Reflection on Eisner's Three Curricula

    The first stop for me was when Eisner argued the reasons for aspiring students’ preferences of universities. Since I did not fully experience the K-12 system in North America, this example was more clear to me to understand the explicit and implicit curriculum he discussed. It reminded me how I chose which Canadian universities to apply to from another side of the earth— I checked the world rankings. Similarly, there is a school ranking website named Fraser Institute for K-12 schools in BC. However, these rankings actually mislead parents or students who have no sense of implicit curriculum for the schools. Now, the new BC curriculum explicitly explains the hidden curriculum and sets standards with the three core competencies. The introduction of these core competencies not only reveals implicit information to parents and students but guides the direction of the development of schools and teachers as well. 

    The concept of the null curriculum was my second stop. I appreciated that Eisner brought this term into the discussion of the school curriculum. Other than simply neglect some knowledge and skills, it is important to know the reasons for ignoring them. Currently, many new subjects such as art designs are rapidly added to the new BC curriculum. Moreover, more new content is expanded under the same subject area. For instance, geometry, statistics and the history of math are attached to mathematics. These subject areas and content were selected to move from the null curriculum since educators saw the necessity of them and understood why other concepts could be neglected. Also, designers of the BC new curriculum changed the approaches of describing courses. The content and skill development section was replaced by two parts: content and curricular competency development. As a result, schools and teachers have a clear image of what to teach and what to put less weight and students understand the exceptions of learning.