學生如何詮釋學校課程？

Abstract

學生對學校課程的詮釋，對課程實施的成效有很大的影響。過去的課程研究與實務，很少考慮學生的觀點。本文選擇幾個學生文化的民族誌，由其豐富的民族誌資料中，描述不同類型學生對學校課程的詮釋。歸納與整理這些學生的詮釋後，本文發現學生會自行判斷課程的價值，將課程分類、定義，以自己認為合適的方式進行學習，以自己認定的標準，評量自己的表現。這種學生的文化創造，提供課程與教育實務工作者新的研究與思考方向。

This article presents students’ interpretations of school curricula as found in past ethnographic research. According to this research, students are learners with an active ability to interpret, instead of just passively following the curricula provided by educators. These students do what every curriculum designer will do: they assess the value of the curriculum, classify it into different categories, decide what they want/don’t want to learn, decide the learning sequence and evaluation criteria. Yet most students interpret school curricula in a different, even an opposite way from that of educators do. According to past research we see that (1) English white boys defined the school curriculum as being “feminine”; (2) American black students viewed it as being a product of white culture; (3) American Punjabi students perceived it as a tool to help them accommodate American society; (4) Advanced math and science were thought to be worthless for Punjabi girls; (5) Math and English were thought to be useless for older Taiwanese adult students; (6) Kansas’s medical students in the US studied what professors wanted them to know; (7) Students in a Taiwanese junior high school only studied specific subject content which they thought they had to perform well or get punished by teachers. This article then discusses the students’ interpretation(s) of their curricula in terms of Willis’ notion of cultural production, and presents some implications for educational practice.