CURRICULUM ESSENTIALS

Chapter 1 Activities

Waniwan, Jackielyn D. BEED III-2

Activity 1 Think-Pair-Share
Recall the “Saber-toothed curriculum you have read and answer the following;
a. Does the saber-toothed curriculum still exist at present? Give examples of
your evidence.

Answer:
The saber tooth curriculum, in my opinion, continues to exist
today since our educational system teaches kids how to do certain tasks
on their own and allows them to do things that help them exercise their
minds as well as their abilities.

b. Describe the kind of curriculum that exist as described in the article.

Answer:
The curriculum mentioned in the article really sends a
message in the form of the premise "we should teach them how to capture
a fish with their hands instead of a net." It indicates that we, as
teachers/future teachers, must educate the young how to manage their
cognitions, that we should let them to think and accomplish things on their
own rather than spoiling them with all of their wants and desires.

c. What does the author mean, when he said “A curriculum should be

timeless”? Explain

Answer:
Simply said, our educational system should be responsive to
current demands and serve a purpose. Individual instructors, school
buildings, and districts should not make these curricular selections;
instead, our community should make them to meet our needs.

d. What is the difference between education and training?

Answer:
The distinction is that training refers to the process of teaching
a person a certain skill or habit, which is frequently provided to operational
personnel. While education is a systematic learning process that creates a
sense of judgment and reasoning in employees, it is also a method of
systematic learning something in an institution. To add to that, training is done
in order to develop a certain talent. This ability will increase your employability
in general. While education is pursued with the aim of broadening one's
horizons and sharpening one's brain.
 Activity 2 The Teacher as a Curricularist Survey Tool

Have you done a survey before? In this activity you will gather information
direct from teachers to find out what curriculum activities they are involved in.
You may involve elementary, secondary or college teachers.

1. Choose at least five teachers in your place.

2. Use the Teacher Survey Tool below

THE TEACHER AS CURRICULARIST SURVEY TOOL

Name of Teacher: CRESELLE A. RANIDO

School: GMNAS
Grade/Year Level Assignment: GRADE 8
No. of Years Teaching: 9 YEARS
Degree Graduated: COLLEGE GRADUATE WITH 33 UNITS OF MAEM
As a Teacher Rank
1 I master the subject matter that I have to teach YES

2 I implement what I have planned for my teaching YES

3 I monitor and assess if my student are learning YES

4 I modify my activity to suit my learners in the classroom YES

5 I lead in the implementation of the new curriculum in my YES

school
6 I write instructional materials based on the
recommended school curriculum YES
7 I look for other ways of doing to improve teaching and YES
learning in the classroom.
8. I participate in community activities as a good citizen. YES

9. I disregard the needs of my learners and focus only in NO

my lesson
10. I teach my plan for the students to learn YES

Name of Teacher: IVY T. GALLEGO

 School: AGUINALDO ELEM. SCHOOL
Grade/Year Level Assignment: GRADE 5
No. of Years Teaching: 8 YEARS
Degree Graduated: BEED
As a Teacher Rank
1 I master the subject matter that I have to teach YES

2 I implement what I have planned for my teaching YES

3 I monitor and assess if my student are learning YES

4 I modify my activity to suit my learners in the YES

classroom
5 I lead in the implementation of the new curriculum in YES
my school
6 I write instructional materials based on the
recommended school curriculum YES
7 I look for other ways of doing to improve teaching and YES
learning in the classroom.
8. I participate in community activities as a good citizen. YES

9. I disregard the needs of my learners and focus only in NO

my lesson
10. I teach my plan for the students to learn YES

Name of Teacher: GENTLY PRAISE T. WACKER

School: MCDEES
Grade/Year Level Assignment: GRADE 5
 No. of Years Teaching: 6 YEARS
Degree Graduated: BEED

As a Teacher Rank
1 I master the subject matter that I have to teach YES

2 I implement what I have planned for my teaching YES

3 I monitor and assess if my student are learning YES

4 I modify my activity to suit my learners in the classroom YES

5 I lead in the implementation of the new curriculum in my YES

school
6 I write instructional materials based on the
recommended school curriculum YES
7 I look for other ways of doing to improve teaching and YES
learning in the classroom.
8. I participate in community activities as a good citizen. YES

9. I disregard the needs of my learners and focus only in NO

my lesson
10. I teach my plan for the students to learn YES

Name of Teacher: MARVIN E. CORAL

School: GMNAS
Grade/Year Level Assignment: GRADE 10
 No. of Years Teaching: 6 YEARS
Degree Graduated: BA IN ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION AND
TEACHER CERTIFICATE PROGRAM
As a Teacher Rank
1 I master the subject matter that I have to teach YES

2 I implement what I have planned for my teaching YES

3 I monitor and assess if my student are learning YES

4 I modify my activity to suit my learners in the YES

classroom
5 I lead in the implementation of the new curriculum in YES
my school
6 I write instructional materials based on the
recommended school curriculum YES
7 I look for other ways of doing to improve teaching YES
and learning in the classroom.
8. I participate in community activities as a good YES
citizen.
9. I disregard the needs of my learners and focus only NO
in my lesson
10. I teach my plan for the students to learn YES

Name of Teacher: MARIA SOL B. SUMIGUIN

School: GMNAS
Grade/Year Level Assignment: GRADE 11&12
No. of Years Teaching: 7 YEARS
Degree Graduated: BSED ENGLISH
As a Teacher Rank
1 I master the subject matter that I have to teach YES

2 I implement what I have planned for my teaching YES

3 I monitor and assess if my student are learning YES

4 I modify my activity to suit my learners in the YES

classroom
5 I lead in the implementation of the new curriculum YES
in my school
6 I write instructional materials based on the
recommended school curriculum YES
7 I look for other ways of doing to improve teaching YES
and learning in the classroom.
8. I participate in community activities as a good YES
citizen.
9. I disregard the needs of my learners and focus NO
only in my lesson
10. I teach my plan for the students to learn YES

Presentation of Result

As a Teacher YES NO
1 I master the subject matter that I have to teach 5 0
2 I implement what I have planned for my teaching 5 0
 3 I monitor and assess if my student are learning 5 0
4 I modify my activity to suit my learners in the
classroom 5 0
5 I lead in the implementation of the new curriculum in
my school 5 0
6 I write instructional materials based on the
recommended school curriculum 5 0
7 I look for other ways of doing to improve teaching
and learning in the classroom. 5 0
8. I participate in community activities as a good
citizen. 5 0
9. I disregard the needs of my learners and focus only
in my lesson 0 5
10. I teach my plan for the students to learn
5 0

Interpretation of the data

Through the survey being conducted, it was being found out that all
the teachers were doing their best how to improve the learning process of the
learners. It was also found out that all the teachers answered that they implement of
what they have planned for their teaching. All respondents’ teachers were monitored
and assessed it their students are learning and they also modified their activity to suit
their learners in their classrooms. They lead in the implementation of a new
curriculum in their school. All the teachers answered that they did write instructional
materials based on the recommended school curriculum. All the teachers in the
survey look for other ways of doing to improve teaching and learning in their school.
All teachers participate in community activities as a good citizen. However, all the
teachers answered no in disregarding the needs of their learners and focus only in
their lesson.

Activity 3 Traditional or Progressive: What is your View of Curriculum

Direction: Write your answer/reaction to what is asked in each question. Write your
answer in your lesson logbook.
 1. What is your own definition of curriculum? Write down you answer on a
piece of paper.

Answer:
For me, curriculum is a set of guidelines for instructors to
follow while teaching pupils about various topics or ideals in life. It is a planned or
unplanned method of instilling teachings and allowing students to understand
concepts outside of their academic areas.

2. Do you have a traditional view of curriculum, progressive view or both?

Explain your view based on your definition.

As a learner in the twenty-first century, the growth of our educational

system has resulted in several good consequences. A Progressive Curriculum, in my
opinion, is one in which what we do inside the four-walled classroom is dependent on
the interests of the students. It is progressive because as teachers/future teachers,
we must have themes and objectives that we must create with them, as well as a
strong emphasis on experiential learning. That is, hands-on experiences connected
to a developmentally appropriate study account for a substantial number of what
youngsters learn. Although many people will agree that a progressive approach to
education has paved the way for new ways of teaching and engaging our students, if
this is the case, the traditional curriculum should have been phased out a long time
ago, even though it has been proven to be an effective teaching method. As a result,
I feel that combining the two curriculums is sufficient and that it should be applied
wisely based on the students' levels. I believe that preschool children should be
taught utilizing a progressive curriculum first, and then the conventional curriculum
should be added gradually.
Activity 4 Making an Inventory of Curriculum Approach as Content, Process and
Product
Instruction: Choose a book that is being used in elementary, high school or
college. Identify the following: Content, Process, Product.

Inventory of the Curriculum Content, Process, Product

Title of the Book: ASSESSMENT OF LEARNING 1
Grade Level: College Subject area used: Education 106

No. Content Process Product/outcome

Example: Example: Example:
A. Type of Curriculum a. Individual research a. List of types
the Classroom b. Interview Of curriculum
c. observation b. Skill in interview
And observation
1. Understanding Performance Task: Distinguish Measurement,
Measurement, Assessment Differentiate Measurement, Assessment and Evaluation
and Evaluation in Outcomes- Assessment and Evaluation
Based Education
2. Learning Outcomes Write 3 domains of learning Fully understand the learning
outcomes

3. Item Analysis and Performance Task: Explain Fully understand the

Validation the meaning of item Item Analysis and Validation
analysis, item validity,
reliability, item difficulty and
discrimination index

4. Performance-Based Tests Performance Task: Distinguish performance test

and Traditional Assessment Differentiate between a and traditional assessment
Method of Cognitive Testing performance test and method of cognitive testing
traditional assessment
method of cognitive testing

5. Grading Systems and Performance Task: Compute Know how to compute the
Grading System of the DepEd grades of students in various grades and grading system of
grade levels observing the DepEd
DepEd guidelines
Activity 5 Exploring the Web
Instruction:
Search one personality in the Cluster of Curriculum Foundations who contributed to
the Curriculum Development. Write their biographies.
Cluster 1 – Philosophical Foundations
 George Herbert Mead was born February 27, 1863, in South Hadley, Massachusetts.
He was raised in a Protestant, middle-class family comprising his father, Hiram Mead,
his mother, Elizabeth Storrs Mead (née Billings), and his sister Alice. His father was a
former Congregationalist pastor from a lineage of farmers and clergymen and who
later held the chair in Sacred Rhetoric and Pastoral Theology at Oberlin College's
theological seminary. Elizabeth taught for two years at Oberlin College and
subsequently, from 1890 to 1900, serving as president of Mount Holyoke College in
South Hadley, Massachusetts. In 1879, George Mead enrolled at the Oberlin
Academy at Oberlin College and then the college itself, graduating in 1883 with a
Bachelor of Arts. After graduation, Mead taught grade school for about four months.
For the following three years, he worked as a surveyor for the Wisconsin Central
Railroad Company. In autumn 1887, Mead enrolled at Harvard University, where his
main interests were philosophy and psychology. At Harvard, Mead studied with Josiah
Royce, a major influence upon his thought, and William James, whose children he
tutored. In 1888, Mead left Harvard after receiving only a B.A. and moved to Leipzig,
Germany to study with psychologist Wilhelm Wundt, from whom he learned the
concept of "the gesture," a concept central to his later work. In 1891, Mead married
Helen Kingsbury Castle (1860–1929), the sister of Henry Northrup Castle (1862–
1895), a friend he met at Oberlin. Despite never finishing his dissertation, Mead was
able to obtain a post at the University of Michigan in 1891. There, Mead met Charles
H. Cooley and John Dewey, both of whom would influence him greatly. In 1894, Mead
moved, along with Dewey, to the University of Chicago, where he taught until his
death. Dewey's influence led Mead into educational theory, but his thinking soon
diverged from that of Dewey, and developed into his famous psychological theories of
mind, self and society. No detached philosopher, he was active in Chicago's social
and political affairs; among his many activities include his work for the City Club of
Chicago. Mead believed that science could be used to deal with social problems and
played a key role in conducting research at the settlement house in Chicago. He also
worked as treasurer for Chicago's Hull House. Mead died of heart failure on April 26,
1931. Much of Mead's work focused on the development of the self and the objectivity
of the world within the social realm: he insisted that "the individual mind can exist only
in relation to other minds with shared meanings." The two most important roots of
Mead's work, and of symbolic interactionism in general, are the philosophy of
pragmatism and social behaviorism. Social behaviorism (as opposed to psychological
behaviorism) refers to Mead's concern of the stimuli of gestures and social objects
with rich meanings, rather than bare physical objects which psychological behaviorists
considered stimuli. Pragmatism is a wide-ranging philosophical position from which
several aspects of Mead's influences can be identified into four main tenets: 1. True
reality does not exist "out there" in the real world, it "is actively created as we act in
and toward the world." 2. People remember and base their knowledge of the world on
what has been useful to them and are likely to alter what no longer "works." 3. People
define the social and physical "objects" they encounter in the world according to their
use for them. 4. If we want to understand actors, we must base that understanding on
what people actually do. Three of these ideas are critical to symbolic interactionism: 
The focus on the interaction between the actor and the world  A view of both the
actor and the world as dynamic processes and not static structures and  The actor's
ability to interpret the social world. Thus, to Mead and symbolic interactionists,
consciousness is not separated from action and interaction, but is an integral part of
both. Symbolic interactionism as a pragmatic philosophy was an antecedent to the
philosophy of transactionalism. Mead's theories in part, based on pragmatism and
behaviorism, were transmitted to many graduate students at the University of Chicago
who then went on to establish symbolic interactionism. Mead was a very important
figure in 20th-century social philosophy. One of his most influential ideas was the
emergence of mind and self from the communication process between organisms,
discussed in Mind, Self and Society (1934), also known as social behaviorism. This
concept of how the mind and self-emerge from the social process of communication
by signs founded the symbolic interactionist school of sociology. Rooted intellectually
in Hegelian dialectics and process philosophy, Mead, like John Dewey, developed a
more materialist process philosophy that was based upon human action and
specifically communicative action. Human activity is, in a pragmatic sense, the
criterion of truth, and through human activity meaning is made. Joint activity, including
communicative activity, is the means through which our sense of self is constituted.
The essence of Mead's social behaviorism is that mind is not a substance located in
some transcendent realm, nor is it merely a series of events that takes place within
the human physiological structure. This approach opposed the traditional view of the
mind as separate from the body. The emergence of mind is contingent upon
interaction between the human organism and its social environment; it is through
participation in the social act of communication that individuals realize their potential
for significantly symbolic behavior, that is, thought. Mind, in Mead's terms, is the
individualized focus of the communication process. It is linguistic behavior on the part
of the individual. There is, then, no "mind or thought without language;" and language
(the content of mind) "is only a development and product of social interaction." Thus,
mind is not reducible to the neurophysiology of the organic individual, but is emergent
in "the dynamic, ongoing social process that constitutes human experience. For Mead,
mind arises out of the social act of communication. Mead's concept of the social act is
relevant, not only to his theory of mind, but to all facets of his social philosophy. His
theory of "mind, self, and society" is, in effect, a philosophy of the act from the
standpoint of a social process involving the interaction of many individuals, just as his
theory of knowledge and value is a philosophy of the act from the standpoint of the
experiencing individual in interaction with an environment. Action is very important to
his social theory and, according to Mead, actions also occur within a communicative
process. The initial phase of an act constitutes a gesture. A gesture is a preparatory
movement that enables other individuals to become aware of the intentions of the
given organism. The rudimentary situation is a conversation of gestures, in which a
gesture on the part of the first individual evokes a preparatory movement on the part
of the second, and the gesture of the second organism in turn calls out a response in
the first person. On this level no communication occurs. Neither organism is aware of
the effect of its own gestures upon the other; the gestures are nonsignificant. For
communication to take place, each organism must have knowledge of how the other
individual will respond to his own ongoing act. Here the gestures are significant
symbols. A significant symbol is a kind of gesture that only humans can make.
Gestures become significant symbols when they arouse in the individual who is
making them the same kind of response they are supposed to elicit from those to
whom the gestures are addressed. Only when we have significant symbols can we
truly have communication. Mead grounded human perception in an "action-nexus".
We perceive the world in terms of the "means of living." To perceive food, is to
perceive eating. To perceive a house, is to perceive shelter. That is to say, perception
is in terms of action. Mead's theory of perception is similar to that of J. J. Gibson.
Mead argued in tune with Durkheim that the individual is a product of an ongoing, pre-
existing society, or more specifically, social interaction that is a consequence of a sui
generis society. The self-arises when the individual becomes an object to themselves.
Mead argued that we are objects first to other people, and secondarily we become
objects to ourselves by taking the perspective of other people. Language enables us
to talk about ourselves in the same way as we talk about other people, and thus
through language we become other to ourselves. In joint activity, which Mead called
social acts, humans learn to see themselves from the standpoint of their co-actors. A
central mechanism within the social act, which enables perspective taking, is position
exchange. People within a social act often alternate social positions (e.g.,
giving/receiving, asking/helping, winning/losing, hiding/seeking, talking/listening). In
children's games there is repeated position exchange, for example in hide-and-seek,
and Mead argued that this is one of the main ways that perspective taking develops.
However, for Mead, unlike Dewey and J. J. Gibson, the key is not simply human
action, but rather social action. In humans the "manipulatory phase of the act" is
socially mediated, that is to say, in acting towards objects humans simultaneously
take the perspectives of others towards that object. This is what Mead means by "the
social act" as opposed to simply "the act" (the latter being a Deweyan concept). Non-
human animals also manipulate objects, but that is a non-social manipulation, they do
not take the perspective of other organisms toward the object. Humans on the other
hand, take the perspective of other actors towards objects, and this is what enables
complex human society and subtle social coordination. In the social act of economic
exchange, for example, both buyer and seller must take each other's perspectives
towards the object being exchanged. The seller must recognize the value for the
buyer, while the buyer must recognize the desirability of money for the seller. Only
with this mutual perspective taking can the economic exchange occur. (Mead was
influenced on this point by Adam Smith.) Mead was a major American philosopher by
virtue of being, along with John Dewey, Charles Peirce and William James, one of the
founders of pragmatism. He also made significant contributions to the philosophies of
nature, science, and history, to philosophical anthropology, and to process
philosophy. Dewey and Alfred North Whitehead considered Mead a thinker of the first
rank. He is a classic example of a social theorist whose work does not fit easily within
conventional disciplinary boundaries. As far as his work on the philosophy of science,
Mead sought to find the psychological origin of science in the efforts of individuals to
attain power over their environment. The notion of a physical object arises out of
manipulatory experience. There is a social relation to inanimate objects, for the
organism takes the role of things that it manipulates directly, or that it manipulates
indirectly in perception. For example, in taking (introjecting or imitating) the resistant
role of a solid object, an individual obtains cognition of what is "inside" nonliving
things. Historically, the concept of the physical object arose from an animistic
conception of the universe. Contact experience includes experiences of position,
balance, and support, and these are used by the organism when it creates its
conceptions of the physical world. Our scientific concepts of space, time, and mass
are abstracted from manipulatory experience. Such concepts as that of the electron
are also derived from manipulation. In developing a science we construct hypothetical
objects in order to assist ourselves in controlling nature. The conception of the present
as a distinct unit of experience, rather than as a process of becoming and
disappearing, is a scientific fiction devised to facilitate exact measurement. In the
scientific worldview immediate experience is replaced by theoretical constructs. The
ultimate in experience, however, is the manipulation and contact at the completion of
an act.
Cluster 2 – Historical Foundations

 Ralph W. Tyler (1902–1994) was an American educator who worked in the field
of assessment and evaluation. He served on or advised a number of bodies that
set guidelines for the expenditure of federal funds and influenced the underlying
policy of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. Tyler chaired
the committee that eventually developed the National Assessment of
Educational Progress (NAEP). He has been called by some as "the father of
educational evaluation and assessment". Biography Tyler was born on April 22,
1902, in Chicago to a professional family. His maternal grandfather was in the
Civil War and had been appointed as a judge in Washington by president
Ulysses S. Grant. His father, William Augustus Tyler, had been raised in a farm,
and had become a doctor. Being deeply religious, there came a time when both
of Tyler's parent thought that the medical profession was too lucrative and that
they should realign their priorities, at which point his father became a
Congregational minister. As the sixth of eight children, Tyler grew up in
Nebraska where he recalled having to trap animals for food and wear donated
clothing. He worked at various jobs while growing up, including his first job at
age twelve in a creamery. Tyler went to college during the day and worked as a
telegraph operator for the railroad at night. He received his bachelor's degree in
1921 at the age of 19 from Doane College in Crete, Nebraska. There was a time
when Tyler wanted to become a missionary in Rhodesia, but he declined
because he had no formal instruction in ministry, unlike his younger brother who
had gone to Yale Divinity School. However, later all the brothers pursued a
career in the field of education. His first teaching job was as a high school
science teacher in Pierre, South Dakota. In 1923, Tyler wrote a science test for
high school students which helped him "see the holes in testing only for
memorization." He earned his master's degree from the University of Nebraska
in 1923 and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1927. His graduate work
at the University of Chicago connected him with notable educators Charles Judd
and W. W. Charters, whose ideas influenced Tyler’s later work in curriculum
development and evaluation. Tyler’s first appointment was at the University of
North Carolina in 1927, where he worked with state teachers to improve
curricula. Later in 1927, Tyler joined the faculty at Ohio State University, where
he refined his innovative approach to testing while working with Charters, who
was the director of the university's Bureau of Educational Research. Tyler
helped Ohio State University faculty to improve their teaching and increase
student retention. He is credited with coining the term, "evaluation," for aligning
measurement and testing with educational objectives. Because his concept of
evaluation consisted of gathering comprehensive evidence of learning rather
than just paper and pencil tests, Tyler might even be viewed as an early
proponent of portfolio assessment. Tyler headed the evaluation staff of the
"Eight-Year Study" (1933–1941), a national program, involving 30 secondary
schools and 300 colleges and universities, that addressed narrowness and
rigidity in high school curricula. He first gained prominence in 1938 when he was
lured by Robert Maynard Hutchins from Ohio State University to the University of
Chicago to continue his work there. In 1953, Tyler became the first director of
the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford
University, a position he held until his retirement in 1967. A decade after
completing his work with the Eight-Year Study, Tyler formalized his thoughts on
viewing, analyzing and interpreting the curriculum and instructional program of
an educational institution in Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction
(1949). This book was a bestseller and has since been reprinted in 36 editions,
shaping curriculum and instructional design to this day. The book laid out a
deceptively simple structure for delivering and evaluating instruction consisting
of four parts that became known as the Tyler Rationale: 1. What educational
purposes should the school seek to attain? (Defining appropriate learning
objectives.) 2. How can learning experiences be selected which are likely to be
useful in attaining these objectives? (Introducing useful learning experiences.) 3.
How can learning experiences be organized for effective instruction?
(Organizing experiences to maximize their effect.) 4. How can the effectiveness
of learning experiences be evaluated? (Evaluating the process and revising the
areas that were not effective.) In this book, Tyler describes learning as taking
place through the action of the student. "It is what he does that he learns, not
what the teacher does" (Tyler p. 63). Tyler advised President Truman on
reforming the curriculum at the service academies in 1952 and, under
Eisenhower, chaired the President’s Conference on Children and Youth. The
Johnson Administration used Tyler’s advice to shape many of its education bills
and programs. Tyler was named founding director of the Center for Advanced
Study in the Behavioral Sciences in 1954 and held that position through 1967.
The center was originally envisioned as a five-year project, but later became an
ongoing independent institution that would eventually claim to have supported
over 2,000 leading scientists and scholars. As a member of the governing board,
Tyler is credited with playing a critical role in determining the character of the
center as a new type of educational institution. In 1964, the Carnegie
Corporation asked Tyler to chair the committee that would eventually develop
the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in 1969. Before this
time, Tyler wrote, "no comprehensive and dependable data about the
educational attainments of our [young] people" were available. Ralph Tyler also
contributed to educational agencies such as the National Science Board, the
Research and Development Panel of the U.S. Office of Education, the National
Advisory Council on Disadvantaged Children, the Social Science Research
Foundation, the Armed Forces Institute, and the American Association for the
Advancement of Science. Ralph Tyler also served the Association for
Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) and helped publish its
Fundamental Curriculum Decisions in 1983. Tyler formally retired in 1967 from
the Center for Advanced Study, but he later became president of the System
Development Foundation in San Francisco in 1969, which supported basic
research in information sciences. He was also on many other commissions,
committees, and foundations. He was on the National Advisory Council on
Education for Disadvantaged Children, a panel to study SAT scores, and was
also the chairman on the Exploratory Committee on Assessing Progress on
Education. After his retirement, Tyler maintained an active life as a lecturer and
consultant. He was a visiting professor at the University of Massachusetts-
Amherst and he advised on evaluation and curriculum in Ghana, Indonesia,
Ireland, Israel and Sweden. Tyler was reported to have remained strongly
optimistic about the future of education, right up until the end of his life. Tyler
died of cancer on February 18, 1994, at the St. Paul's Health Care Center in San
 Diego. Tyler believed in the social role of religion and remained a member of the
First Congregational Church of Palo Alto, to which he paid contributions.

Cluster 3 – Psychological Foundations

 Abraham Harold Maslow (April 1, 1908 – June 8, 1970) was an American

psychologist who was best known for creating Maslow's hierarchy of needs, a
theory of psychological health predicated on fulfilling innate human needs in
priority, culminating in self-actualization. Maslow was a psychology professor at
Alliant International University, Brandeis University, Brooklyn College, New
School for Social Research, and Columbia University. He stressed the
importance of focusing on the positive qualities in people, as opposed to treating
them as a "bag of symptoms". A Review of General Psychology survey,
published in 2002, ranked Maslow as the tenth most cited psychologist of the
20th century. Born in 1908 and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Maslow was the
oldest of seven children. His parents were first generation Jewish immigrants
from Kiev, then part of the Russian Empire (now Ukraine), who fled from Czarist
persecution in the early 20th century. They had decided to live in New York City
and in a multiethnic, working-class neighborhood. His parents were poor and not
intellectually focused, but they valued education. He had various encounters
with antiSemitic gangs who would chase and throw rocks at him. Maslow and
other young people with his background were struggling to overcome such acts
of racism and ethnic prejudice in the attempt to establish an idealistic world
based on widespread education and economic justice. The tension outside his
home was also felt within it, as he rarely got along with his mother, and
eventually developed a strong revulsion towards her. He is quoted as saying,
"What I had reacted to was not only her physical appearance, but also her
values and world view, her stinginess, her total selfishness, her lack of love for
anyone else in the world – even her own husband and children – her narcissism,
her Negro prejudice, her exploitation of everyone, her assumption that anyone
was wrong who disagreed with her, her lack of friends, her sloppiness and
dirtiness...". He also grew up with few friends other than his cousin Will, and as a
result "[He] grew up in libraries and among books. "It was here that he
developed his love for reading and learning. He went to Boys High School, one
of the top high schools in Brooklyn. Here, he served as the officer to many
academic clubs, and became editor of the Latin Magazine. He also edited
Principia, the school's Physics paper, for a year. He developed other strengths
as well: As a young boy, Maslow believed physical strength to be the single
most defining characteristic of a true male; hence, he exercised often and took
up weight lifting in hopes of being transformed into a more muscular, tough-
looking guy, however, he was unable to achieve this due to his humble-looking
and chaste figure as well as his studiousness. Maslow attended the City College
of New York after high school. In 1926 he began taking legal studies classes at
night in addition to his undergraduate course load. He hated it and almost
immediately dropped out. In 1927 he transferred to Cornell, but he left after just
one semester due to poor grades and high costs. He later graduated from City
College and went to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin to study
psychology. In 1928, he married his first cousin Bertha, who was still in high
school at the time. The pair had met in Brooklyn years earlier. Maslow's
psychology training at UW was decidedly experimentalbehaviorist. At Wisconsin
he pursued a line of research which included investigating primate dominance
behavior and sexuality. Maslow's early experience with behaviorism would leave
him with a strong positivist mindset. Upon the recommendation of Professor
Hulsey Cason, Maslow wrote his master's thesis on "learning, retention, and
reproduction of verbal material".Maslow regarded the research as
embarrassingly trivial, but he completed his thesis the summer of 1931 and was
awarded his master's degree in psychology. He was so ashamed of the thesis
that he removed it from the psychology library and tore out its catalog listing.
However, Professor Cason admired the research enough to urge Maslow to
submit it for publication. Maslow's thesis was published as two articles in 1934.
He continued his research at Columbia University on similar themes. There he
found another mentor in Alfred Adler, one of Sigmund Freud's early colleagues.
From 1937 to 1951, Maslow was on the faculty of Brooklyn College. His family
life and his experiences influenced his psychological ideas. After World War II,
Maslow began to question the way psychologists had come to their conclusions,
and although he did not completely disagree, he had his own ideas on how to
understand the human mind. He called his new discipline humanistic
psychology. Maslow was already a 33-year-old father and had two children
when the United States entered World War II in 1941. He was thus ineligible for
the military. However, the horrors of war inspired a vision of peace in him
leading to his groundbreaking psychological studies of self-actualizing. The
studies began under the supervision of two mentors, anthropologist Ruth
Benedict and Gestalt psychologist Max Wertheimer, whom he admired both
professionally and personally. They accomplished a lot in both realms. Being
such "wonderful human beings" as well, they inspired Maslow to take notes
about them and their behavior. This would be the basis of his lifelong research
and thinking about mental health and human potential. He extended the subject,
borrowing ideas from other psychologists and adding new ones, such as the
concepts of a hierarchy of needs, metaneeds, metamotivation, self-actualizing
persons, and peak experiences. Maslow was a professor at Brandeis University
from 1951 to 1969. He became a resident fellow of the Laughlin Institute in
California. In 1967, Maslow had a serious heart attack and knew his time was
limited. He considered himself to be a psychological pioneer. He gave future
psychologists a push by bringing to light different paths to ponder. He built the
framework that later allowed other psychologists to conduct more
comprehensive studies. Maslow believed that leadership should be
nonintervening. Consistent with this approach, he rejected a nomination in 1963
to be the president of the Association for Humanistic Psychology because he felt
that the organization should develop an intellectual movement without a leader.
[23] While jogging, Maslow suffered a severe heart attack and died on June 8,
1970, at the age of 62 in Menlo Park, California. He is buried at Mount Auburn
Cemetery.
Cluster 4 – Sociological Foundations

 Alvin Toffler (October 4, 1928 – June 27, 2016) was an American writer,
futurist, and businessman known for his works discussing modern technologies,
including the digital revolution and the communication revolution, with emphasis
on their effects on cultures worldwide. He is regarded as one of the world's
outstanding futurists. Toffler was an associate editor of Fortune magazine. In his
early works he focused on technology and its impact, which he termed
"information overload." In 1970 his first major book about the future, Future
Shock, became a worldwide best-seller and has sold over 6 million copies. He
and his wife Heidi Toffler, who collaborated with him for most of his writings,
moved on to examining the reaction to changes in society with another best-
selling book, The Third Wave in 1980. In it, he foresaw such technological
advances as cloning, personal computers, the Internet, cable television and
mobile communication. His later focus, via their other best-seller, Powershift,
(1990), was on the increasing power of 21stcentury military hardware and the
proliferation of new technologies. He founded Toffler Associates, a management
consulting company, and was a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation,
visiting professor at Cornell University, faculty member of the New School for
Social Research, a White House correspondent, and a business consultant.
Toffler's ideas and writings were a significant influence on the thinking of
business and government leaders worldwide, including China's Zhao Ziyang,
and AOL founder Steve Case. Alvin Toffler was born on October 4, 1928, in New
York City, and raised in Brooklyn. He was the son of Rose (Albaum) and Sam
Toffler, a furrier, both Jewish immigrants from Poland. He had one younger
sister. He was inspired to become a writer at the age of 7 by his aunt and uncle,
who lived with the Tofflers. "They were Depression-era literary intellectuals,"
Toffler said, "and they always talked about exciting ideas." Toffler graduated
from New York University in 1950 as an English major, though by his own
account he was more focused on political activism than grades. He met his
future wife, Adelaide Elizabeth Farrell (nicknamed "Heidi"), when she was
starting a graduate course in linguistics. Being radical students, they decided
against further graduate work and moved to the Midwest, where they married on
April 29, 1950. Seeking experiences to write about, Alvin and Heidi Toffler spent
the next five years as blue collar workers on assembly lines while studying
industrial mass production in their daily work. He compared his own desire for
experience to other writers, such as Jack London, who in his quest for subjects
to write about sailed the seas, and John Steinbeck, who went to pick grapes with
migrant workers. In their first factory jobs, Heidi became a union shop steward in
the aluminum foundry where she worked. Alvin became a millwright and welder.
In the evenings Alvin would write poetry and fiction, but discovered he was
proficient at neither. His hands-on practical labor experience helped Alvin Toffler
land a position at a unionbacked newspaper, a transfer to its Washington bureau
in 1957, then three years as a White House correspondent, covering Congress
and the White House for a Pennsylvania daily newspaper. They returned to New
York City in 1959 when Fortune magazine invited Alvin to become its labor
columnist, later having him write about business and management. After leaving
Fortune magazine in 1962, Toffler began a freelance career, writing long form
articles for scholarly journals and magazines. His 1964 Playboy interviews with
Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov and Ayn Rand were considered among the
magazine's best. His interview with Rand was the first time the magazine had
given such a platform to a female intellectual, which as one commentator said,
"the real bird of paradise Toffler captured for Playboy in 1964 was Ayn Rand."
Toffler was hired by IBM to conduct research and write a paper on the social and
organizational impact of computers, leading to his contact with the earliest
computer "gurus" and artificial intelligence researchers and proponents. Xerox
invited him to write about its research laboratory and AT&T consulted him for
strategic advice. This AT&T work led to a study of telecommunications, which
advised the company's top management to break up the company more than a
decade before the government forced AT&T to break up. In the mid-1960s, the
Tofflers began five years of research on what would become Future Shock,
published in 1970. It has sold over 6 million copies worldwide, according to the
New York Times, or over 15 million copies according to the Tofflers' Web site.
Toffler coined the term "future shock" to refer to what happens to a society when
change happens too fast, which results in social confusion and normal decision-
making processes breaking down. The book has never been out of print and has
been translated into dozens of languages. He continued the theme in The Third
Wave in 1980. While he describes the first and second waves as the agricultural
and industrial revolutions, the "third wave," a phrase he coined, represents the
current information, computer-based revolution. He forecast the spread of the
Internet and email, interactive media, cable television, cloning, and other digital
advancements. He claimed that one of the side effects of the digital age has
been "information overload," another term he coined. In 1990 he wrote
Powershift, also with the help of his wife, Heidi. In 1996, with American business
consultant Tom Johnson, they co-founded Toffler Associates, an advisory firm
designed to implement many of the ideas the Tofflers had written on. The firm
worked with businesses, NGOs, and governments in the United States, South
Korea, Mexico, Brazil, Singapore, Australia, and other countries. During this
period in his career, Toffler lectured worldwide, taught at several schools and
met world leaders, such as Mikhail Gorbachev, along with key executives and
military officials. Toffler has received several prestigious prizes and awards,
including the McKinsey Foundation Book Award for Contributions to
Management Literature, Officier de L'Ordre des Arts et Lettres, and
appointments, including Fellow of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science and the International Institute for Strategic Studies. In
2006, Alvin and Heidi Toffler were recipients of Brown University's Independent
Award. Toffler was married to Heidi Toffler, also a writer and futurist. They lived
in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles, California, and previously lived in Redding,
Connecticut. The couple's only child, Karen Toffler (1954–2000), died at age 46
after more than a decade suffering from Guillain–Barré syndrome. Alvin Toffler
died in his sleep on June 27, 2016, at his home in Los Angeles. No cause of
death was given. He is buried at Westwood Memorial Park.