Curriculum mapping

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Curriculum Mapping is a procedure for reviewing the operational curriculum as it is entered into an electronic data base at any education setting. It is based largely on the work of Heidi Hayes Jacobs in Mapping the Big Picture: Integrating Curriculum and Assessment K-12 (ASCD, 1997) and Getting Results with Curriculum Mapping (2004, ASCD). Schools are using curriculum templates that display key components of the curriculum: content, skills, assessments, and essential questions. Key to the approach is that each teacher enters what is actually taught in real-time during the school year, in contrast to having an outside or separate committee determine decisions. The entries by teachers are not left alone, however; in fact, because the work is displayed via internet-based programs, it is open to view by all personnel in a school or district. This allows educators to view both K-12 and across grade levels and subjects what is transpiring in order to be informed and to revise their work. The curriculum mapping model has seven specific phases that schools use to thoroughly examine and then revise their curriculum. There are both commercial companies and not-for-profit groups that have generated curriculum mapping software used around the world. Related to mapping, but separate from it, is the concept of a curriculum audit, described by Fenwick English in "Deciding What to Teach and Test: Developing, Auditing, and Aligning the Curriculum" (1999, Sage).