Shared decision making is critical for the success of the studies. Shared decision making is particularly important in elementary school setting, where parents, education professionals, and curriculum designers form a kind of joint committee and work together to improve the quality of educational process. “Elementary schools are actively seeking to involve the parents and the community on a day to day basis” (Wilmore, 1995). In elementary context, parents, education professionals, and ultimately, children form a chain of decisions that are later used to raise the effectiveness of elementary education.
Unfortunately, parents are not always aware of the peculiarities of various curriculum theories. Moreover, parents’ inability to objectively evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of certain educational issues may prevent teachers and instructional professionals from implementing new effective strategies of learning. Although shared decision-making is a vital component of elementary school curriculum environment, and “lessens the decision making responsibility with others” (Cornbleth, 1990), principals should be careful when encouraging shared decision-making initiatives, due to parents’ unawareness of the major curriculum elements.
“The idea of curriculum is hardly new – but the way we understand and theorize it has altered over the years, and there remains considerable dispute as to meaning” (Smith, 2000). In elementary school, parents unconsciously keep to the idea of a curriculum being a syllabus that should be transmitted to students. Looking closer at this curriculum theory, it becomes clear that syllabus should further be supplemented by other practical elements, to form a reliable knowledge structure in elementary classroom.
To start with, syllabus implies the existence of a clear statement of student needs, and is represented by a series of lectures (or topics for discussion) – Smith (2000). This curriculum structure helps parents understand the essence of elementary school learning. Syllabus implies the structured approach to lessons that subsequently lead to examinations (for many of us, such structure of the learning course is more than familiar). Unfortunately, parents are not aware of the fact that the mere notion of syllabus does not emphasize the importance of topics and the way they should be related to each other.
Very often, the vision of curriculum as a syllabus is tied to a traditional textbook vision, where the learning course follows the structure of the textbook content and does not go beyond the traditional textbook knowledge (Smith, 2000). As a result, parents risk obtaining a subjective and highly limited vision of what curriculum is and how their small children should be taught in class. Better knowledge of curriculum theory may help parents pay more attention to the content structure of the elementary school course.
The content should be designed in a way to prioritize certain topics and to encourage small students to learn beyond the traditional textbook. Ultimately, the knowledge of curriculum theory will enhance the quality of shared decision making in elementary school setting, by providing parents with the feeling of ownership over what they have done to improve the quality of elementary school instruction. “Anyone will work harder for a program or an idea if they feel the program is their own” (Wilmore, 1995).
