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!!!