The Problem

On my frequent visits to Jewish day schools, mainly in the English-speaking world, I am struck by an almost universal problem in these countries – the lack of a professionally written, systematic curriculum in Jewish Studies. I base myself, in particular, on my experience in writing Humash curriculum, but the same would be true for Halakha, Mishna, Tefilla and other areas of Jewish Studies. By curriculum, I mean a clear definition of what should be taught in each grade and trimester in terms of content, skills, values and written guidelines on how the material should be taught. In the area of Humash instruction, for example, most schools have lists of Humash chapters to be taught, vocabulary to be learned and commentaries to be studied. But the focus is generally on content and less on how Humash skills should be taught systematically from low to high grades. Even more importantly, a vital component of the Humash curriculum has been almost completely ignored. I refer to the values, beliefs and behavioral characteristics that we wish to impart to students through the study of a particular Humash text. This aspect of the curriculum is usually left to the individual teacher’s discretion and is not outlined in detail in the school curriculum. This lack of definition of values has important ramifications on the actual content of the curriculum itself. On what basis does one choose what content to teach? More precisely, what are the criteria for choosing a particular verse or Rashi commentary? Should the specific values we wish to impart through the study of a given text guide us in our choice of content? In most schools, these questions have not been sufficiently discussed or thought through in detail.

I offer, here, some reflections on a curriculum development project that addresses the issues outlined above. I emphasize the process of developing a curriculum rather than the end product. The goal of this article is to enable schools to be aware of the elements that need to be considered prior to determining a curriculum. I offer my own reflections and conclusions as head of the curriculum consultancy team of the project together with the comments of the participants themselves so that we can learn from everyone’s experiences. As the project is still in process my conclusions are somewhat tentative, but will hopefully give readers plenty of food for thought.

The Project

Recognizing the aforementioned problem, the Association of Modern Orthodox Day Schools and Yeshiva High Schools, under its newly appointed director Dr. Jeremiah Unterman, launched a curriculum development initiative in September, 2000. During the previous year, Dr. Unterman had been a Senior Fellow at the Lookstein Center and, in the course of that year, he took a seminar with me on curriculum development. In accord with criteria discussed in the above-mentioned seminar, the project’s process would take the following structure (see further details below):

• Based upon an active mission statement, schools would create a profile of the values, knowledge, and skills they wished their students to have achieved in Jewish studies by graduation.
• Using backward design, a spiral curriculum would then be developed starting with the lower grades.
• Consultants would be hired to train school staff to develop, write, and assess curriculum.
• The consultants would meet with school staff for semi-annual workshops. Other communication would take place through email and fax.

In November 2000, I was invited to participate as guest lecturer at the Annual Conference of the Association of Modern Orthodox Day Schools and Yeshiva High Schools in New York in order to inaugurate this curriculum development project. At the conference I presented a model, which I will summarize shortly for developing a Jewish Studies curriculum for Jewish Day Schools. Following the presentation, a group of elementary schools expressed interest in participating in a pilot project for the creation of a detailed Humash curriculum for grades 2-8. The participating schools are Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy (Livingston New Jersey), Rabbi Pesach Raymon Yeshiva (Edison, NJ), the Epstein Hebrew Academy (St. Louis, MO), Netivot Hatorah (Toronto, Canada) and Addlestone Hebrew Academy (Charleston, SC). The project is supervised by Dr. Unterman under the proprietorship of the Association of Modern Orthodox Day Schools and Yeshiva High Schools (it should be noted that the resulting curricula will be made available to schools which did not participate in the project). The Association contracted the Lookstein Center for Jewish Education in the Diaspora at Bar Ilan University to be the primary consultants. Due to limited resources and time, it was decided to focus on two major areas: Humash and Limudei Eretz Yisrael. In effect, I became the director of the Humash portion, and Dr. Michael Grunzweig has been directing the writing of the Limudei Eretz Yisrael curriculum for grades 1-8. Our first seminar took place in New Jersey in February 2001 and we met an additional five times over the ensuing three years.

What was the curriculum development process model, which we adopted for this project? I think it important, at this stage, to give some academic background as to various models for the process of curriculum development from the world of general education and to consider their application within the area of Jewish Studies.

The Process of Curriculum Development – Possible Models

It is interesting to note that the issues of curriculum development that I have described are mirrored in what is happening in general education as well. In a recent article, which appeared in the Journal of Curriculum Studies, Macdonald (May 2003) describes the crisis in curriculum reform and summarizes the recent debates on curriculum studies using descriptors such as “disarray,” “blind,” “floundering,” and “failure”. In another article describing the experiences of new teachers with curriculum and assessment, Kauffman, Johnson, Kardos, Liu and Peske (March 2002) come to similar conclusions. After interviewing a diverse sample of 50 1st and 2nd year Massachusetts teachers working in a wide range of public schools, they found that, despite the state’s development of standards and statewide assessments, new teachers received little or no guidance on what to teach or how to teach it. Left to their own devices, they struggled to prepare content and materials. In the words of one teacher, “you want me to teach this stuff, but I don’t have the stuff to teach.” The authors conclude that, “the absence of a coherent curriculum has implications for student achievement and teacher retention in that students may learn less than they otherwise might, and many new teachers who could have succeeded with more support may leave teaching prematurely because of the overwhelming nature of the work. This suggests an urgent need to reconsider the curricula and support provided to new teachers.” It seems that the world of general education is facing similar problems to those faced by Jewish Studies.

What has been done, in the past, in general education to ensure effective curriculum reform? The following brief historical analysis will uncover three models of curriculum change, representing differing attempts by powerful groups in general education to impact upon what and how students learn in school.

1. Top-Down Model

Attempts at curriculum reform in North America and the UK during the 1960s and early 1970s led to the development of the so-called “teacher-proof” curriculum package as a central component of reform. As the term “teacher-proof” suggests, the intent was to minimize the teacher’s influence on curriculum reform by developing a tight relationship between educational objectives, curriculum content, and assessment instruments, all packaged in a set of curriculum materials or texts produced by specialized curriculum writers unaffiliated with the schools. In this context, the educational purposes of schools and teachers were to play a subsidiary role to those of educational administrators and their curriculum writers. The goal was to achieve a high level of concordance between the conception and implementation of curriculum change. In Jewish Education, too, various Jewish agencies, over the years, provided the school system with ready-made curricula based on this top-down model. Jewish Education Bureaus, for example, prepared curriculum kits on various subjects such as Holidays and Festivals, Humash, Israel etc.

2. Bottom-Up Model

Research on curriculum development during the 1970s and early 1980s revealed the difficulty of achieving the goals of top-down teacher-proof curriculum packages. Curriculum innovations invariably changed between the conception and implementation stages, and local forces, including teachers and the school environment, played a key role in the apparent “slippage” between conception and practice. Innovations failed to take into account temporal, social, economic and cultural factors that govern possibilities for change in special contexts (Kirk, 1988).

In Jewish education it is fair to say that, for a variety of reasons, many principals and teachers found the top-down ready-made curriculum approach inadequate. Firstly, the political impartiality and ideological neutrality built into the nature of Bureaus, as communal organizations, did not allow for the development of curricula according to specific ideological positions (Schremer and Bailey 2001). Since it is common to find teachers with different ideological backgrounds in the same Jewish day school – a single curriculum pack could not accommodate these differences. Secondly, as Floden (1997) pointed out, a gap often exists between the knowledge base of some teachers and that required in order to teach a new curriculum. Given that teachers, in Jewish day schools, are not party to the writing of ready-made curricula, they do not always understand their rationale or some of the content. Teachers, in addition, often reject curricula designed by external authors, not so much because these constitute external intervention, but because of their incompatibility with the teachers’ individual teaching standards (Schremer and Bailey 2001). The curricula may also inadequately meet the needs of individual classrooms.

As a result of these difficulties, curriculum researchers began to advocate a central role for teachers in the curriculum development process and the need for teachers to “own” aspects of changes sought. In the late 1970s and 1980s, the emergence of new approaches to curriculum reform, such as school-based curriculum development (SBCD) and action research (both particularly influential in Australia) began to place schools and teachers at the center of curriculum reform efforts. For some advocates, SBCD represented a democratization of curriculum development in which the “real experts” – the teachers – were justly given control of the curriculum development (Kemmis and McTaggart 1988).

The result, however, in many Australian states and in the USA, was less demanding, poorly resourced and loosely assessed curricula. As Vickers (1992) pointed out, the consequences for various disciplines included the loss of systemic attention and support.

3. Partnerships

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s research, critique and re-assessment of school-based strategies for change acted as a corrective to extreme manifestations of the “bottom-up notion” of curriculum reform. Critics of school-based curriculum reform drew attention to the problematic nature of the teacher as the change agent. Studies of teacher-initiated innovation reported that, even in this context, “slippage” occurred between the formal conception and its implementation (Fullan 1999). Advocates of action research re-assessed the efficacy of this strategy for change (Tinning 1996).

Consequently, a new model for curriculum reform evolved based on collaborative relationships between administrators, curriculum developers, researchers and teachers. Such partnerships, in Fullan’s (1999) terms, involve “across-boundary collaboration.” Ennis (1999) for example, describes a US peace-education curriculum initiative, “Sport for Peace,” led jointly by district education officers, community groups, teachers and, most noticeably, students. The features of this change model combine collaboration between schools, teacher professional development, community and student input to meet local needs, and systematic, monitoring and revision. Fullan (1999), McGinn (1999) and Adams (2000) suggest that since curriculum change is multi-dimensional, messy, and shaped by local contexts, it should include classroom teachers and is most effective when both top-down and bottom-up partnerships are included.

The Process of Curriculum Development Adopted in this Project

Based on our research of the pros and cons of the various curriculum development models, as described above, we decided to adopt a “partnership” model as the basis of our work. In this model, each participating school appoints a curriculum coordinator to oversee the process of curriculum development in the school. The actual writing of the curriculum is the responsibility of each individual school. In some schools, the writing is carried out by the curriculum coordinator himself. In others, it is carried out, under the supervision of the curriculum coordinator, by groups of teachers familiar with the material and standards of students at particular grade levels. We emphasize that, even when there is one official curriculum writer in a school, he/she will involve teachers in the process at every stage of the work. As described above, the “ownership” component of the process is a very important aspect of its development. In our model, the role of the curriculum expert, in this case, consultants of the Lookstein Center, is twofold. Firstly, the consultant trains the curriculum coordinators to become curriculum writers and supervisors. This is achieved by a series of professional development seminars, which we will describe below. Secondly, the consultant critiques and provides meaningful feedback on the material produced by the curriculum writer or team from each particular school. The process also allows for collaboration between schools particularly during professional development seminars.

The Stages of Curriculum Development in the Partnership Model

The stages in the curriculum development process are based on the seminal work of Tyler (1949) in his book Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction. Tyler presents four questions that should guide curriculum development:

1. What are the educational goals the school strives to attain?
2. Which educational means, available to the school, are necessary to bring about the attainment of these goals?
3. How can these means be organized more efficiently?
4. How should the attainment of goals be evaluated?

These four questions not only reflect a rational approach to the planning of a curriculum, they also represent an outcome-based orientation. Educators are challenged to identify precisely the final outcomes they expect of students as a result of teachers’ teaching efforts. Conceptualizing the goals of teaching in this manner endows classroom work with a clear sense of purpose and learning experiences are treated as task-oriented activities rather than as cultural rituals. Tyler suggests that no rational efficient teaching can take place unless teachers start planning their classroom work with a definite sense of purpose. They need to decide, for example, which topics deserve more focus, how much time should be spent on each item, and how classroom work should be apportioned in terms of the development of specific skills and values.

Following the basic guidelines of Tyler’s model, the participants in this project were presented with a 4-Stage model for curriculum development.

1. Definition of the School’s Ideal Graduate: What belief system do we wish them to have? What values do we want them to have? What do we want the students to know in terms of Jewish knowledge by the time they graduate? What skills do we wish them to have for the study of Jewish texts? Each school was asked to determine these questions using the School’s particular Mission and Ethos Statement. The issues were presented under five headings:
   1. Beliefs and Philosophies
   2. Behavioral Characteristics
   3. Jewish Knowledge
   4. Skills in Jewish Learning
   5. General Knowledge
2. Definition of subjects to be taught and time allotted to them.
3. Definition of overall goals for each subject in terms of content, skills and values.
4. Definition of annual and semester goals for each subject at each grade level.

On completion of these stages, we would then deal with Tyler’s four objective-models for evaluation and assessment.

Stages 1 and 2 were accomplished by the schools between November 2000 and February 2001. This was followed by the first professional development seminar, which focused on stage 3 of the process – the development of overall goals in the study of Humash and Limudei Eretz Yisrael (the two topics chosen for the project).

Subsequent seminars (October 2001, February 2002, October 2002, February 2003 and October 2003) continued with Stage 4 of the process – the definition of annual and semester goals for Humash. To date, the Humash curriculum for grades 2-5 has been completed and the target date for grades 6-8 is October 2004. The Limudei Eretz Yisrael curriculum has followed a different process, which goes beyond the scope of this article.

Project Evaluation: Does the Partnership Model Work?

Does the Partnership Model work? We asked each of the participating schools to distribute questionnaires to their teachers. We also interviewed the curriculum coordinators in each of the schools.

The questionnaire examined six areas of the curriculum development process:

1. The effectiveness of the curriculum development process as a whole.
2. The level of involvement of teachers in the curriculum development process.
3. The level of interaction between teachers in the same school as a result of the curriculum development process.
4. The role of the consultants in facilitating curriculum change.
5. The involvement of the school principal in the curriculum development process.
6. The collaboration of a number of schools in the curriculum development process.

Results

1. Both in written and oral responses, the coordinators and teachers clearly indicated that the curriculum development process was productive and that they now have a more effective Humash curriculum than before. In the words of one third grade teacher: “This is so helpful. Seeing everything laid out gives a meaning and a framework to what I am teaching. I wish I had something like this when I first started teaching this grade.” In written evaluations, the vast majority of respondents agreed that the new curriculum is more effective than the previous Humash curriculum.
2. As the process is based on a partnership between coordinators, teachers and consultants, we asked the teacher respondents to assess their level of involvement in the process. Responses to this question varied greatly. In some schools, coordinators involved teachers throughout the process while in others, it was the coordinator who wrote most of the curriculum material and only involved teachers in the implementation process. These coordinators expressed the desire for more teacher involvement, but noted that this was impeded by scheduling and union pressures. Interestingly, teachers who were less involved in the curriculum writing still felt, on the whole, that the curriculum development process was effective. The implications of these findings need to be examined more thoroughly, particularly in the long-term.
3. With regard to the interaction between teachers, there was a broad range of responses, even though the level of interaction was usually a function of time allocated by the school specifically for the project. One interesting observation was that the interaction engendered by the project enhanced not only the curriculum itself but also the teacher’s pedagogic skills. As one coordinator noted: “This has been much more than a curriculum development process. It has been a professional development process as well.” One teacher commented: “This process has enabled us to talk with each other, perhaps for the first time, about why we are teaching what we are teaching. We will be better teachers because of it.”
4. There was general consensus that the curriculum consultants played a pivotal role in the process. Their contribution was deemed to have contributed significantly to the positive impact of the project.
5. The level of involvement of the school principal in the process seems to have played a major role in the relative success of the implementation process by the school. In general, schools whose principals played an active role in both supporting and actively involving themselves reported that this factor had a very positive impact on the project. On the other hand, coordinators and teachers whose principals were less involved reported difficulties in implementation. Again, this needs to be considered in the longer term.
6. Most respondents felt that the fact that the schools met and worked collaboratively together did not impact significantly on the curriculum development process. While many of the schools have a similar ethos and mission, the curriculum of each school reflected the teaching philosophies of the individual teachers more than that of the particular schools. This has very significant implications regarding collaborative processes in the future between schools in the area of curriculum development. At the same time, the process of learning the work of curriculum composition was greatly enhanced by the helpful exchange of ideas, articulation of positions, reflection, and mutual support of colleagues from different schools.

Conclusions: What can we learn from the process?

It is still very early to come to firm conclusions regarding the partnership method of curriculum development and, specifically, its implications as applied to Jewish Studies. This particular project has not yet been completed and any conclusions, at this time, can only give us directions and pointers for further consideration. I suggest the following thoughts:

1. In general, teachers are eager for the opportunity to talk with their colleagues about what they should be teaching in the classroom and how it should best be done. In many schools, there simply does not exist a forum in which this can take place in an organized and systematic way. A curriculum development process of this kind offers teachers the opportunity to develop both their knowledge and pedagogic skills.
2. Most teachers are searching for a Jewish Studies curriculum that is built in a systematic way and is also suited to their specific needs, school ethos and population. A process, such as that described above, enables them to be involved in the writing of a curriculum that meets their needs.
3. One of the major weaknesses of such a process is the lack of time to meet and discuss curriculum issues. Where schools did not find the time for teachers to work collaboratively on the project, the process was less successful.
4. Active involvement by principals is a crucial aspect in the success of such a project. When the principal is less involved, the process is usually less successful.
5. The central role of the individual teacher in curriculum development needs to be considered more carefully in such a process. Our study seems to indicate that the philosophy, ideology and beliefs of the individual teacher is what ultimately decides what is taught in the classroom. Omitting the individual teacher is detrimental to the curriculum writing process.

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