Do Student Perceptions of Curriculum Matter? Evidence From Secondary Social Studies Students

Abstract

Title: Do Student Perceptions of Curriculum Matter? Evidence From Secondary Social Studies StudentsA large body of literature documents the negative effects of student disengagement from K-12 schooling and chronic absenteeism. Practitioners and policy makers often theorize that shifts in the curriculum and instruction might improve student engagement. In this study, I examine whether students' perception of the curriculum they experience in social studies classes is related to their achievement and engagement. To test this hypothesis, I develop a novel instrument, the Critical Cultural Perception Measure (CCPM), to measure the extent to which a curriculum aligns with the goals of critical bicultural pedagogy (Darder, 1991(Darder, , 2012. I find that students' perception of curricular alignment with these goals differ by students' social studies achievement levels and curriculum engagement levels, and by their socioeconomic level. Comparisons among racial and gender pronoun groups result in statistical significance at the item level for several CCPM items of special interest. I further contextualize these pronounced demographic differences in students' perception of the curriculum through textual analysis of their open-responses. Evidence generated within this study indicates that v curriculum perception measures may be valuable instruments to assess and respond to student disengagement.