EPB3063: CURRICULUM AND PEDAGOGY IN EDUCATION/SEPTEMBERY2012

Topic 11:

Curriculum Design

Curriculum designs refer to the arrangement of the elements of a curriculum into a substantive entity. Designs means to develop or select. The design that is actually selected is influenced by his or her curricular approach and philosophical orientation. The parts, sometimes called components or elements, are arranged in a curriculum design are: 1 2. 3. 4. Aims, goals and objectives. Subject matter Learning experiences Evaluation approaches

Components of design Objectives

Subject matter

Methods and organization

Evaluation

Curriculum design is concerned with the nature and arrangement of four basic curricular parts. It suggests to the curriculum maker four questions: 1. 2. 3. 4. What is to be done? What subject matter is to be included? What instructional strategies, resources, and activities will be employed? What methods and instruments will be used to appraise the results of the curriculum

Design Dimension Consideration Curriculum design is a statement of relationships that exists among the components or elements of a curriculum curricularists, when considering design, view it on several dimensions, scope, sequence, continuity, integration, articulation and balance

EPB3063: CURRICULUM AND PEDAGOGY IN EDUCATION/SEPTEMBERY2012

Scope. When considering the design of a curriculum educators need to address the breadth and depth of its content that is its scope. Tyler referred to scope as consisting of all the content, topics, learning experiences and organizing threads comprising the educational plan. Scope not only refers to cognitive learning but also to affective learning, and some would argue to spiritual learning. In many ways the current knowledge explosion has made dealing with scope almost overwhelming. Eisners point that we must arrange curriculum phenomena such that the individuals intellects and hears, and perhaps their souls, are addressed. Knowledge is dynamic, not static. Knowledge cannot be separated, objectified, and quantified with precision. Everything is integrated and interconnected. Life is a series of emerging themes. Articulation. This refers to interrelatedness of various aspects of the curriculum the relation can be either vertical or horizontal. The vertical articulation depicts the relationships of certain aspect in the curriculum sequence to lessons, topics or course appearing later. When viewed vertically, we usually are referring to the sequencing of content from one grade level to another. The reason for addressing vertical articulation is to assure that t students receive those learning that are prerequisite to later learning n in the curriculum. Horizontal articulation takes place when curriculum designers attempt to develop interrelationships between grade levels of English courses. Balance. When designing a curriculum, educators are also concerned that appropriate weight be given to each aspect of the design so that distortions do not occur. Keeping the curriculum in-balance requires continuous fine-tuning of the curriculum as balance in ones view of philosophy and psychology of learning so as not to fall prey to a particular clich. Subject centered designs. This is knowledge and content are well accepted as integral parts of the curriculum and widely used curriculum designs schools have a strong g history of academic rationalism; furthermore, the materials available for school use also reflect content organization. The category of subject-centered designs has the most classifications of any of the design. Subject Design. The subject design is both the oldest school design and the best known to both teachers and laypeople. In the subject matter design, the curriculum is organized according to how essential knowledge has been developed in the various subject areas. This organization of curricular content also assumes that subjects are best outlined in textbooks. The teacher assumes the active role. Lecture, recitation and large group discussion are major instructional techniques used with this design. Logic is emphasized. Discipline Design means that a discipline of a specific knowledge that thus the following essential characteristics; a community of persons, an expression of human imagination, a domain, a tradition, a mode of inquiry, a conceptual structure, a specialized language, a heritage of literature, a network of communications, a evaluative and affective stance, and an instructive community.. In the discipline design, students are encouraged to see the basic logic or structure of each discipline the key relationships, concepts and principles. Perhaps the greatest shortcoming of the design was that it caused the school to ignore the vast amount of information that could not be classified as disciplined knowledge. Such knowledge, deals with aesthetics, humanism, personal-social living, and vocational education is difficult to categorize as a discipline Process Designs. This advocates students to learn process. An example of a process design is computer programming. Programming may be the only generic subject that succeeds in teaching students about things as a process. Writing and debugging a program force students to think logically and carefully about a subject. It is likely that knowledge explosion continues and as the increase in computers and 2

EPB3063: CURRICULUM AND PEDAGOGY IN EDUCATION/SEPTEMBERY2012

computer programming continues, curricula with a process design will receive increasing attention. The process designs emphasize procedures to act that enable students to analyze their realities and creates frameworks by which the knowledge derived can be arranged. Process designs may be the most dynamic in the future. It is quite likely that process designs will meld increasingly with those designs identified as a learner centered. Learner-Centered Design. These designs tend to stress the whole child. Thus, it creates curricula that are valuable to students. These designs are more frequently at the elementary school level where teachers tend to stress the whole school. Child Centered Designs. This design believed that if we are to optimize learning then the student must be active in his or her environment. Learning should not be separated from the ongoing lives of students; it should be based on students lives, their needs and interests. The emphasis on the child displaced the emphasis on subject matter. This new emphasis on the learner also led to life-needs, life-adjustments education, persistent life situations, methods for organizing bodies of knowledge and subject matter. The child-centered design of curriculum flourished under the work of progressives such as Ellsworth Collings and William Kilpartick who crated project method which engaged children in their learning at the Lincoln School in New York City. Experience-Centered Designs. These designs closely resembled the child-centered designs in that they used the concerns of children as the basis for organizing the childrens school world. However, they differed from child-centered designs in their view that the interests and needs of children cannot be anticipated and therefore, a curriculum framework cannot be planned for all children. Dewey wanted educators, to think of the childs experience as vital and fluid, dynamic as opposed to static. Thus the curriculum would be ever changing in addressing the needs of students