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Curriculum Development

Curricula are education's silent partners, bringing teacher, content, and student together to share, explore, and construct knowledge within a variety of instructional settings. While not a substitute for good teaching, curricula can structure, support, and shape teaching practice and the learning process. Technology has opened a world of resources previously unavailable in schools, such as online access to experts, primary sources, multiple media. Curricula need to adapt to this new reality and help teachers figure out how to use, cope with, integrate and respond to new tools and demands in the classroom, in their kids’ lives, and in an evolving content base. Curricula are still running to catch up. CCT staff who have played prominent roles in this domain include Bill Tally and Babette Moeller. Select a snapshot below to learn more about the kinds of work we do in this area.

• Snapshot 1
  Online digital archives offer students the opportunity to examine primary sources and build critical reasoning, yet most teachers and students have little exposure to the historical inquiry process. With funding from the NEH, CCT developed web-based tools and inquiry guides called Picturing Modern America to help middle and high school students and their teachers conduct historical inquiries into a range of topics related to the building of modern America (1880 to 1920) using materials from the Library of Congress' American Memory collections.
• Snapshot 2
  Standards-based reform has brought increased rigor and quality into mathematics and science education, however, students with physical, developmental, and learning disabilities have largely missed out on these advances. The result is their limited participation and achievement. With support from NSF, we developed and tested curriculum activities that demonstrate how students with disabilities can be included in standards-based education. Focus was on Grades K-4, our approach stressed an “asset” model of disability, which recognizes that people with disabilities may have unique skills and experiences relevant to mathematics and science that could enhance their achievement of the standards, could enhance other students understanding, and perhaps contribute to a more inclusive formulation of the standards themselves.
• Snapshot 3
  In early childhood learning, technology can viewed as another manipulable for facilitating children's play. IBM approached CCT to develop professional develoment materials for teachers and parents that explained and supported appropriate use of technology in early child development. We produced a Web site and CD-ROM of guiding questions, multimedia tutorials, and associated materials for early childhood teachers, support staff, and parents that explored ways to gauge, direct and scaffold young children's computer time called the Kidsmart Early Learning Guide.