Rick and company hold (then release!) a green sea turtle from Snow Bay on San Salvador, Bahamas. See other beautiful phenomena from the Bahamas.
|
|
The purpose of this paper is to familiarize myself with Costa RicaÕs education system for my own benefit and also to enable me to inform my classmates on the subject. To do this I have translated large portions of the Biology curriculum. I have chosen the biology curriculum as I am a licensed biology teacher in the state of Ohio and have acquired through my education a fluency with this curriculum. This fluency will enable me to make a decent comparison between the biology curriculum of the United States and that of Costa Rica. Through a variety of other sources including journal articles, interviews, and credible websites, I will obtain a credible image of the day to day activities and workings of schools. I will also briefly lay out the similarities in inequalities between the two systems of education.
First off I am going to provide some background information on Costa RicaÕs education system. Originally property of Spain the Education system began in 1821 when the country became independent. Originally the education system was based off of the French system since many of the socially powerful individuals in society were educated there. An article by Zaher Wahab described the education system as being liberal, humanistic, and European oriented. Today the system is guided by a law passed in 1957 called the Organic Law of Education. This established the Ministry of Public Education, which is headed by the Minister of Education. The Minister of Education is the equivalent of Margret Spelling in the United States. (Costa rica - educational SystemÑoverview.)
There are several theories of curriculum and they mostly revolve around the purpose of education. From reading articles about the education system and examining the curriculum itself I believe the dominant theory to be that of a mix between Òconnecting to the canonÓ and ÒTraining for work and survivalÓ(Joseph, Bravmann, Windschitl, Mikel, & Green, 2000). Let me first explain these two. The canon is the very traditional set of skills and knowledge that everyone should have. Under this theory everyone should learn nearly the same information in public schools as to ensure equality. The second theory involving training for work is under the mindset that the function of school is to prepare students to become productive and self-sufficient members of society. My personal impression is that the system leans to the later with statements out of a reform movement in the 1970Õs being Listed below. In the quotes below I have bolded the sections that specifically make the connections to the Òtraining for work and survival theoryÓ.
o ÒA. Raise the average of the educational level of the population, especially in the heretofore less favored zones ; in order to gain national integration, improve the lives of citizens, and contribute to the socio-economic development of the country.
o B. Modernize the education system so that it can meet the socio-economic needs of the country and favor its process for development.Ó(Costa rica - educational SystemÑoverview.)
o
Another goal of this reform was to denationalize or ÒnuclearizationÓ of the education. This means that smaller local regions would have more control over the education of students in their region. This allows for education to be specially fitted if you will to the students needs. Currently in the United States I would argue that there is a push for just the opposite. There is a call for a national curriculum and a return to a very strict canon style of education. My professional opinion on the matter is that this makes no sense. A student that has no intention on going to college will not be best served by the same education as a student who will. That non-college bound student needs to leave high school with employable schools, implying more of a trade school style of education. An example of this movement is the No Child Left Behind legislation under the Bush administration. With testing set up the way it is, students are being held accountable for canon style information that isnÕt best suited for them.
Just like the NCLB reform this 1970Õs reform struggled from issues ranging from lower level resistance, poor implementation, and general lose of realistic expectations by the government. This echoes strongly of the same problems facing NCLB.
Now IÕm going to explore the basic structure of Costa RicaÕs education system. This information comes from articles and an interview with Olman Eduardo Piedro Carvajal. Olman grew up in Costa Rica in a town called Moravia. He graduated high school then moved to the United States to pursue a degree in the performing arts, with a focus on percussion. He has attending the University of Michigan and is now getting his masterÕs at Bowling Green. We spoke multiple times via e-mail and telephone.
There are twelve years of school similar to the United States. These twelve years are broken up into groups of three called cycles for a total of four cycles (1-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-12). Only the first three cycles are mandatory and completely financed by the state and are rather similar to what would occur here in the states. When it comes to the fourth cycle there are three different tracks that students can choose from. They can attend a college preparatory program that will focus in on the core subjects, a vocational program that will prepare them for the workforce, or thirdly they can pursue the performing arts. Beyond high school there is a total of five universities. (Costa rica - educational SystemÑoverview.)(Streng & Carvajal, Olman Eduardo Piedra, )
o University of Costa Rica
o National University
o The Technical Institute of Costa Rica
o The State University
o University of Central America (Private)
As with any education system there are going to be issues. One of the problems according to an article was that job market had not been able to keep up to improvements in education, which resulted in vast under-employment for people. This means that people were finding themselves having to work in position that they were over qualified for. They also have the same issues regarding gender where males are geared towards hard sciences and women into social sciences. One of the issues that is the reverse of the united states is the condition of urban schools. Currently in the United States urban schools are known as some of the lowest performing schools. In Costa Rica just the opposite is true and mainly due to financial and resource reasons. The rural schools just have fewer resources at their disposal.
The day to day pedagogy from what I can tell through journals is going through similar movements as the United States. Inquiry and learning through experience is a big push currently, especially in early childhood education (San Francisco, Arias, & Villers, 2005). This practice of learning through experience was practiced in the 1950s in schools around Monteverde where American Quakers came and set up schools under their tradition which they called this experiential learning Òorganic style of education (Fregeau, Leier, & Newman, 2000). This style of education is also the source of many professional development style courses in Costa Rica for teacher domestic and foreign (Cookson Jr., 2006).
Finally I translated a large portion of the 77 page biology curriculum. My hope was that I would be able to compare Costa RicaÕs curriculum to that of the United States. One of the aspects that I was hoping to look at was the vertical alignment. Unfortunately my inability to speak Spanish has haunted me throughout my research in this regard. Attempting to find anything on a foreign website is difficult, even one that is partial translated by google, is tough. Then trying to find the right documents, and the length of that document, and translations were limited by a free translations website www.freetranslations.com, which gives literal word translation. I am assuming what I found was the college preparatory track curriculum. This eliminated my ability to look at the vertical alignment, which is the progression of content matter from year to year.
IÕll first give a brief description of OhioÕs Biology curriculum to provide you with the frame of reference that I am using to compare Costa RicaÕs curriculum to. In Ohio there are three levels of curriculum. First is the standards, which science is broken down into four different science standards; Life, Earth, Chemistry, Physics. So biology is under the Life Science standard which is what I am certified to teach, teachers have to obtain a certification in each in order to teach it. The next level is a bit more specific and are called benchmarks. An example of a benchmark would be evolution. These are broad categories within Life Science. Then the third and final level are Grade level Indicators. These GLIÕs are very specific bits of information the state declares each student should be able to know. An example of a GLI would be the different mechanisms behind evolution etc. I also have spent some time teaching in Australia and their curriculum is set up a bit differently, but follows a similar pattern.
When I was looking over the content within the curriculum I was surprised at how similar it was in terms of layouts I was familiar with. I would say it was combination of the Australian style of curriculum than that of the United States. The content areas were broken down into five categories.
Objectives Content Procedures Values and attitudes Evaluation
These five categories fell under headings that were broad categories like Ohio standards but were slightly more specific and fell under more than just four categories. The Objectives portion would be the equivalent of benchmarks, and the content section the equivalent of GLIs. In Costa Rica they do a similar thing to Australia in that they actual lay out the procedures and evaluation part in the curriculum. These are flexible and can be changed by the teacher but they are laid out as guidelines. The Values and attitudes section I found to be rather interesting. This section laid out what appears to be character building ideas that could be incorporated into the lessons. An example would be: ÒSolidarity in the group work and in the exchange of information without discriminatory attitudes. Discipline upon organizing and to carry out works of laboratoryÓ(LA TRANSVERSALIDAD EN LOS PROGRAMAS DE ESTUDIO.).
I was impressed with the detail of curriculum and the level of depth that it went into with the material. If Costa Rican Students are living up to this curriculum it would place them in above many U.S. students.
Another thing that I was impressed with was that there is a lot of emphasis within the curriculum on environmental issues and personal responsibilities for the environment. They go into decent depth on environmental topics, unfortunately I was unable to determine how much the local environments are used in instruction. My guess as a teacher would be that it would be dependent on the school and the teacher.
The Curriculum was broken down into five broad categories. As a teacher these would be similar to the units that I would lay out for a year to teach in my room. So they are very broad topics. Each of which was broken down further into more specific categories. I wanted to look at how environmental issues were covered and this made up one of the five units within the curriculum. The units were:
o I UNIT. NATURE OF THE LIFE.
o II UNIT. CONTINUITY OF THE LIFE
o III. UNIT. EVOLUTION AND BIODIVERSITY
o IV. UNIT. HOMEOSTASIS OF THE INDIVIDUAL
o V. UNIT. HOMEOSTASIS OF THE NATURE
o (LA TRANSVERSALIDAD EN LOS PROGRAMAS DE ESTUDIO.)
o
I was also impressed with the fact the there doesnÕt seem to be any challenge to evolution and the working in the curriculum leads to the conclusion, this is how it happened. When I spoke with Olman, separation of church and state was not something he recalled being an issue as it is here.
In all I was surprised at how my fluency with OhioÕs curriculum was easily transferred over to Costa RicaÕs curriculum. The content of the two curriculums match up rather closely with Costa Rica paying a bit more attention to environmental issues. It is comforting to see that other countries are having similar troubles in education that we are showing us that we are not alone in our inability to resolve some of these issues including gender and socio-economic inequalities. In the end no system should be compared in regards to which one is better, but held as unique opportunities to learn from other schoolÕs and teacherÕs experiences in hopes that you may be able to better your own instruction.
References
Cookson Jr., P. W. (2006). The whole student. Teaching Pre K-8, 37(2), 14-16.
Costa rica - educational SystemÑoverview. Retrieved 5/7/2008, 2008, from http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/297/Costa-Rica-EDUCATIONAL-SYSTEM-OVERVIEW.html
Fregeau, L. A., Leier, R. D., & Newman, J. W. (2000). Progressive education and quaker schooling: Alabama emigrants' influence on education in monte verde, costa rica. High School Journal, 84(1), 14.
Joseph, P. B., Bravmann, s. L., Windschitl, M. A., Mikel, E. R., & Green, N. s. (2000). In Pinar W. F. (Ed.), Cultures of curriculum. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
LA TRANSVERSALIDAD EN LOS PROGRAMAS DE ESTUDIO. Retrieved 04/20, 2008, from http://www.mep.go.cr/CentroDeInformacion/DOC/Biologia-1822008145039.pdf
San Francisco, A. R., Arias, M., & Villers, R. (2005). Quality early childhood education in costa rica? policy, practice, outcomes and challenges. Early Years: Journal of International Research & Development, 25(2), 113-127.
Streng, B., & Carvajal, Olman Eduardo Piedra. E-mail interview
For Further Info on this Topic, Check out this WWW Site: http://brianstreng.googlepages.com/.
Next Article
Previous Article
Return to Topic Menu
DOWNLOAD the Paper Posting HTML Formating HELP SHEET!
We also have a GUIDE for depositing articles, images, data, etc in your research folders.
Article complete. Click HERE to return to the Pre-Course Presentation Outline and Paper Posting Menu. Or, you can return to the course syllabus
WEATHER & EARTH SCIENCE RESOURCES |
|
OTHER ACADEMIC COURSES, STUDENT RESEARCH, OTHER STUFF
|
|
TEACHING TOOLS & OTHER STUFF
 |
It is 4:28:28 AM on Sunday, November 8, 2009. Last Update: Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Listen to a "Voice Navigation" Intro!
(Quicktime or