7 Curriculum and Academic Standards

John Dewey (1902) described curriculum as “a continuous reconstruction, moving from the child’s present experience out into that represented by the organized bodies of truth that we call studies… are themselves experience…” (p. 11–12). This chapter will examine the purpose of curriculum, different types of curricula and the relationship between curricula, cognition, affect and equity.

7.1 The Purpose of a Curriculum

What is the importance of a curriculum? Answers will vary. The U.S. Department of Education frames curriculum as an outline for what should be taught in classrooms to ensure students are exposed to rigorous curricular goals and are prepared for real-world experiences that will make them college and career ready. Most schools look to local or state authorities for guidance regarding a curriculum.

Most countries around the world have unified standards and a centralized curriculum. The United States, however, has never had a fully unified national curriculum or set of standards. Attempts were made through federal legislation such as the No Child Left Behind Act, signed into law on January 8, 2002, and through the state-led Common Core initiative (2010), both of which aimed to create shared expectations. However, because education governance in the United States is largely controlled at the state and local levels, curriculum content remains varied. Communities often debate controversial topics—such as evolution, racism, or climate change—that highlight how political curriculum can be.

Teachers exercise significant discretion: even while following district curricula, instruction reflects teachers’ beliefs, experiences, and cultural frameworks. For instance, one teacher might present Martin Luther King Jr. as evidence of how much progress has been made toward racial justice, while another might highlight ongoing inequities. Such choices shape students’ understanding in very different ways.

Educational reformers have long debated whether students should share a common body of knowledge or whether curriculum should be more flexible and localized. As early as 1987, Core Knowledge advocate E.D. Hirsch argued that all children in the United States need access to a foundation of shared “cultural literacy,” especially in the early grades, to ensure equity of opportunity. In contrast, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), released in 2010 by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, sought to establish grade-level benchmarks across states without prescribing specific content or texts. Most states initially adopted CCSS, though several have since withdrawn, and some never joined. These shifts underscore the highly politicized nature of curriculum in the U.S., where federal, state, and local agendas often collide.

Who influences which curriculum is chosen? What is their agenda? Do they always have the best interests of students in mind? Who do you think should decide?

• 

  Parents and Community Members: As taxpayers, parents hold influence. Power often varies by socioeconomic status and cultural capital.

• Special Interest Groups: Advocacy groups (cultural, religious, political) lobby for curricular changes.
• State Legislatures: Pass budgets and laws that shape statewide education priorities.
• Textbook & Testing Companies: States with large markets heavily influence what gets published and tested.
• Teachers: Experts in practice, though personal beliefs may shape emphasis.
• School Boards: Locally elected bodies making decisions about what is taught.

7.2 Sociological Influences of the Four Curricula

There are four different types of curricula that educators have to address in the classroom; these four are the explicit, implicit, null, and extracurricular.

Explicit Curriculum

The explicit curriculum is the official, state-approved plan for what students should learn. It is intentionally designed, tested by educators, and supported with resources to guide instruction. Unlike standards, which outline what students should know and be able to do, the curriculum provides the how—the units, lessons, and materials.

Here, it is important to differentiate between standards and curriculum:

While NY has an organized statewide digital curriculum that all educators can access, Oregon has adopted the same Common Core state standards but does not have a statewide curriculum. Instead, Oregon has district curricula which follow the Common Core standards ( see video 7.2 for more information about the Common Core Movement). What are the advantages of a system such as the system in New York? They are able to share curriculum, ideas, and lesson plans across districts. This makes a difference when some districts have access to a lot more resources than others. When teachers in a district can only share within its district, there is a limit to what they can achieve. For example,  If a district just started a dual immersion program and no one else has such a program, they have to start from scratch and work alone, whereas in a statewide approach, resources are widely shared.

Implicit Curriculum (also known as the Hidden Curriculum)

The implicit curriculum involves hidden lessons that emerge from the culture of the local school district school and the values, behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs that have been defined by the district. Bruner (1960) addressed the need to cultivate an understanding of ideas by including content beyond the explicit curriculum. An example of an implicit curriculum is character education. Character education may address values that are not part of the state-approved curriculum. While character education can be found in the explicit curriculum, the nuances of the character education program may be informed by many factors present in the local school district including the school community’s cultural expectations, values, and perspectives. A character education program may also include specific curricular topics which may contain varying ideological and/or cultural messages. Teaching strategies that connect the school to the community like problem-based learning or applied learning, can also be part of the implicit curriculum.

It is important that schools and educators consider that all schools have a hidden curriculum, and that it is largely outside of our consciousness. With attention and reflection, this curriculum can be brought into sharper focus. In the late 1970s, Jean Anyon did a study of different kinds of schools in the United States and described her observations about socioeconomic class and how socio-economic class is perpetuated by a kind of hidden curriculum. She observed that schools in wealthier communities provided more autonomy and freedom to their students thus encouraging students towards executive and leadership roles, while students in poorer communities were given less autonomy and freedom and subsequently encouraged towards more working and middle class roles. Ultimately, Anyon concluded that students were  being prepared for certain kinds of work, in her words: “differing curricular, pedagogical, and pupil evaluation practices emphasize different cognitive and behavioral skills in each social setting and thus contribute to the development in the children of certain potential relationships to physical and symbolic capital, to authority, and to the process of work” (Anyon, 1970).

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded a survey of U.S. public school teachers’ from 2010 to 2012 in both English language arts and math classes in seven large metropolitan areas. The study examined teaching-effectiveness or differences in classrooms taught by the same teacher and whether factors such as student demographics play a role. The study found that  “whenever there was a classroom of predominantly students of color, teachers were systematically less likely to use proven instructional models they used with White students.”

The fact that low income students, students of color and underserved emergent bilinguals, routinely receive less instruction in higher order skills development than other students is evident in our educational system. The curriculum is typically less challenging and more repetitive, with teachers reinforcing what they believe students should be able to do on specific tasks and focusing on the lower skills in Bloom’s Taxonomy. This type of instruction denies students the opportunity to engage in what neuroscientists call a productive struggle that actually grows our brain. As a result, a disproportionate number of culturally and linguistically diverse students are dependent learners.

Zaretta Hammond, in her book Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain (2015), explains that neuroscientists are talking about neuroplasticity with an emphasis on culture. She observed that we, as future educators, spend a lot of our time learning about different theories but do not learn how to apply them in our everyday teaching. Her emphasis has been on linking neuroscience and how it can be applied to a culturally responsive pedagogy. ”Cognition and higher order thinking have always been at the center of culturally responsive teaching, which makes it a natural partner for neuroscience in the classroom” (Zaretta Hammon, p. 4). Therefore, we need to strive to facilitate student’s cognitive growth so that they can activate their neuroplasticity and become independent learners.

In the table below, you will find the difference between a dependent learner and independent learner according to Zaretta Hammond

Teachers who understand the power of the hidden curriculum recognize their potential to develop the social emotional capacities of their students, and realize that taking time to develop the social emotional needs of their students can have life-changing consequences. Creating independent students with leadership capabilities will have a significant effect on their lives, as Hammond and Anyon point out. The hidden curriculum can be a double-edged sword with positive or negative implications for students. There are many teachers who don’t necessarily recognize their own cultural frameworks and how they influence the hidden curriculum they are teaching or perpetuating.  Understanding one’s own cultural influences is critical for all teachers and should be required professional development for any current or future educators.

Null Curriculum

Eisner (1985) defined null curriculum as information that schools do not teach:“… the options students are not afforded, the perspectives they may never know about, much less be able to use, the concepts and skills that are not part of their intellectual repertoire” (Eisner,1985, p. 107).

There are several examples of null curriculum that can be identified in content areas. For example, in social studies, the teacher may give a general overview of the Oregon Trail in terms of westward progress, but leave out the impact on Native peoples. Another example would be the exclusion of Darwin’s theory of evolution from the official biology curriculum. Null content may represent specific facts omitted in a particular unit of study. An example of this would be a social studies unit focusing on the New Deal may not reference the fact that the New Deal failed to resolve the problem of unemployment. Many educators would argue that racism has not been taught in US schools for most of the history of the United States, and recent attempts to rectify this have resulted in huge controversy.

Extra-Curricular Curriculum

Extra-curricular curriculum includes school-sponsored opportunities that fall outside of academic requirements prescribed on the local and state levels. Examples of extracurricular activities include participation in sports, music, student governance, yearbook, school newspaper, and academic clubs. Extracurricular participation is a strategy to promote school connectedness (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2009). Extracurricular activities are often associated with many positive outcomes such as higher academic achievement and decreased school dropout (Farb & Matjasko, 2012).

According to the United States National Center for Education Statistics (2012), sports are the most common type of extracurricular activity among secondary school students, with 44% of high school seniors reporting participation in some type of sport. Additionally, 21% of students participate in music activities, as well as clubs, such as academic (21%), hobby (12%), and vocational clubs (16%).

7.3 Racial Justice in the Curriculum

Curriculum is not neutral. What we teach—and what we leave out—shapes how students understand our nation, their communities, and themselves. Many of the most contested curriculum debates today emerge when schools attempt to address race, racism, and the legacy of slavery.

The 1619 Project argues that the history of the United States cannot be separated from slavery and the anti-Black racism that sustained it. This framing challenges traditional narratives that begin national “origin” stories in 1776 and instead asks educators to reckon with how slavery shaped the country’s economic, political, and social systems.

Hasan Kwame Jeffries (Southern Poverty Law Center, Teaching Hard History) reminds us that racial justice was not a founding priority in the nation’s earliest democratic promises. If we want to move toward equity in the present, we must be willing to confront inequity in the past—beginning with slavery. This work is difficult and often politicized. Yet avoiding it does not make its impact disappear; it simply makes the omission part of the null curriculum.

Historically, schools have often taught slavery as something “resolved” in the 19th century. Yet after emancipation, Jim Crow laws and other formal and informal barriers created separate and unequal systems in schooling, housing, healthcare, and the justice system—consequences that continue to shape opportunity today. And while understanding anti-Black racism is central to understanding U.S. history, racialized oppression also profoundly impacted Indigenous peoples through westward expansion, forced assimilation policies, and the systematic suppression of language and culture. (More on these topics appears later in this chapter.)

Many students grow up learning national narratives centered on meritocracy and equality, with little attention to the policies and structures that made those ideals unevenly accessible. When this history is not taught, it becomes harder for students to make sense of present-day inequities—and harder for communities to engage in honest civic dialogue.

Teaching Hard History: Supporting Students Through Discomfort

Teachers who address slavery and racism must consider how to support students as they process difficult content.

• Co-processing: Educators can begin with affirmation—validating students’ emotions and acknowledging what they already know—then scaffold learning so students can move through discomfort with support (Stang & Allen)
• Courageous Conversations: Glenn Singleton’s framework encourages students to explore history through moral, emotional, intellectual, and relational lenses
• Centering primary sources: When possible, use voices and accounts from those most impacted to avoid teaching history solely through the lens of power

Critical Lens

Schools do not only transmit information; they also shape what counts as “legitimate knowledge.” Curriculum reflects power—what is centered, what is minimized, and what is omitted. Michael Apple argues that what becomes “knowledge for all” is deeply connected to political and economic power.

This helps explain why current debates about race and justice in schools are so contentious. Recent concerns and protests about racial justice in the United States illustrate the tensions among explicit, implicit, and null curricula. Some schools openly address these events; others remain silent. The reasons for silence range from fear of controversy to political pressure at the district or state level. Yet when major social events go unmentioned, students notice what is missing.

Milner (2017) describes events such as the violence in Charlottesville in 2017 as precisely the kinds of topics students must examine in order to understand social justice in contemporary society. Similarly, Critical Race Theory (CRT), which examines how systemic racism has shaped institutions such as housing, healthcare, justice, and education, has become highly politicized. In response, some legislators have attempted to limit discussions of race in classrooms.

All educators must consider how racism has functioned in U.S. society and determine the lens through which they will approach these conversations. Following the death of George Floyd, the United States entered a period of heightened awareness and social change. Educators have an important role to play in helping students engage thoughtfully, critically, and responsibly with this history.

Video 7.1

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This article and video describe a proposed 2023 bill backed by Governor Ron DeSantis proposes to prevent Florida public schools from “making people feel “discomfort” or “guilt” based on their race, sex or national origin.”

7.4 Cognitive and Affective Domains of Curricula

As we have seen, curriculum is shaped by history, politics, and power. Yet curriculum is not only about what is included or excluded; it is also about how students engage with what is taught. To better understand this, we can examine curriculum through two complementary lenses: the cognitive and the affective domains.

The cognitive perspective of the curriculum focuses primarily on the acquisition of knowledge—how students think, process information, and develop understanding. The affective perspective goes beyond knowledge acquisition to consider the degree to which students value what they are learning, how they feel about it, and how it shapes their motivation and identity.

Together, these two perspectives allow us to consider not only the subject matter itself, but also how students experience and respond to the material being delivered.

The Cognitive Domain of Curricula

The cognitive domain of curriculum focuses on how students think, process information, and develop knowledge. It addresses questions such as: What should students know? How deeply should they understand it? How should learning progress from basic recall to critical thinking? In many schools, cognitive development is organized through distinct subject areas, which structure how knowledge is delivered and assessed.

Bloom’s Taxonomy

One of the most widely recognized frameworks for understanding cognitive development is Bloom’s Taxonomy (Bloom et al., 1956; revised by Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). Bloom proposed that learning progresses through levels of thinking, from basic recall to more complex forms of analysis and creation. The revised taxonomy includes:

• Remembering
• Understanding
• Applying
• Analyzing
• Evaluating
• Creating

This framework reminds educators that learning should not stop at memorization. While remembering facts is foundational, deeper cognitive engagement occurs when students apply knowledge, analyze ideas, evaluate perspectives, and create new understanding.

Bloom’s Taxonomy continues to influence lesson planning, assessment design, and standards-based instruction across grade levels.

Subject-Centered Curriculum

Subject-centered instruction separates learning into distinct content areas such as mathematics, science, language arts, and social studies. Although adopted widely in the United States in the late 19th century, this model remains dominant today, particularly at the secondary level. Ornstein (1982) outlined several strengths and limitations of this approach.

Pros of Subject-Centered Instruction

• Subjects provide a logical structure for organizing knowledge
• This structure can support long-term retention
• Secondary teachers are trained as subject-matter specialists
• Textbooks and instructional materials are typically organized by subject

Cons of Subject-Centered Instruction

• Curriculum can become fragmented, with concepts learned in isolation
• It may de-emphasize students’ lived experiences, cultures, and interests
• Instruction may become teacher-dominated with limited student input
• Textbooks often present limited perspectives
• Emphasis may remain on lower-order thinking skills such as recall

While subject-centered models provide clarity and structure, they can unintentionally disconnect learning from students’ identities and real-world application.

Common Core Curriculum

As we discussed in chapter 4, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), developed in 2010, aimed to create greater consistency across states. Supporters emphasize rigor and shared expectations, while critics raise concerns about testing pressure, local control, and responsiveness to diverse learners. A central question remains: who determines what counts as essential knowledge in a diverse society?

It is also important to distinguish the Common Core from E.D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge movement. Hirsch argued that students need access to shared “cultural literacy” to ensure equity. While Common Core emphasizes broad skills, Core Knowledge specifies particular content. These debates reflect ongoing tensions between shared knowledge, flexibility, and local decision-making.

Video 7.2

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Mastery Learning

Mastery learning is based on the principle that, given sufficient time and appropriate instruction, most students can meet established learning standards (Block & Anderson, 1974). This approach recognizes that students learn at different rates and emphasizes formative assessment, feedback, and reteaching.

Theoretically, mastery learning requires teachers to attend to differences in pace and readiness. When implemented thoughtfully, it can support culturally responsive practice by acknowledging students’ prior knowledge, interests, and strengths rather than assuming uniform progression.

Expanding the Cognitive Lens: Dewey and Vygotsky

While Bloom focuses on levels of thinking, other theorists expanded our understanding of how cognition develops.

John Dewey emphasized learning through experience, arguing that knowledge becomes meaningful when connected to real-life contexts. For Dewey, thinking develops through inquiry, reflection, and interaction with the environment.

Lev Vygotsky highlighted the social nature of learning. His concept of the Zone of Proximal Development suggests that students learn best when supported just beyond their current level of independent ability. This perspective reinforces the importance of scaffolding, dialogue, and collaboration in cognitive growth.

Together, these perspectives remind us that cognition is not merely about absorbing information. It develops through interaction, reflection, structure, and support.

The Affective Domain of Curricula

The affective domain of curricula places emphasis on feeling and valuing in education. This is the aspect of the curriculum that emphasizes emotions and motivation. This domain is rooted in the belief that schools have responsibilities beyond the delivery of instruction. In this domain, the information is presented in a manner that guides students to seeing the value in the things they are learning in the classroom. It is the goal to make a lasting impression on the students, eliciting an emotional response from the students.

Concerned with the affective side of his students’ education, Paulo Freire developed a liberation pedagogy which has influenced generations of educators, centering the freedom and humanization of students. In his theory, students become active learners as educators pose worldly problems that relate to their lives and push them to analyze how and why those problems exist, leading to a cultural change. He encourages educators to teach through critical pedagogical lens that encouraged students to question content presented rather than blindly accepting it.

The work of Freire inspired bell hooks (amongst many others) who added the concepts of self-care to Freire’s liberatory approach. The Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh was another major influence for hooks, particularly regarding health and well-being. Self-actualization cannot occur without self-care. Hooks’ holistic concept of “Engaged Pedagogy” centers care and healing in the process of learning. Thich Nhat Hanh was concerned with the whole body, more than just the mind. This wholeness includes mind, body and spirit and emphasizes well-being, a somewhat radical notion in academia.

Sentipensante

Laura Rendon offers a transformative vision of education that emphasizes the harmonic, complementary relationship between the sentir of feeling, intuition, and the inner life and the pensar of thinking, intellectualism and the pursuit of scholarship; between teaching and learning; formal knowledge and wisdom; and between Western and non-Western ways of knowing. In the process she develops a pedagogy that encompasses wholeness, multiculturalism, and contemplative practice that helps students transcend limiting views about themselves; fosters high expectations, and helps students to become social change agents. Teaching about social justice is central to developing this responsibility in students.

In this video, Laura Rendon describes what it means to be “una persona educada”, a person not only with academic knowledge but a person with wisdom, and responsibility for the world they are living in. She describes contemplative education and how we need to learn to cultivate this wisdom, compassion and humanity.

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CONCLUSION

Curriculum has always been a political and controversial topic because defining what children learn has so much to do with determining what the political and societal future will be. In some states, educators are increasingly limited in what they can teach because education has long been a political battleground. In many cases however, educators have more autonomy than they realize. While it may be true that educators can not teach on certain controversial topics (such as racism or climate change) they are able to provide assignments and the autonomy for students to do research in those areas. While educators should never tell their students what to think, they can cultivate opportunities for their students to engage in critical thinking about important issues that impact our modern society.

References

Anyon, J. (2019). Anyon: Social class and the hidden curriculum of work. University of Delaware.

Barnett, R. (2009). Knowing and becoming in the higher education curriculum. Studies in Higher Education, 34(4), 429–440.

Bennett, G., & Conciatori, T. (2023, January 23). DeSantis defends blocking African American studies course in Florida schools. PBS NewsHour.

Bloom, B. S. (Ed.). (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals. Handbook I: Cognitive domain. David McKay Company.

Bruner, J. S. (1960). On learning mathematics. The Mathematics Teacher, 53(8), 610–619.

Cineas, F. (2023, February 15). Ron DeSantis’s war on “woke” in Florida schools, explained. Vox.

CNN. (2022, January 20). Florida bill to shield people from feeling “discomfort” over historic actions by their race, nationality or gender approved by Senate committee.

Common Core State Standards Initiative. (2019). Common Core State Standards Initiative.

ASCD. (n.d.). Confronting inequity: Reimagining the null curriculum.

Confronting Inequity / Reimagining the Null Curriculum. (2021, June 9). ASCD.

Dewey, J. (1902). The child and the curriculum (No. 5). University of Chicago Press.

Eisner, E. W. (1994). The educational imagination: On the design and evaluation of school programs (3rd ed.). Macmillan.

Flinders, D. J., Noddings, N., & Thornton, S. J. (1986). The null curriculum: Its theoretical basis and practical implications. Curriculum Inquiry, 16(1), 33–42.

Hammond, Z. L. (2014). Culturally responsive teaching and the brain: Promoting authentic engagement and rigor among culturally and linguistically diverse students. Corwin Press.

Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1999). Making cooperative learning work. Theory Into Practice, 38(2), 67–73.

Miller, M. (2005). Teaching and Learning in Affective Domain – Miller Emerging Perspectives on Learning, Teaching, and Technology.

Milner, H. R. (2017). Race, talk, opportunity gaps, and curriculum shifts in (teacher) education. Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, 66(1), 73–94.

Muhammad, G. (2020). Cultivating genius: An equity framework for culturally and historically responsive literacy. Scholastic.

Najarro, I. (2022, January 13). Teachers deliver less to students of color, study finds. Is bias the reason? Education Week.

New York State Education Department. (2017). New York State Next Generation Standards and Instruction.

Oregon Department of Education. (2010). Academic content standards. Oregon.gov.

Ornstein, A. C. (1982). Curriculum contrasts: A historical overview. The Phi Delta Kappan, 63(6), 404–408.

Rendón, L. I. (n.d.). Sentipensante pedagogy. Laura I. Rendón.

Teachers College Columbia University. (n.d.). Unpacking curriculum: Adopt, adapt, apply. Center for the Professional Education of Teachers.

Mindfulness training courses. (n.d.). Urban Mindfulness Foundation.

Urban Mindfulness Foundation. (n.d.). UMF real talking [Video]. YouTube.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press.

Wells, M., & Clayton, C. (n.d.). Chapter 6: Curriculum: Planning, assessment, & instruction. In Foundations of American education.Pressbooks

Images

7.1 “Puzzle clipart. “ by Creazilla is in the Public Domain, CC0

7.2 “Planet earth world global – Free Stock Illustrations “ by Creazilla is in the Public Domain, CC0

7.3 “A teacher helps a student in class “ by Flickr is in the Public Domain, CC0

7.4 “Chapter 6: Curriculum: Planning, Assessment, & Instruction”, Viva Open Publishing is in the Public Domain, CC0

7.5 “Two fourth-grade boys and a fourth-grade girl working together” by Allison Shelley, Flickr is licensed under

7.6 “Tyler Olvera- Medium” by Bakken Museum , Flickr is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

7.7  “We are skipping our lessons to teach you one” by K6ka is in the Public Domain, CC0(2019).

Videos

7.1  – “The consciousness gap in education – an equity imperative “ by Dorinda Carter Andrews, TEDxLansingED is licensed under

7.2 – “How Common Core Broke U.S. Schools”  by Youtube is in the Public Domain, CC0

7.3 – “Working Toward a Sentipensante (Sensing/Thinking) Pedagogic Imaginary” by Naropa University, YouTube is licensed under CC BY 4.0

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