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Curriculum : a palette for the mind : modeling reflective curriculum inquiry for curricular content

Curriculum is a means by which the medium of thought finds expression. It is a palette
for the mind. Curriculum is a device by which thoughts are given form that can be shared. In the
hands of a curriculum artist, symphonies of thought are conceived, composed, and performed.
Like a palette in the hands of a master, curriculum in the hands of a teacher can transform
minds. This dissertation seeks to examine, through reflective inquiry, the efficacy of an
integrative, concept‐driven curriculum framework for novice elementary teachers, and, thereby,
posit a generalized model of reflective curriculum inquiry to generate a deeper understanding
for the researcher and her readers. The emergent model is not a curriculum, but when viewed
as a framework, this model can become a means to facilitate design and to further support the
development and evaluation of curricula. This dissertation is a story of how a teacher was made,
not born. It is a story of how students learned conceptually and performed purposefully. It is
also a story of roles and relationships found between students, teachers, parents,
administrators, and curriculum. Throughout this dissertation, actor‐network theory (ANT) was
used to help describe these relationships between the various roles that I assumed in relation to
others, resources, and educational settings. Finally, this dissertation reveals a significant and
direct relationship between standards‐derived concept vocabulary, subject matter integration,
and literacy development that emphasized the need for a configurable curriculum framework to
serve as a model for curriculum inquiry. / text

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UTEXAS/oai:repositories.lib.utexas.edu:2152/6632
Date23 October 2009
CreatorsStarkes, Kathryn Elizabeth
Source SetsUniversity of Texas
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Formatelectronic
RightsCopyright is held by the author. Presentation of this material on the Libraries' web site by University Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin was made possible under a limited license grant from the author who has retained all copyrights in the works.

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