Teaching and Learning

The real work of curricular development focuses on how teaching and learning are accomplished in the classroom. As Eisner observed (1994), “Teaching can be done as badly as anything else…wooden, mechanical, mindless, and wholly unimaginative.” Likewise, educators and school leaders know that the practical application of effective approaches is more complicated than is portrayed in the media.

Previous reliance on textbook-based instruction has led many people to assume that the textbook is the curriculum. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Contemporary education is based on classroom-based research. Instructional strategies that provide a venue for successful curricular implementation are grounded in adopted standards and twenty-first-century skills.

This resource provides instruction for users to:

• Identify the role of curriculum as a filter in classroom instruction
• Describe instructional improvement using research-based best instructional strategies
• Explain the purpose of the Common Core Standards