The
curriculum development component may be the most important part
of the project because it has the potential to affect students
throughout New Jersey and the United States. Indeed, most of the
other components are designed to contribute to the curriculum
development effort, and the ten partner schools may be seen as
laboratories for developing new curricular materials. A core group
of four Rutgers faculty, including curriculum specialists from
the Graduate School of Education, and team of almost sixty high
school teachers will develop the new curricular materials, largely
during two four-week summer institutes in 2001 and 2002. The core
group will design approximately 15 course units, many of them
featuring interactive materials, simulations and case studies
on such essential topics as:
• Geography, Ecosystems and their effects on Culture;
• Choices resulting from the economics of scarcity in the developing world;
• Representation of political aspirations in Western and non-Western Literature;
• Citizenship and cooperation in post-conflict societies;
• Change in identity resulting from global interconnection; and
• New economic choices and responsibilities.
Some curricular units will be developed in several versions; conflict
resolution, for example, might be available in units focusing
on various parts of the world, so teachers could choose the version
that best suited their needs. All curricular materials will be
pilot-tested in participating schools and evaluated according
to parameters defined by secondary school educators and consultants
from the Rutgers University Graduate School of Education. They
will be posted on the Global Citizen 2000 Web site, where they
will be readily accessible free-of-charge to teachers throughout
the country. We plan to announce their availability to all 34,000
public and non-public secondary schools in America.
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