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Academic Areas & Divisions
Curriculum & Instruction
Curriculum and Instruction is the one field at the heart of Education. Here are teachers, students, and subject matter interacting in a wide array of "classrooms" and "schools": from inner cities to suburbs, from reservations to same-sex African American academies, from museums to dance clubs and 
hospitals. All the politically-charged debates about education in a diverse society, the attempts to win access to education for historically-excluded groups, the preservice and inservice education of teachers, the lesson and unit planning, the testing and standards, the discussion about how and where to use technology, the debates over vouchers and charter schools - all this is dependent on the fundamental questions of Curriculum and Instruction:
- What knowledge and skills are most worthwhile and why? (content selection)
- How best can they be taught and learned, in what settings and by what means? (instruction)
- What opportunities do students have to learn them? (inclusion; equity pedagogy; teachers' knowledge of students, subjects, and instruction)
These questions are not only at the heart of education, they are at the center of human civilization. In every society adults contemplate the intentional education of young people and argue over what direction it should take. They worry about what should be taught, how, and under what circumstances. Curriculum and Instruction is inseparable from the hopes and fears people have for their children and their societies. Read a curriculum plan, and you see a society’s image of itself and what it's trying to become. Walk into a classroom, and you see a world being built.
Curriculum & Instruction
