Damicka Bates
Educ 301
1/27/09
Today many parents have one goal in common and that goal is to send their children to college. The idea that college equals success is an ideology that our country has adopted within our society. Many parents who have had the privilege of obtaining a degree, and have embarked on greater opportunities because of their degree, expect the same of their own children. Additionally, parents who did not have the same opportunity to attend college have bigger and brighter goals for their own children. These goals include paying for their kids to have the American dream, a dream they weren’t privy to.
There are some members of society who have not conformed to the ideology of college equals success. For some, college is a waste of time. There are some people who have gone to college, obtained a degree, only to be denied job after job. Contrastingly, there are some who have never attended college a day in their life and make more money than someone who has a master’s degree. Why has it become so challenging to obtain a job with a degree? Does having a degree actually make one more qualified to fulfill a position based on his level of education versus a person who has worked for the same company for 10 years? There is a commercial that plays regularly on television. There is a young woman who is complaining about not being able to get a job. She says, “How can I get a job if I don’t have any experience? But how will I get the experience if I never get the job”? This concept plays into the strategy that our educational standards have placed upon us. However, is there a way to alter our views on this concept? Optimistically speaking, I think so. It’s just about the nature of our teachers and other professionals that support teachers, to alter their views and become open minded to a curriculum that doesn’t have such rigid, confining standards.
McKernan addresses this as he talks about his process-inquiry model. He opens this chapter with a question, “Can curriculum and pedagogy be organized satisfactorily by a logic other than that of the ends=means (objectives) model” (p. 85)? Mckernan thinks so. He created the process-inquiry model as an alternative to the outcome-based model. The problem with the outcomes-based model is that it takes the practice of teaching and educating and places boundaries around it by setting standards which limits how much a teacher can teach. Mckernan believes the process-inquiry model is much more beneficial to education because it “allows teachers to become artist rather than technicians in giving them a fair stake in qualitative judgment, classroom research, and evaluation” (p. 86). It eliminates students’ assessments being based solely off of numbers and test scores and more on their actual developmental process of learning. It gives teacher more freedom and leverage in their own classrooms to be able to engage their students in higher levels of thinking. The process-inquiry model gives students a chance to acquire pure knowledge.
The process-inquiry model would also give teachers a chance to have more control in their classrooms. Unlike the objectives model in which the state plays a major role in setting goals and making the decisions, the process-inquiry model would place teachers in control of creating their own teaching. With this model the teacher would become the teacher/researcher/evaluator of his/her own work. Effectively engaging in this form of reflection allows the teacher to be “more finely tuned to the critical interpretation of data and evidence” (p. 94) within the classroom. More importantly the process-inquiry model recognizes that each classroom is different in its dynamics and needs. For this reason this model suggests that “teachers can improve their professional behavior by researching the problems raised by their teaching and curriculum” (p. 94). This model allows teachers to address the needs of the classroom and make the necessary changes.
The process-inquiry model is a great idea with a lot of potential for success. Despite many of the amenities it offers, American’s educational standards may not be ready for change. Agreeing with Mckernan, ‘Americans are obsessed with assessing the performances of students’ (p. 87). This obsession will limit our ability to move on to something fresh and new. Until our government and law makers get their heads out of the clouds, and stop treating education as a form of “instrumental engineering” (p. 86), our educational system will remain stagnant with no hopes of ever moving on.
