Steve Bailey, Ph.D., is a psychologist, educator and curriculum developer. He was co-founder of Shalhevet High School in Los Angeles and was Visiting Professor at York University’s Jewish Teacher Training Program in Toronto before making Aliyah in 2009. A frequent contributor to Jewish Educational Leadership, he is the author of two recent books, which can be found at www.thebiblicalvoice.com.
Steve Bailey describes a process he used to help one school include all its major stakeholders in determining the school’s needs.
Most Jewish day schools (with some ultra-orthodox exceptions) abide by standardized general studies curricula in math, science, English and history, mandated by state laws. The schools keep within these guidelines so that students can graduate with accepted pre-requisites for higher education. The task of the school administration is to see that these curricular guidelines are met.
By contrast, with the exception of a few large communities with bureaus of Jewish education that mandate guidelines, Jewish studies curricula are not mandated or assessed by outside educational agencies. In the absence of imposed curricular frameworks, the school administration is typically tasked with the responsibility of defining the Jewish studies goals of the school and setting the curricular guidelines. Often the Head of Jewish studies is charged by the Principal to sit with a few seasoned teachers and map out a spreadsheet of what should be covered at each grade level, in each subject area.
Is this the best way to go about setting the curricular goals for a school?
Some years ago, I was hired to direct a five-year project to design and implement the Jewish studies curriculum for a large (2000 students) K-12 Jewish day school in Australia (Bailey, 2013). This article describes how I went about formulating the goals that would shape the Jewish studies curriculum in a way that would meet the particular needs of the school. Hopefully, a description of my reasoning and methodology may provide some productive suggestions for this intimidating, but critical, mission for Jewish studies curriculum developers.
Getting the stakeholders
My overall task was to establish the school’s Jewish studies’ goals and curriculum. After much research and planning, I had in mind a basic Jewish Literacy curriculum so that students would graduate with the knowledge and skills of an educated, committed Jew. But I had to ask myself some fundamental questions. Although my responsibility was to establish goals and curricular guidelines, to what degree do I involve various “stakeholders” among the school community (Lundang, 2013)? For example, what about faculty? On the one hand, faculty teach the material and should have a say in what they will be expected to teach. Teachers have to be committed to the value of the required material and teachers often differ greatly on what should be taught, how deeply, how often and how much (Schremer & Bailey, 2001). On the other hand, although teacher input would be valuable, there needed to be some standardization of curriculum to assure that all sections of a grade are taught specified, basic material so that the curriculum is spiraled and that next year’s teachers know what the students have already learned. Teachers’ individual interests are relevant to shaping goals, but to allow each class teacher to establish the class goals would result in anarchy; teacher preferences need to be balanced with the need for standardized goals and boundaries.
What about students – should students have a say in the goals of their own Jewish education? True, students are the recipients of education, not its designers, but students are more motivated to learn material that interests them and that they believe is important to learn (Newmann, 1992). Although feedback from students does not define curricular goals, students may help refine the topics and the hierarchy of pedagogic goals that are proposed by professional educators.
What about parents – should they have a say about what their children are taught (given they are paying for education)? One the one hand, by enrolling their children in the school, parents have entrusted their children’s education to professional educators. Educators tend to be wary of over-involvement of parents in the school’s pedagogic responsibilities. On the other hand, parents are with their children after school, on Shabbat and holidays. Parents – especially Jewishly educated parents – have expectations about what knowledge and skills their children should have regarding the meaning and observances of Jewish life, mostly on those holidays celebrated by the family. Parents also are sensitive to community standards and want their children to be active in Jewish community activities; they expect that the school will educate their child to participate in synagogue and social activities with the rest of the community. Thus, parents’ expectations may be valuable in helping to define the desired outcomes of their school’s curricular goals.
Finally, to what degree should the school board get involved – is it their business to be involved in pedagogic issues? While school boards know that their main task is the support, maintenance and development of the school, there are often a few members or a board committee focused on the educational component of the school. Although, typically, there is a clear understanding of boundaries so that the board does not step on the toes of the school administration when it comes to pedagogy, still the board represents the wider school community and often has constructive views on what the curricular goals of the school should include, albeit leaving the specifics to the professionals.
All things considered, it made sense to have these four groups of “stakeholders” (teachers, students, parents and board members) share the task of developing a school’s goals along with the administration and myself, conscious of the caveats described above.
Gathering information
The next task was to gather input from these groups. Two decisions needed to be made: from whom shall I gather data and in what manner? It is inefficient to speak to all the stakeholders within these four groups. That would have to be done by questionnaire, a method that is easy to administer but has a low rate of response, is hard to quantify and does not allow give-and-take between the questioner and respondent to assure focus. So the choice was to set up “focus groups” of selected informants. The purpose of all the focus groups (each comprised of 6-8 participants) was to provide information that would help in formulating goals for the school’s Judaic studies. Having been new to the school, I had to rely on others to help me select informed and motivated participants for the focus groups. I asked administrators to recommend board members and teachers, teachers to recommend students (in the middle and high school), and the Chair of the PTA to recommend parents.
The second decision was formulating questions to guide the discussion. I knew what I considered to be basic Jewish Literacy in the curriculum, but I wanted these pedagogic goals to be adjusted by this particular school’s needs. I decided to be straightforward and clear in my questions so I could get specific responses that would directly help me in shaping these goals. Also, my questions had to be similar for all groups so that I could pool the responses to form a summary on the same issues from all participants.
I decided to ask just three questions to evoke discussion around what participants believed was most important for their school’s goals; one question had to do with knowledge, one with behavior and the third, with Jewish values and identity. Although the school’s stakeholders may disagree on specifics and the hierarchy of importance of these three broad categories, all tend to agree that a day school’s mission statement and educational goals fall into these classifications.
The questions
I needed to formulate open-ended, but focused questions. The initial question to each group was: What knowledge is most important for students to acquire so that they become literate, cultured and conversant with Judaism? I explained to the group that the intent of this opening question focused on basic literacy in texts and facts within our written and oral literature, knowledge of Jewish culture, including Israel and Hebrew language, and familiarity with Jewish life, past and present. I kept the discussion focused on the written and oral Torah texts, Hebrew language competency, Jewish history and laws and customs. I encouraged respondents to express what they felt was most important in these areas for students to learn over their school years. With this question and all subsequent questions, I also asked respondents to provide the reasoning (“why?”) behind their choice of the “most important” areas to present to students. The reasoning behind a statement is often more informative than the statement itself.
The second question was directed to behavior: What competencies are most important for students to acquire regarding the laws, customs and observances of traditional Judaism? Although the school was a community school it represented a “traditional” approach to Judaism. Though not imposing strictly Orthodox requirements, traditional practices for the holidays, Shabbat and laws of kashrut were observed and taught. I was asking the group to identify areas of Jewish practice that they believed were most important for students to acquire so that they were competent in their skills in performing laws and rituals. The discussion focused on prayer – skills in reading liturgy as well rituals such as tefillin and tzitzit – in school and at home, kashrut, observances of the major holidays, and salient synagogue structure and ritual.
The final question related to Jewish values and identity. What Jewish values are most important for students to acquire so that they develop a strong Jewish value system and a defined, firm Jewish identity? My focus here was on Jewish ethics and values, derived from our traditional texts, Jewish law and contemporary discussion of Jewish philosophy and morality. “Jewish identity” included discussion of Jewish history, Holocaust studies, diaspora Jewish life and the State of Israel.
The outcome
Since I could not take written notes while focusing on the discussions, I recorded the sessions with the participants’ permission. Over the next few weeks, I analyzed the recordings and transcribed the key points (not the entire discussion), also indicating where there was voiced group consensus with the speaker. Analysis of the data was qualitative, not quantitative, as I was interested in a group’s general sense of which goals were most important for the school and the reasoning of the group’s participants.
One of the outcomes of the focus group data was validation of a finding in the original study on curriculum by Prof. Schremer and myself (2001, op. cit.) that indicated the need for a school’s goals and curriculum to be customized to the individual school. In that study, we found that although professional curriculum developers may agree on basic knowledge and skills all students should learn, the effectiveness of a standardized curriculum for a particular school was weakened when the school’s administrators and teachers did not share the approach, methodology and/or content of the predetermined curriculum. The valuable feedback I gathered from the focus groups demonstrated the individualistic nature of a particular school’s educational needs.
Unexpected findings
One of the surprises came from the school board focus group. Board members indicated that one of the most important goals of Judaic studies was the teaching of the Holocaust, each year, throughout high school. It turns out that most of the school’s founders and supporters were survivors and, what some educators would consider an obsession with Holocaust studies, actually reflected the expressed wishes of the school community, especially the funders. Although I had planned one year of Holocaust study in 11th grade, this feedback caused me to reconsider.
Another example of an unexpected finding came from parents. In the area of Jewish practice, most parents focused on Friday night and the Pesah seder as “most important.” Parents felt that the school was responsible to teach their child how to recite Kiddush, motzi, and birkat hamazon on Shabbat and holidays. Also, the child needed to know about the dynamics of the seder and be informed regarding the recitation of the Haggadah. Upon discussion of reasoning behind this position, it was evident that these rituals involved extended family and parents did not want to be embarrassed by their child’s lack of knowledge or skills.
One final example from the teachers’ focus group: Although the majority of Jewish studies staff was educated in Mishnah and Talmud texts, they presented a united position placing the study of Tanakh as “most important.” They explained that, given the time constraints of Jewish studies hours and the population of students (mostly non-Orthodox), they felt that students needed to be familiar with the key figures and events in the Torah and Prophets, even at the expense of gaining skills in Mishnah and Gemara – an unexpected position for the teaching staff of an Orthodox institution.
Closing observations and caveats
I must stress again that these examples are unique to this particular school and are not generalizable to other schools. But for any school, this sampling of findings points to the value of gaining information from a specific school’s stakeholders before shaping the school’s curricular goals.
Also, it is important to note that focus group input did not determine or significantly alter the final, core curriculum. The overall goal of the curriculum, from the start, was the development of a “Basic Literacy” curriculum as defined by the curriculum developer in conjunction with education professionals. However, the information gained from the various focus groups did help formulate a hierarchy of material considered “most important” to the school community and the assignment of time devoted to these areas within the hours-per-week constraints of Jewish studies. To cite one example, in developing the Middle School unit on Shabbat and the unit on the holiday of Pesah, I gave precedence to the meaning and the performance of rituals for the Friday night meal and to the seder night, respectively. This was not at the cost of the basic literacy of the texts, history and meaningfulness of Shabbat or Pesah, but it did result in sacrificing some detail of the prohibitions of Shabbat and the special laws of kashrut for Pesah (both these areas were still part of basic literacy but the curriculum did not require elaboration of detailed laws, as I originally planned).
One last, crucial point on setting school goals. When formulating mission statements or curricular goals, there must be an assessment component to validate the outcomes, showing that the school or curriculum succeeded in what it said it set out to accomplish, and reflected satisfaction from the school’s stakeholders. One needs board members, administrators, teachers, parents and students to see, objectively, that graduates have met the stated educational goals of the Jewish studies curriculum. Those readers interested in how this was done in my actual curriculum project can review the article I wrote in this journal a few years ago (2011). Although I left to take a university position after my five year project, I advised the chairman of the department to convene focus groups of stakeholders in another five years to assess the degree to which the original concerns and requests were met by the final curriculum project.
References
Bailey, S. (2013). Jewish literacy by design: A case study of developing and implementing a Jewish Literacy curriculum. In Rich, Y., et al. Jewish literacy and education. (pp. 69-86). Bethesda: University Press of Maryland.
Bailey, S. (2011). Assessing for success. Jewish Educational Leadership, (10) 1, 15-18.
Lundang, Lara (2013). The roles of stakeholders in curriculum implementation. Retrieved August, 15, 2014, from www.slideshare.net/laralundang/the-rolesof-stakeholders-in-curriculum-implementation-16151513.
Newmann, F. M. (1992). Student engagement and achievement in American secondary schools. New York: Teachers College Press.
Schremer, O. & Bailey, S. (2001) Curriculum: Real teachers in focus. A study in Jewish education. Ramat Gan, Israel: School of Education, Bar-Ilan University .