CHILDRENS INTERPRETATIONS OF CURRICULUM EVENTS

The purpose of the project reported in this paper was to explore the n ature of children's everyday interpretations of curriculum events in c lassrooms and the potential impact of these interpretations on their e volving understandings of subject matter. The particular focus of this study was on how students in a fourth-grade class interpret curriculu m events, especially those involving mathematics. To establish a frame work for examining the experienced curriculum, we drew on four lines o f inquiry: (a) subject matter learning; (b) everyday representations o f mathematical concepts; (c) knowledge production processes in classro oms; and (d) children's event structured knowledge. The domains of res earch surveyed above underscored for us (a) the importance of interpre tation in the acquisition of knowledge, (b) the role of everyday under standings in this interpretative process, (c) the significance of chil dren's immediate experiences with curriculum in a classroom, and (d) t he potential influence of broad event frames in children's interpretat ion of curriculum Within these perspectives, then, the observations an d analysis were focused on children's interpretations of curriculum ev ents, with special attention to their interpretations of events involv ing mathematics. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.