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John Ritz




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NOTETAKING GUIDES: CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT

Curriculum Design

  • Involves valuing, establishing a foundational rationale; the theoretical aspects of curriculum work.

Curriculum Development

  • The actual engineering and construction of the curriculum.

What are the components used to assist us in Curriculum Development?

  • Two general classifications of models for curriculum development -
    • Technical-Scientific
      • behavioral
      • managerial
      • systems
      • academic
    • Nontechnical-Nonscientific
      • humanistic
      • reconceptualist

The Technical-Scientific Models

  • A way of planning curricula to optimize students' learning and to allow them to increase their output.
  • A plan for structuring the learning environment and coordinating the elements of personnel, materials, and equipment.
  • A complex unity of parts organized to serve a common function.
  • These curriculum developers:
    • use a rational approach to accomplishing tasks.
    • believe that it is possible to outline systematically the procedures that will facilitate the creation of curricula.
    • Employ a means-end paradigm that suggests the more rigorous the means, the more likely the desired results.
    • indicate that a systematically designed program can be evaluated.
  • Franklin Bobbit
    • First task of curriculum development is to discover the activities which ought to make up the lives of students . . . the abilities and personal qualities necessary for proper performance.
    • The analysis should address the actual activities of humans.
  • Developing a curriculum is essentially like planning the route that a person must travel from infancy to the goals of his/her growth, culture, and special abilities.
  • W. W. Charters
    • Suggested a sequence of steps for curriculum construction:
      • Selecting objectives
      • Dividing them into ideals and activities
      • Analyzing them to the limits of working units
      • Collecting methods of achievement
  • Ralph Tyler --
    • Filter subject matter through
    • The philosophy of the school
    • The psychology of learning
  • Hilda Taba
    • Believed that teachers should participate in developing the curriculum
    • Her 7-step grass-roots model:
      • Diagnose the needs
      • Formulation of objectives
      • Selection of content
      • Organization of content
      • Selection of learning experiences
      • Organization of learning activities
      • Evaluation and means of evaluation.
  • Saylor and Alexander

Hunkin's Model

Nontechnical-Nonscientific Approach

  • Stress the subjective, personal, aesthetic, heuristic, and transactional.
  • Stress the learner through activity-oriented approaches to teaching and learning.
  • Curriculum evolves rather than being planned.
  • The persons most involved with the curriculum (learners) are involved in the planning.
  • Focuses on individual's self-perceptions and personal preferences, their own assessments of self-needs, and their attempts at self-integration.

Glatthorn: Naturalistic Model

  • Assess the alternatives
  • Stake out the territory
  • Develop a constituency
  • Build the knowledge base
  • Block in the unit
  • Plan quality learning experiences
  • Develop the course examination
  • Develop the learning scenarios

Weistein and Fantini's Humanistic Model

Summary of Curriculum Development Approaches

  • Technical Scientific
    • Major steps can be identified, managed
    • Curriculum development has high degree of objectivity, logic
    • Curriculum development is rational
    • Curriculum development involves key decision points
  • Nontechnical
    • Curriculum development is subjective, personal, aesthetic, and transactional
    • Curriculum development relies on intuitive forces
    • Curriculum development is a dynamic process fraught with much uncertainty

Ritz Model - Technical

  • Curriculum Foundation
  • Definition
  • Rationale
  • Content Source
  • Content Structure
  • Aim
  • Goals
  • Curriculum Content
  • Unit Goals
  • Rationale
  • Objectives
  • Activities
  • Resources
  • Curriculum Evaluation
  • Content Evaluation
  • Document Validation

Curriculum Components

  • Content -- Knowledge, skills, attitudes that enable learners to gain understanding and to apply that understanding to daily life -- present and anticipated.
  • Content Organization --
    • Logical -- according to rules and concepts
    • Psychological -- concrete content then the more abstract

Content Selection

  • Self-Sufficiency
  • Significance
  • Validity
  • Interest
  • Utility
  • Learnability
  • Feasibility

Learning Experiences

  • Validity
  • Feasibility
  • Optimal in terms of learners learning the content
  • Allow learners to develop thinking skills and rational powers
  • Stimulating learners to greater understanding
  • Fostering in learners an openness to new experiences and tolerance for diversity
  • Facilitate and learning and motivate learners to continue learning
  • Allow learners to address their needs
  • Allow learners to broaden their interests
  • Fosters the total development of learners in cognitive, affective, psychomotor, social, and spiritual domains

Summary - Curriculum Development

  • Focus is on selecting and arranging goals, objective, content, activities, and materials.
  • Developers usually employ a technical approach to the engineering and construction of the curriculum.
  • Philosophy, psychology, and sociology assists us to design the foundations from which the content and structure arise.
  • It is not a hard job after you establish the foundational rationale.
  • Good Luck!!!