Towards a Curriculum of the Heart: Thinking, Growing, Feeling, and Connecting in Contemporary Education
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In this paper, I explore the tensions embedded within my experiences as both a learner and a teacher as they relate to curriculum theory, current conceptions of curriculum, and contemporary education. I argue that students growing up today suffer from an unbalanced and unhealthy education system, characterized by a curriculum that is becoming increasingly standardized and impersonal. To help regain balance and to provide students with a more holistic education, I propose a new conception of curriculum: a curriculum of the heart. Similar to the four chambers in the human heart, four main components are essential to a balanced curriculum, education, and life: living, thriving, feeling, and connecting. Within this conception of curriculum, each component serves an important purpose, contributing to students’ overall holistic development and learning. Just as the heart is at the center of the pulmonary system, the curriculum is at the heart of the education system. If there is too much pressure or focus on one component, the system cannot function properly. If this imbalance continues, students will not receive a well-rounded education and will suffer accordingly. Schools have the potential to provide positive and fulfilling lived experiences for students, but must remain conscious that they too, unintentionally, have the potential to accomplish quite the opposite. It is the task of curriculum theorists, teachers, and administrators to initiate and sustain a dialogue about how to provide the best experiences for students and to implement changes that will help them grow in happy, healthy, and holistic ways.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.035 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.011 | 0.012 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.012 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".