HIGHLIGHT
THE MOST IMPORTANT POINTS AND YOUR BIGGEST TAKEAWAYS FROM THE LESSON
This is brief introduction about curriculum. It is the
crux of the whole education process or system, without curriculum teachers
cannot conceive any educational Endeavour, so it is a literal sense, towards a
goal. Now curriculum is what happens during the course like lecture,
demonstrations, field visits, and the work with the students and so on.
What
is curriculum?
Curriculum refers to all those activities, contents in
which students engage under the auspices of each institution. This includes not
only what students learn, but how they learn it, how teachers help them learn,
using supporting materials, strategies, styles and methods of assessment, and
in what kind of facilities to get a good teaching- learning.
Curriculum is an effort to communicate the principal
features of an educational proposal in such a manner that it is open to
critical scrutiny and proficient of effective translation into practice.
There
are three facets of curriculum.
Ø
Goals
and purposes
Ø
Process
of curriculum
Ø
Evaluation
of procedures
Determinants
of curriculum
Ø
Basic
needs
Ø
Social
aspects
Ø
Cultural
factors individual talents
Ø
Ideals,
intellectual, moral etc.
Ø
Religion
Ø
Traditions
Some steps to do a curriculum
·
Diagnosis
of needs
·
Formulation
of objectives
·
Select
the content
·
Organization
the content
·
Select
of learning experience
·
Organization
of learning experience
·
Determinate
of what to evaluate.
Who
participate in the curriculum committee?
v
Parents
v
Curriculum
policy
v
Communities
v
Laws
educational researchers
v
Teacher
educators
v
Publishers
v
Projects
directors
v
Authorities
v
Students
from each different part of the community to see the reality from this place.
Models
of curriculum
To understand what is model of a curriculum here is a
little explanation. It is formal in design a curriculum developing to meet
needs, contexts or the purposes in order to address these goals, curriculum
developers, design, reconfigure, or rearrange one or more key curriculum
components.
The
Tyler model
It is one of the best know curriculum model. It
introduced in 1949. He propose four questions.
1-
What
educational purposes should the school seek to attain?
2-
What
education experience can be provided that are likely to attain these purposes?
3-
How
can these educational experience be effectively organized?
4-
How
can we determine whether these purpose are being attained?
The
Taba model
Another model in curriculum development was proposed
by Taba in 1962. She argue that there was a definite order in creating a
curriculum. She believe that teachers, who teach the curriculum. Also she
participate in a model called grass- roots in which teachers would have major
input.
The
following steps she followed were:
§
Diagnosis
of need
§
Formulation
of objectives
§
Selection
of content
§
Organization
of content
§
Selection
of learning experience
§
Organization
of learning activities
§
Evaluation
and means of evaluation
The
Saylor Model
It was in 1974. According to this model a plan for
providing sets of learning opportunities to achieve broad educational goals and
related specific objectives.
The
step are the following:
·
Goals,
objectives and domains
·
Curriculum
design
·
Curriculum
implementation
·
Evaluation.
Finally
Types
of curriculum
Null
curriculum
Teachers do not teach thus giving students the message
that these elements are not important in their educational experiences in the
society. In others words curriculum does not exists.
Hidden
curriculum
It includes the norms and values of surrounding
society. It is not explicitly taught but is part of what molds the school/
university or institution environment.
Rhetorical
curriculum
It is comprised from ideas offered by policymakers,
school official, administrators or politicians. It may also come from the
publicized works offering updates in pedagogical knowledge.
Hi Anita,
ReplyDeleteI just spent a long time commenting on this post and then Google didn't let me publish it for some reason! How annoying!
Anyways, I was saying that I appreciated your summary of what we saw in class last week and also the way you summarized the principle design models. I also liked that you added a little more about the different stakeholders in a curriculum. We didn't talk about it much, but it's an important part of the design as well.
As for the null curriculum, I understand it a little differently. I don't see it as so much as having no curriculum, more like teachers not teaching a part (or maybe a whole I suppose) of the curriculum because of a variety of reasons (too hard to implement, teachers are not trained well enough, the teachers have different beliefs and values that contradict the curriculum values, or the teachers are not convinced of what the curriculum says, etc.). For example, in our context, an example of null curriculum might be the use of pair and group work. This is a large part of our curriculum, which states that students learn a language better by working with others in a collaborative fashion and by using the language to communicate directly with others in real life activities. I observe a lot of teachers, yet few of them actually have students working in pairs or groups in class. Most of the time the students are doing the work individually, even when it would be better suited for pair or group work. When I ask the teachers why, they often say they "can't" work in pairs because students get too loud, get distracted, don't pay attention, or because the classes are too big, there is no space, it's too hard, there isn't enough time, students don't "know" enough English, etc. So teachers have many reasons why they do not implement that core, essential aspect of the curriculum (and it isn't based on research since research overwhelmingly shows that learning from others and learning by doing is the best and most effective way to learn). This would be an example of null curriculum - the concept is there, in the curriculum, but the teachers are not paying attention to it or giving it importance.
I hope that clears it up a bit. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow.