Henderson and Gornik's Three Paradigms
Henderson and Gornik’s Three Paradigms
The three paradigms
- Standardized management.
- Constructivist best practices.
- Curriculum wisdom.
How to tell them apart
- By the view of student performance they hold.
- By the discourse educators use to discuss practice and achievement.
What each aims at
- Standardized management: success on standardized tests.
- Constructivist best practices: student understanding of subject matter.
- Curriculum wisdom: students’ self-knowledge and their capacity for democratic life.
James Henderson and Rosemary Gornik, writing in 2007, describe curriculum as it is actually enacted in contemporary schooling. They name three paradigms at work in today’s schools. The three can be told apart by focusing on two things: the view of student performance each holds, and the discourse educators use to talk about practice and achievement. Read in order, they widen from a narrow aim to a sweeping one.
The three paradigms
Standardized management is the narrowest. It has the limited and instrumental aim of success on standardized tests. Henderson and Gornik treat this as the paradigm that best describes the dominant curriculum of contemporary schooling: the curriculum many schools actually run, organized around test results.
Constructivist best practices shifts the focus to student understanding of subject matter. Here the educator’s main concern is not the test score but whether learners genuinely understand the content. Following this paradigm can mean significant change inside classrooms and schools that are otherwise immersed in teaching for tests, because it asks for real understanding rather than test performance.
Curriculum wisdom is the widest. It stresses the enhancement of students’ self-knowledge and their commitment to, and capacities within, democratic societies. It looks past both test scores and subject mastery toward the kind of person and citizen a learner becomes, and it offers the possibility of sweeping, wide curriculum transformation.
| Paradigm | What it aims at |
|---|---|
| Standardized management | Success on standardized tests |
| Constructivist best practices | Genuine understanding of subject matter |
| Curriculum wisdom | Self-knowledge and capacity for democratic life |
Standardized management, constructivist best practices, and curriculum wisdom
They aim, in turn, at test success, genuine understanding of subject matter, and students’ self-knowledge and capacity for democratic life. They widen from narrow to sweeping.
By their view of student performance and the discourse educators use
Each holds a different idea of what good performance is, from test scores to understanding to democratic capacity, and educators talk about achievement differently within each.
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