I shared this with one of my classes this morning.  We spent some time reflecting on Kony2012.  We had a wonderful and emotionally engaging conversation about it.

But in order to set up the reflection, we used some curriculum theory to frame our reflection.  There are many ways to frame a reflection, but since I’m an educator, I use the educational tools that I’m familiar with to frame the conversation.

Curriculum theory takes a broad perspective and there are many facets to it.  We just used 4 pieces of it to frame our conversation.  We took a look at the Explicit Curriculum, Implicit Curriculum, Hidden Curriculum, and Null Curriculum.

Explicit C – what they actually say.

Implicit C – what they say that is not expressed

Hidden C – what they don’t say but is still expressed; ergo hidden

Null C – what they don’t say, but I think unintentionally communicate.

You can go wikipedia the theory to get a much deeper treatment of these ideas.  You can even criticize the way that expressed it here and the class – that’ll be fine.  I just took 2 minutes to set up the framework, but whether these definitions were 100% consistent with Curriculum Theory, it still framed our reflection.

You could use this about any movie, school, person, and/or brand.  Take what they say and what they don’t say, what they don’t mean to say, and what they’re just not saying in what they say – and it’ll provide a great framework for any kind of reflection you might need to do.

What do you think?  How do you frame your reflection?

Please check out these other posts about education.