Chapter 2: Students as Curriculum

Who knows what is worthwhile for the educational benefit of a student? The phrase students as curriculum refers to a tradition of perspectives on curriculum and teaching that have persisted in education for over a century (Schultz, 2011), fostering an ongoing debate. What knowledge and content should be devised, developed, and designed for and taught to students to enable them to become more fully functioning members of society? Should curriculum development be exclusively the prerogative of credentialed adults, educational experts, and policymakers, or should it involve the public, parents, and students themselves? If curriculum as subject matter is designed by experts, is it received by all students in the same way? Or do students mediate what is presented by accepting, rejecting, and refashioning it according to the lenses they have developed through their unique experiential, cultural, and other contextual background? If so, even if all students are presented with the same content and engaged in the same learning activities, is the learning they derive the same or different? Thus, the interpretation of content and learning experiences may be a basis for concluding that the student, at least in part, is the curriculum.