A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

In August, 1988, Rockview High School opened its doors to over 1,450 tenth through twelfth graders, 18% of whom are minorities. Rockview High School was created in order to ease the crowding of students in the district's two other high schools. Taking advantage of the opportunity to establish a high school with a different orientation to teaching, the district superintendent facilitated the creation of a reform-oriented school. His initial step in this direction was to hire a principal from outside the district that he knew to be a forward thinking, innovative person. He gave her as much freedom as possible within the boundaries of a fairly traditional district.

In the winter of 1988, six months before the school opened, seven teachers were hired to work with the principal on initial planning. This group laid the groundwork for the organizational framework and curriculum of the school. Among other innovative decisions, the group decided to not have department chairs, to implement a flexible schedule, and to draw up a series of broad, reform-oriented belief statements for the school.

In 1991-92, the school published a statement of progress for the reform underway at Rockview, including aspects of its school-centered decision making and accountability processes, the changed roles with student as worker and teacher as facilitator, and its integrated core curriculum.

For the purposes of this case study, the research team focused on the work of one integrated core curriculum, the 10th grade American Studies Integrated Core, which combines US History, Language Arts, Science, and Fine Arts. Just as the selection of this core was being made, the teachers were deciding to focus on the "Perspectives Unit," an eight week unit placed chronologically during the Civil War and Reconstruction years. This unit became the basis of intensive study within this school-wide study.

For the Perspectives unit, the core teachers were interested in structuring a culminating activity that would meet their desires for reform in terms of integrated curriculum, employment of students' thinking skills, and student arrival at an understanding of multiple perspectives. In particular, the teachers were interested in addressing three problems they felt were present in students' earlier work: lack of use of supporting evidence, lack of student preparation, and lack of integration of subject areas in a sophisticated way.

In another unit, the increased clarity of the activity, the engagement of the students through playing the role of a Civil War character, the practice session, the specific rubric, and the greater coaching of students during the event all seemed to contribute to the increased success of the activity as compared to previous endeavors. Although the teachers were generally pleased with this activity, the experience showed that these teachers and students of Rockview High School were still transitioning from traditional modes to more reformed modes. A look into six areas of reform--goals, content, teacher role, student role, student work, and assessment--will explain.

In terms of goals, the "essential learnings" for the Perspectives Unit were neither clear nor explicitly conveyed to students. The content has the beginnings of "reform" curriculum in that efforts toward interdisciplinary connections and "less is more" are being made. However, there was little interdisciplinary understanding on the part of the students and a lack of interdisciplinary instruction on the part of the teachers.

In order to understand the causes behind Rockview's current status of reform, the researchers compared the different modes and conditions of learning between teacher and student. They found that while the teachers had modes and conditions which met what research says is necessary for group learning, integration of curriculum, and responsibility for learning, the students did not. Although the teachers seemed to have a driving vision of a transformed classroom, they did not seem to have a clear idea of what they needed to do to achieve it, or, rather, to enable students to achieve it. Thus, students showed little ability to work well in groups, generally remained unclear about the connections between subject areas, and did not take on personal responsibility for their learning.

The Rockview community clearly has gone far down the path of reform and they are unlikely to turn back. The challenge now seems to be to achieve the major shift from emphasis on how to teach better to how to guide students in their learning. In particular, the emphasis needs to be on defining what students are to learn and how students best move to a strong emphasis on depth of learning and acquisition of thinking skills with strong content.

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[Thinking Across Disciplines at Oakgrove Middle School]

[Cross-Site Analysis of the Case Studies of Curriculum Reform]