Curriculum Critical Analysis (part 1)
Why are we so hungry for research?
With the explosion of personal curriculum videos on TikTok right now, I had so much more to say than I could organize in my own, so if you’re new here from TikTok, hello! Even here I had to break it into two parts, so you’ll be hearing from me twice today.
If you’re not on TikTok, to catch you up, a creator @xparmesanprincessx posted her August curriculum which is of course, exactly that — a study plan for her interests for that month. If you know me, my brain works in two ways, and my immediate thought was connection, yay! I also do this! And then with the onslaught of videos, I also thought — why? Why do we do this? (And since I use Substack for this very purpose, it’s time to get a little meta.)
In her article Research as Leisure Activity, Celine Nguyen sums up so well my own thoughts on this very act, and it seems as though so much of what this self-directed curriculum is can be found in her piece: a definition of research as well as who is doing this type of research, and honestly, it’s everyone and it’s everywhere, and we know this because of social media.
Now back to why.
In my video I focused on the reclamation of education by women as being such a powerful act of feminism, and it’s illustrative of a more matriarchal view of education.
We’re in a cultural moment that has almost zero tolerance for intellectual drift and/or intellectualism (hello/goodbye department of education) by those in political power. The world feels unstable, tech is rewiring our brains, and the institutions that used to give us a shared sense of learning, community, and collaboration—public education, universities, libraries, even the dependence on a reliable career—are losing authority (and funding, by said political power).
In her NYT opinion essay, Thinking is Becoming a Luxury Good, Mary Harrington writes, “Making healthy cognitive choices is hard. In a culture saturated with more accessible and engrossing forms of entertainment, long-form literacy may soon become the domain of elite subcultures.” She argues that all the cognitive advantages of intentional learning are becoming markers of class privilege rather than widely distributed educational outcomes, and more strikingly, Harrington extends the research implications to democracy itself. If intentional learning creates citizens capable of sustained analysis and evidence evaluation, then its erosion among the broader population while being preserved among elites creates a fundamental threat to democratic participation. The creation and sharing of these curricula continue to democratize education at a time when the educational strata are shifting substantially (and this is why the book club’s mantra is reading is resistance).
People are craving the structure of a curriculum because it promises three things we’re starved for (example of Ideas are Food!):
1. Coherence in a fractured information economy. On social media, we’re drowning in content with no hierarchy. It’s so helpful to focus your interests, and a curriculum suggest that your interests matter, and here’s the order in which it matters. That’s a relief in a world where the algorithm keeps throwing us disjointed fragments. In addition, we’re seeing the result of traditional educational institutions failing to prepare people for the world we’re actually living in, because so many of us don’t want to become the automatons that make authoritarianism easy. Schools taught so many of us to memorize but not to think critically so now there's this massive cultural hunger for the analytical tools we were never given — unless you had the money for an elite education (when I see the difference in the education my son receives at his public school vs what I’m able to provide at my very expensive school — it’s heartbreaking).
2. We love learning through shared intellectual journeys. With access to the Internet, people can access graduate-level ideas without the gatekeeping, but we also need storytelling and connection to make the information relevant. After years of life sound-bite hacks and surface-level self-help, people are starving for deeper understanding. We don't want to optimize our morning routine — I think we want to understand why hustle culture exists in the first place, and why we keep buying into it.
3. We need a sense of agency. Culturally, we’re watching institutions fail us. A self-chosen curriculum says: I decide what I need to know. I build my own canon. For women in particular, it’s an act of resistance against a historical pattern of being told what (and whether) we’re allowed to study.
From a girls’ school educator’s perspective, this is especially interesting because the curriculum trend borrows from feminist pedagogy—valuing interdisciplinary connections, placing the learner’s curiosity at the center, and recognizing that what we study is a reflection of whose voices we value. These are the very values I built my Writing Center around: if you’re interested, you can explore my research in my conference presentation Intersectional Feminist Methodologies as Social Justice in the Writing Center. (And if you’re interested in starting your own Writing Center, or employing Writing Center concepts in your classroom, I have a guide.)
What’s so exciting about this self-directed study is how beneficial it is
Intentional reading and learning show measurable advantages across multiple cognitive domains, supported by substantial research evidence.
Comprehension and Retention Benefits: Studies demonstrate that students who engage in intentional reading strategies show 15-25% better comprehension scores compared to passive reading. Research by Pressley and Afflerbach found that strategic readers who set specific purposes before reading retained 40% more information after one week compared to those who read without clear intentions.
Metacognitive Advantages: Intentional learners develop stronger metacognitive awareness, which correlates with academic success. Research shows that students trained in intentional learning strategies improved their self-regulation skills by an average of 30%, leading to better study habits and performance across subjects. So even if you’re not reading for academic purposes, the benefits for your learning are substantial because they’re also designed to perpetuate further learning.
Neural Efficiency: Neuroimaging studies reveal that purposeful learning activates more efficient neural pathways. When learners approach material with specific goals, brain scans show increased activity in the prefrontal cortex and reduced cognitive load, suggesting more efficient information processing. Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, whose work emphasizes the deep connection between emotion, cognition, and learning, asserts that that emotional engagement is not separate from learning, and by sharing and engaging collaboratively with these curriculum guides, people are creating this emotional engagement.
Transfer and Application: Research by Bransford and colleagues found that students who learned with clear intentions were 60% more likely to successfully transfer knowledge to new contexts compared to those who learned through rote memorization. This transfer effect is particularly strong when learners understand the "why" behind what they're studying.
Long-term Memory Formation: Studies on elaborative processing show that intentional learners, who actively connect new information to existing knowledge, demonstrate 35-50% better long-term retention. The act of setting learning goals appears to prime the brain for deeper encoding.
Time Efficiency: Perhaps most practically, research indicates that intentional learners complete tasks 20-30% faster while achieving equal or better outcomes, as they avoid irrelevant information and focus cognitive resources more effectively.
Collaboration as Leadership: Appley and Winder (1977) developed a theory of collaboration that evokes themes of caring, commitment, and consciousness (or reflexivity) that tend to be characteristics of feminist inquiry. They conceptualize collaboration as a relational value system that provides an alternative to competition and hierarchy and identify three characteristics, the most pertinent of which states that collaboration is “characterized by each individual’s consciousness of her or his motives toward the other; by caring or concern for the other; and by commitment to work with the other over time provided that this commitment is a matter of choice” (p. 281). This model reframes caretaking as intentional leadership.
These findings consistently point to intention as a key factor in transforming learning from a passive to an active, efficient process. So even if you’re just learning for fun, the benefits are incredible! Please keep sharing your curricula — we all benefit.
So maybe that’s why.
Resources!
Immordino-Yang, M. H., Kundrak, C., Knecht, D., & Matthews, J. (2024). Civic reasoning depends on transcendent thinking: Implications of adolescent brain development for SEL. Social and Emotional Learning: Research, Practice, and Policy, 4(1), 1-10
“Learning and Transfer." National Research Council. 2000. How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9853.
Pressley, Michael & Gaskins, Irene. (2006). Metacognitively competent reading comprehension is constructively responsive reading: How can such reading be developed in students?. Metacognition and Learning. 1. 99-113. 10.1007/s11409-006-7263-7.
Rea SD, Wang L, Muenks K, Yan VX. Students Can (Mostly) Recognize Effective Learning, So Why Do They Not Do It? J Intell. 2022 Dec 16;10(4):127. doi: 10.3390/jintelligence10040127. PMID: 36547514; PMCID: PMC9781761.