Debat nieuwe eindtermen/leerplannen

Opkomst van nefaste constructivistische curricula in de jaren 1990 in VS, Canada, Australië …

Die invloed was ook merkbaar bij de opstelling van de Vlaamse eindtermen in de jaren negentig. De DVO-overheidsdienst -die de eindtermen patroneerde - ging in sterke mate uit van zo’n constructivistische curriculumvisie. Binnen de eindtermencommissie wiskunde lager onderwijs was de tegenstelling tussen constructivisten en tegenstanders goed merkbaar. In een begeleidende tekst bij de eindtermen hebben we dit ook verwoord. Uit de feitelijke eindtermen kan men wel afleiden dat de tegenstanders van een constructivistische aanpak zoals in de VS-Standards en in Freudenthal Instituut de grootste invloed uitoefenden. Binnen b.v. de taalleerplannen was het omgekeerde het geval. )

(Passage uit Review of the Australian Curriculum)
During the 1990s the OBE model (=outcome based education of constructivistisch model) prevailed, best illustrated by Australia’s national statements and profiles, and various equivalent state and territory frameworks such as Essential Learnings and the New Basics. As noted in Figure 3, OBE embraces a futures perspective with an emphasis on skills. Progressive education also emphasises the process of learning over content, places the child centre stage instead of the subject disciplines, and gives priority to an inquiry-based approach to learning and a definition of relevance that is often restricted to what is immediate, local and contemporary. Formative assessment is descriptive, diagnostic and collaborative, as opposed to summative assessment such as competitive Year 12 examinations that are high-risk and externally set and marked.

In relation to how students learn, OBE, for example, favours a learning theory described as ‘constructivism’ based on the belief that: the classroom is no longer a place where the teacher (‘expert’) pours knowledge into passive students, who wait like empty vessels to be filled. In the constructivist model the students are urged to be actively involved in their own process of learning. The teacher functions more as a facilitator who coaches, mediates, prompts, and helps students develop and assess their understanding. Instead of knowledge being objective, postmodern theory and deconstruction are based on the belief that how we perceive and relate to the world is highly subjective and relative – there are no external truths or absolutes as each person creates his or her own sense of reality based on gender, ethnicity, race, sexuality and class.

As noted by Gita Steiner-Khamsi, 2006, during this period OBE was only adopted by a handful of countries, including New Zealand, Australia, England and Wales, Canada and the United States. Top performing Asian systems maintained a more traditional model of curriculum development and implementation and capabilities instead of essential content, a developmental approach to learning23, and a classroom situation where teachers are described as facilitators or ‘guides by the side’ and students become ‘knowledge navigators’ and ‘digital natives’.
Yates and Collins describe the period of Australian curriculum development during the years 1975– 2005 in the following way: there was a strong shift over the period we are examining from an emphasis on knowing things to being able to do things. In the interviews we conducted with senior curriculum actors we also noted how rarely ‘knowledge’ came into the frame of their talk about curriculum, compared with a focus on outcomes, politics and management of resources; or compared with a focus on the developing child (from a cognitive developmental perspective).
Bruce Wilson, the one-time head of Australia’s Curriculum Corporation, notes that even though OBE became the prevailing orthodoxy in many states and territories during the 1990s it represented an ‘unsatisfactory political and intellectual compromise’.

OBE is criticised for being difficult to implement, for failing to detail essential content, for failing to have a valid and credible system of assessment and for adopting an overly constructivist approach to teaching and learning.Such were the criticisms levelled against OBE when it was being implemented in a number of American states that critics argued that a standards model of curriculum should be adopted.