Open Collections

What the elementary schools should be doing : blueprints from three Canadian provinces - Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia

University of British Columbia

This study examined major provincial curriculum-defining documents produced during the period 1969 to 1977 in Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia, Canada, in order to identify: (1) the reasons for the preparation of the documents, (2) the processes by which the documents were prepared, (3) the recommendations made concerning priorities for the elementary schools curriculum, and (4) any possible applications for the Nigerian educational systems. The conceptualization used in the study represented curriculum as a process of societal educational decision-making and a product of that process. The conceptualization was used as an analytical tool to examine the source documents. The specific questions used in the study are of two types - process and product. The questions relating to process were intended to identify in the source documents the procedures used for their preparation. The questions relating to product sought to identify in the documents the curricula for the elementary schools. A comparative analysis of the findings about the procedures showed essential differences between the Ontario and the Alberta documents on the one hand and the British Columbia document on the other. Two policy decision-making models (rational-participatory and reactive-adversarial) were used to examine the procedures. The rational-participatory model was recommended for the Nigerian educational systems. An assessment of the procedural methods observed in the three Canadian documents indicated that the methods could apply to Nigerian settings in a particular way which could facilitate the involvement of both the literate and the illiterate in the process of a societal education decision-making. A comparative analysis of the findings about the curriculum for the elementary schools showed that the three Canadian documents display in their statements of ends and means of schooling considerable variety in breadth, specificity, and clarity. The advantages of specificity may be offset to some extent by the way in which broader statements may facilitate curriculum development within the framework which they provide.

Text

2010-03-30

For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/23042

Educational Administration and Leadership

University of British Columbia

Graduate