Review of Growth in Teachers’ Curriculum Knowledge through the Process of Curriculum Analysis

The title of the paper which I will review is “Growth in Teachers’ Curriculum Knowledge through the Process of Curriculum Analysis” which is written by Tamar Ariav from Jewish Education Service of North America 730 Broadway, New York, NY 10003. The paper presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual meeting, New Orleans, April 1988. The permission to reproduce this material has been granted by the Educational Resources Information centre (ERIC).

The writer is trying to analyze how teachers’ curriculum knowledge growth through the process of curriculum analysis and identifiers particular areas of growth derived from the experience. The research was conducted with eight individual teachers in Israel. The writer said that curriculum analysis is the critical and systematic examination of curriculum materials in order to identify their positive and negative characteristics, potential for teaching and learning and hidden values and assumption. This analysis is also guided by an instrument or a scheme which includes questions or criteria to be considered throughout the examination. This instrument is called “SALTAL” and includes 33 perspective criteria which explicate the desirable characteristics of good curriculum materials and the way the study was conducted.

The writer wrote the problem statement in two pages; page 5 and page 7. The first problem statement is how curriculum knowledge could be established as a part of teacher’s pedagogical repertoire and the second one is how growth in teachers’ curriculum knowledge occurs. Unfortunately, the goal of the paper is not really suitable to the problem statement. Because the writer said on the page 7 that the goal was not directly stated to the participating teachers at the outset because we did not want to influence their thinking and attitudes and the writer presented the goal of the study as the pilot testing of a new instrument for curriculum analysis. Perhaps, that is way the writer just took eight teachers in Israel which is actually it is not enough yet to be the object of the research.

The paper is quite detail, because the writer explained the way he conducted the data and the writer also explained the factors one by one which influenced his research which starts from the teachers, the instrument, the findings which explained about SALTAL and the main part of the paper which explained in discussion. Then, the writer arranged the simple conclusion.

Over all, this paper is well-organized enough but unfortunately, the paper has not fulfilled the standard of making a scientific writing (paper) such as the margins and the alignment. The writer is also forgetting to write the key words under the abstract.