Curriculum of the Community

PSEd 26 – Home-School Relations Presented by:

Mr. Ronald Macanip Quileste, MAEd-SM

School of Education

Xavier University – Ateneo de Cagayan

Corrales Avenue, Cagayan de Oro City

Topic Outline

•Community Configuration Affects Curriculum

•Social and Emotional Environments in a Community

•Physical Environments in a Community

• Interactions Among Community Agencies, Families, and Schools

Urie Bronfrenbrenner’s Ecology Model

•The community has something to offer in terms of the learning development of children.

•The community offers “learning areas” for children known as resources

• Children constantly learn from persons in their neighborhoods.

• Children learn from various materials generated by people in the society.

• Children learn from many other materials, including those that adults consider junk.

• Children acquire knowledge, values, and social skills (positive and negative) from their experiences within their communities and interactions with community workers.

Resources in the Community Natural Resources Living Organisms

Geographic

Services Educational

Communication

Entertainment

Recreation

Transportation

Commercial

Professional

Service Agencies

Living Quarters

Resources in the Community

Materials and Media Print Audiovisual Recyclables Social Networks Adult Peer Ethnic Associations Contacts

Community Agencies • Service agencies provide families with health

transportation, protection, communication and numerous professional services.

• Just as teachers and homes vary in how they instruct children, so do people in various agencies and professions.

• Most community agencies provide materials that schools and parents can use to feature the functions of those agencies

Transportation Agencies • Transportation is necessary for children to participate in

community events.

• Travel provides children with many enriching as well as hostile experiences.

• Transportation agencies provide many formal learning experiences for children as they collaborate with schools in planning trips.

Political Agencies • These are government agencies, school boards, and task

forces or communities empowered by the community government to provide different types of community curricula.

• Formal curriculum on political organizations usually handled by schools is more apparent especially during election years.

• Political decisions can affect the community curriculum presented to children.

Social and Cultural Agencies • The more skilled parents become at securing community

services, the more opportunities they have to use other community resources.

• Religious groups, libraries theaters, and recreational facilities as well as municipal human services departments are community agencies that supplement children’s education.

Cultural Organizations…

Cultural Organizations… • Many cultural organizations provide a rich formal

curriculum to children.

• Art museums offer both art instruction and art appreciation as do opera companies and theaters.

• Most libraries also seek to enhance children’s appreciation of literature and learning through educational lectures, storytelling events and book talks.

• Religious organizations offer summer day camp and religious education classes often with integration.

Social Agencies… • Community clubs are another means of educating

children. (Scout organizations, trail, outing and ski clubs, etc.)

• As Lareau (2003) pointed out in her book Unequal Childhoods, a family’s social class determines how much children will participate in community opportunities, some of which are fee based.

Business and Commercial Enterprises • All communities have business and commercial

enterprises, located in large malls or along highways.

• Children hear comments from adults, note certain identifying characteristics of buildings and learn without specific instruction where to buy things.

• Business enterprises distribute advertising circulars and put signs in shop windows which provide information about prices and the kinds of items a store sells.

Media Outlets • Media expose children to a world beyond their immediate

neighborhoods and contribute to their learning.

• Media provide education for children but concerns about the amount of time children spend immersed in media are on the rise.

• Much of these media are for adult consumption, but many children are exposed to programs that confuse, frighten, or misinform them when there is little or no adult guidance.

Media Outlets • Television

Media Outlets • Television

Media Outlets • Television

Media Outlets • The Internet

Media Outlets • The Internet

Media Outlets • The Internet

Media Outlets • The Internet

Media Outlets • Video Games

Media Outlets • Video Games

Media Outlets • Print Media

Media Outlets • Print Media

Media Outlets • Print Media

Media Outlets • Media Vigilance

Media Outlets • Media Vigilance

Media Outlets • Media Vigilance

Media Outlets • Media Vigilance

Media Outlets • Media Vigilance

Social and Emotional Environments in a Community

• Children’s chances of becoming healthy, confident, and competent adults are greater when they have both a safe home environment and a safe neighborhood in which they are able to play, explore and form relationships.

Social Networks

•Nowadays, however, children and their families need community support more than ever because parental supervision is far less constant in dual – income and single – parent homes (Adelman & Taylor, 2002; Bookman, 2004).

Social Networks

•Adult Connections and Support

•Mentoring

•Peer Group Settings

Ethnic Community Contributions

•Schools can profit from the various ethnic cultures in learning about the richness of community life, and students learn to be analytical thinkers as they discover the cultural orientations of other persons in their school and community.

Ethnic Community Contributions • Some teachers have used the following objectives in seeking

to acknowledge a community’s various cultural groups:

a. Research the stories behind the food choices that different ethnic groups make

b. Uncover the history of the dances and music of each ethnic groups

c. Compare different family schedules, approaches to rearing children, and ways different families praise the successes of individual members.

d. Find out and record the stories behind the immigration journeys individuals in the community undertook to reach the place where they now live.

Multicultural Education

•Multicultural education describes programs and practices that schools have developed to ensure that all students have equal opportunity to learn in school.

•DepEd further pushes lessons in classrooms that should be multilingual and multicultural (K to 12 Curriculum).

Multicultural Education

Physical Environments in a Community

Physical Environments in a Community

• Children’s life space and atmosphere around them provide the physical portion of the curriculum.

• However, all ecological and physical structures can provide learning opportunities, and skilled teachers find ways to maximize children’s learning in the byways of their local area.

Physical Environments in a Community

• Children’s Play

- Children engage in more dramatic and constructive play outdoors and in more exploratory play (Steglin, 2005).

• Observing Nature

- Learning to observe the environment enhances children’s cognitive as well as their social and emotional learning and understanding.

Physical Environments in a Community

• Human Creations and Structures

- These include their neighborhood and the places in the larger community that they visit often.

- Human creations show what our society is capable of doing and completing.

- All this means that young children do need to start looking at the built community they live in with respect and with the idea of examining it.

Interactions Among Community Agencies, Families and Schools

•Many community agencies welcome children’s visits, either with their families or with school teachers.

• Teachers and other community – service personnel can help families who reach out.

Collaboration Needs to Grow

•Communities and schools can collaborate to provide concrete experiences to extend children’s learning but this is not done as much as possible.

Collaboration Needs to Grow

• In community programs, where children interact with materials, observe events, or see animals acting in a natural environment, youngsters usually learn more than they do in programs where adults demonstrate and lecture, expecting children to be enraptured with what they do.

In Conclusion

•The community, through natural phenomena and by the nature of its organization, offers a stimulating alternative for teachers who see the benefits for the children they work with.

Thank You, Namaste!