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Making curriculum links with homes and communities

1a Introduction

“There is good evidence that some children fail not because they lack intellectual ability or motivation to learn, but rather, at least in part, because their home and school learning lives lack congruence” (Paratore 2003)

A commitment to schooling as part of life-long learning inevitably raises the question of how best to integrate the elements of what Paratore calls “children’s learning lives”. For many schools this will entail something of a revolution in the way they think about the school curriculum, its sources and its value in relation to home and community learning. This is certainly an area which current student teachers will need to address increasingly in their future careers. These screens outline some of the linguistic and pedagogical reasons for this, together with some practical ideas for making links of different kinds between school, home and the wider community.

The screens as a whole should enable tutors to address the following questions:

  • Why should schools and teachers try to develop better curriculum links with homes and communities?
  • What kinds of aims should student teachers be trying to achieve through making different kinds of curriculum links?
  • What programmes and initiatives are available to help schools establish these curriculum aims?
  • Which programmes and initiatives are particularly accessible to student teachers?
  • What are some of the practical problems in establishing good curriculum links with homes and communities?

Most practices described here can be implemented by student teachers in their own classrooms. However, there is a presumption throughout that, unlike initiatives described in other sections of this website, some of these initiatives will not be possible for student teachers to undertake immediately since they require school management decisions, or necessitate a longer classroom involvement than is available on most placements. Nevertheless, it is important that student teachers are made aware of the range of possible initiatives and their underpinning philosophies so that they can build them into their repertoire of practices.

Student Teachers might: draw on their own schooling and observations from their training to write down their initial reactions to the questions in the box and review them later in training.

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Contents

  1. Introduction and Rationale
    1. Introduction
    2. Rationale
  2. Core Principles about Language and Learning
  3. Key Issues
    1. Key Issues in Language and Learning
    2. Key Issues in Assessment and Evaluation
    3. Key Issues in Management
  4. Suiting Links to Purposes
  5. Links to Inform Parents and the Community
    1. Overview of Informing Links
    2. What Student Teachers might do to Inform Parents
  6. Links to Support Parents
    1. Overview of Supporting Links
    2. What Student Teachers might do to Support Parents
    3. Case Study (i): Supporting parental awareness of curriculum and methodology
    4. Developing parents’ own abilities through Family Learning courses
  7. Links to Make the Curriculum Reflective of Home and Community
    1. Overview of Reflective Links
    2. What Student Teachers might do to Make the Curriculum Reflective of Home and Community
    3. Case Study (ii): Reconstructing a community scenario
    4. Case Study (iii): Using texts from the community culture
  8. References
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