Ed.D. Doctor of Education Doctor of Education Curriculum and Instruction 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Jerome Bruner's concept of the 'spiral curriculum' recommends that:
- Students master each concept fully before moving to the next
- Complex ideas are introduced early and revisited at increasing levels of sophistication (Correct answer)
- Curriculum should follow a linear sequence determined by standardized tests
- Teachers rotate through subjects to prevent burnout
Correct answer: Complex ideas are introduced early and revisited at increasing levels of sophistication
Bruner's spiral curriculum revisits core concepts across grade levels, each time with greater complexity and abstraction, building on prior understanding.
Question 2: An Ed.D. practitioner-researcher uses action research to improve curriculum implementation. Which characteristic BEST distinguishes action research from traditional educational research?
- It requires a control group and experimental group
- It is conducted by practitioners to solve local problems and inform practice (Correct answer)
- It uses only quantitative data collection methods
- It must be generalizable to national populations
Correct answer: It is conducted by practitioners to solve local problems and inform practice
Action research is practitioner-led, context-specific inquiry aimed at solving immediate local problems and improving professional practice, rather than generating broadly generalizable findings.
Question 3: Which curriculum design model is characterized by beginning with subject-matter objectives and moving toward learning experiences—the opposite of backward design?
- Understanding by Design
- Forward design (traditional objectives-activities model) (Correct answer)
- Goal-free evaluation
- Constructivist curriculum mapping
Correct answer: Forward design (traditional objectives-activities model)
Traditional forward design starts with subject content and objectives, then selects activities and materials, and finally considers assessment—in contrast to UbD's backward design approach.
Question 4: Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (Django Paris) extends culturally relevant pedagogy by emphasizing:
- Standardizing curriculum content across diverse communities
- Sustaining and revitalizing the cultural practices of marginalized communities, not just connecting to them (Correct answer)
- Replacing academic content with cultural content
- Using multicultural literature as the sole curriculum modification
Correct answer: Sustaining and revitalizing the cultural practices of marginalized communities, not just connecting to them
Paris argues that culturally sustaining pedagogy must actively maintain and revitalize students' cultural and linguistic practices, going beyond mere relevance to sustain heritage.
Question 5: A curriculum evaluation reveals strong student performance on knowledge-level items but weak performance on application and synthesis tasks. This finding MOST likely indicates:
- The curriculum over-emphasizes higher-order thinking skills
- Instruction is primarily focused on recall rather than transfer of learning (Correct answer)
- Standardized tests are misaligned with national standards
- Teachers need more professional development in classroom management
Correct answer: Instruction is primarily focused on recall rather than transfer of learning
A gap between recall performance and application performance typically indicates instructional emphasis on lower-order tasks, leaving students without practice in transferring knowledge to new contexts.
Question 6: Which policy mechanism in the U.S. most significantly shifted curriculum authority toward the federal government by tying funding to standardized accountability systems?
- The Morrill Act of 1862
- No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (Correct answer)
- The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)
- The Higher Education Act of 1965
Correct answer: No Child Left Behind Act of 2001
NCLB (2001) required states to implement standardized testing and meet Adequate Yearly Progress benchmarks as a condition of federal Title I funding, dramatically increasing federal influence on K-12 curriculum.
Question 7: In curriculum leadership, 'instructional coherence' refers to:
- Using a single textbook series across all grade levels
- A schoolwide consensus on learning goals with aligned curriculum, instruction, and assessment that build on each other (Correct answer)
- Ensuring all teachers follow the same daily lesson schedule
- Limiting curriculum to tested subjects to maximize accountability scores
Correct answer: A schoolwide consensus on learning goals with aligned curriculum, instruction, and assessment that build on each other
Instructional coherence describes school-level alignment among shared learning goals, curriculum materials, instructional practices, and assessments that mutually reinforce student learning.
Ed.D. Doctor of Education Doctor of Education Curriculum and Instruction 5
Jerome Bruner's concept of the 'spiral curriculum' recommends that: