Beyond the commitment educators worldwide share to children and achievement, we are all linked by another bond—that of our shared need to respond to accelerating political, social, and technological change. Around the globe, change, in its diverse forms, poses extraordinary dilemmas for education policymakers and for those concerned with the practices, content, and tools of teaching and learning.
Today's education policymakers and curriculum specialists struggle to balance a cornucopia of tensions, including (1) conflicts regarding the essential role of schooling, (2) struggles over control of the curriculum, (3) concerns associated with educating increasingly diverse populations, and (4) implications of emerging technologies for curriculum decision making.
The writer Thaddeus Golas said, "you are always legislating for yourself; all your words and actions define the world you want to live in." Similarly, when we consider educational policies for our children, we are essentially defining the world in which we want them to live.
In the United States, for example, researcher John Goodlad found that Americans place enormous academic, social, and ideological demands on their schools. Thinkers such as economist Jeremy Rifkin have noted that as we move from the industrial era to the Information Age, downsizing trends will continue in corporate sectors worldwide. As citizens face the prospect of unemployment, they become increasingly anxious about the ability of schools to prepare workers. Corporate interests, as well as citizens concerned with meeting corporate needs, enter the curriculum policy arena, demanding that schools serve this fundamental function.
But even more fundamental than the need for education to produce a nation of workers is education's role in sustaining democracy. This role requires a different tone for curriculums and educational resources, because citizenship demands far more of students than the marketplace does. Democratic life requires critical inquiry, collective decision making, and a commitment to the basic processes of civic participation.
Controlling the Curriculum
Curriculum policymakers also grapple with a second major tension—control of curriculum. Some thinkers, looking to centralized European concepts of education, have proposed national curriculum mandates, standards, and assessments, which they believe will drive educational improvement. Others, however, believe that national mandates are hollow and that education reform must originate in local efforts. Although curriculum mandates and "top-down" initiatives have gained currency in some U.S. education policy circles, practitioners are increasingly embracing a constructivist notion of curriculum. Though the constructivists may turn to national content standards for guidance, they rely on their particular classroom contexts to make curricular decisions.
The extraordinary diversity of the world's population creates a third tension in decisions about curriculum policy and educational resources. Recently, I visited Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. I found that, as in the United States, demographic and social developments in most European countries are creating new challenges for their education systems. The number of pupils of nonnative origin in European countries is expected to increase substantially by the beginning of the new century. This integration will undoubtedly influence the future of pupils throughout Europe, and will have to be taken into account in education policy and in the development of education resources.
Beyond the central tensions that curriculum decision makers face, technology also plays a dominant role. Clearly, education technologies hold significant potential to enhance teaching and learning—and to make high-quality education accessible to greater numbers of students. Some thinkers even contend that technologies such as the Internet can actually enrich democratic participation, because users gain greater access to information. And yet, technology may widen the gap between the "haves" and "have nots."
Focusing on Teaching and Learning
Given these tensions, education decision makers must determine where to focus their energies. Political, social, and technological change will continue to shift the content of curriculums. Indeed, the proliferation of "disposable" information makes it difficult for curriculum specialists to develop materials with content validity. Compounding the rapid change, commercial and ideological interests will continue to struggle over the content of instructional materials.
Yet, in the face of change and controversy, the essential processes of teaching and learning remain steady. As our base of educational research expands, we gain greater insight into these processes, which are inextricably bound to human nature. Education technologies support learning in new ways, but the intellectual, social, and emotional processes themselves remain constant. For curriculum decision makers facing the maelstrom of change, shifting focus from the content of curriculum to the processes of teaching and learning may help them meet our shared vision—that of shaping the best possible achievement for all children.