injustice, and treats awareness without capacity to act as unfinished. Each is usable because each rules something out.
Keeping a two ideology framework coherent
Two positions can share a design if they govern different questions, and cannot if they answer the same one differently.
Writing the five questions down the page and marking which position governs each is a five minute test that prevents the commonest structural failure in a presentation. A related move is worth learning for the question period: many objections from a rival position can be reconstructed as internal criticisms, and an internal criticism is far harder to dismiss than an external one.
What this chapter covers
- 01
The shared reading list, and what changes between the two sessions
- 02
The ladder from position to design question to principle to decision
- 03
Why each narrowing is a contestable commitment
- 04
Nine published schemes and four underlying positions
- 05
A label that points the wrong way, and how to report it
- 06
Deliberative theory as a claim about process rather than teaching
- 07
The principle each position supplies and the thing it forbids
- 08
Two positions, five questions, and the coherence test
- 09
Reconstructing a rival objection as internal criticism
One unit, two positions, and a decision rather than a compromise
- 3Name the design question in dispute and show it is not the content question.
- 4Say which position governs it and why the other cannot be simply overruled.
- 3State the resulting decision and what each party has conceded.
Key terms
- Design Principle
- The rule a position supplies for one specific design question, stated so that it names what the position rules out as well as what it permits.
- Design Decision
- A specific change that a named actor at a named level could make in a named timeframe. It is the rung at which a framework becomes checkable.
- Governing Position
- The position that settles a particular design question in a framework built from more than one. Two positions may share a framework but may not share a question.
- Deliberative Theory
- A category in the literature concerned with how curriculum decisions are reached through deliberation rather than with the teaching and learning process, so it does not compete with the four positions.
- Internal Criticism
- An objection restated in terms a position is already committed to, such as challenging the validity of a chosen measure rather than challenging measurement itself.
- Curriculum Orientation
- One of several interchangeable names in the literature for a collective set of beliefs about curriculum objectives, content, instructional strategies and evaluation.
Key Design Principles from Competing Ideologies FAQ
Why does this session repeat the previous session's readings?
Because the same material supports two different operations and the course wants both performed. Recognising a position in a document you did not write is an interpretive task, and deriving a design from a position you have adopted is a productive one.
Students who read the second session as revision arrive at the presentation able to name four positions and unable to build anything from one, which is the failure the shared reading list is arranged to prevent.
What does it mean to say a principle must forbid something?
A rule that only permits is not doing any work, because everything is permitted by something. The four principles are usable precisely because each rules out a class of design choice that its position cannot accept, and a marker can check whether your framework actually declines what your stated position declines.
Writing the prohibition also protects you in the question period, since the fastest way to expose a framework is to show it does the thing its own position forbids.
How do I cite a paper whose classification uses different names?
Keep the author's own term in the citation so a reader can follow you back to the source, and resolve the position separately by its commitments. One widely cited scheme uses humanist for a position centred on liberal education for everyone, on the academic subjects, on reason as a faculty to be strengthened, and on staying with tradition, which belongs with scholar academic despite the word.
Resolving by vocabulary alone produces a classification that is wrong while the citation is correct, which is harder for a reader to detect than an ordinary error.
My framework is about how a decision should be reached rather than what should be taught. Is that allowed?
It is allowed and it should be labelled as what it is. One category in the literature is explicitly concerned with the curriculum making process rather than with teaching and learning, and it sits at a different level from the four positions rather than competing with them.
Dressing a process proposal as a claim about content confuses the two levels and invites an objection you would find hard to answer, whereas naming the level is straightforward and defensible.
Is compromising between two positions ever the right answer?
Splitting a design between two positions is usually the weakest available answer, because it assigns no governing position to the question in dispute and therefore cannot say what should happen in the borderline case, which is the only moment the design is load bearing.
The stronger move is to locate the objection inside the governing position where it becomes a criticism that position is obliged to take seriously, and to say plainly what the other position gave up.
Assessment move
Take the position you intend to build your presentation on and write its prohibition in one sentence, in your own words, without looking at this guide. Then look at your draft framework and find the element that violates it.
There is almost always one, because a prohibition is easy to accept in principle and easy to forget while designing, and finding it yourself is much cheaper than having it found for you in the question period.
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