Can the Curriculum Guide Both Emancipate and Educate Teachers?

Abstract

This article examines the prospects of proposing a curriculum guide that has the potential to educate as well as emancipate teachers. Such a curriculum guide should present a clear pedagogical-content approach while encouraging teachers to be autonomous. In order to examine this idea, I interviewed eighty-three Bible teachers after exposing them to three curriculum guides that present the same content but take different approaches to it. The research issue was examined via the following two questions:

1. How well do the teachers comprehend the approaches of each of the three curriculum guides?

2. To what extent do the teachers see the approaches of each of the guides as allowing for autonomy?

This study found that not one of the curriculum guides was perceived by the teachers as combining both a clear pedagogical-content approach and autonomy. It may be concluded that as far as teachers are concerned, these two fundamental elements cannot be combined in one curriculum guide, and seem to embody two contradictory and incompatible rationales. This study suggests that we should think of a means of presenting teachers with curriculum guides that suit the teachers’ narrative world of knowledge and thought, and are communicative to teachers and “speak” in their professional language.