I. Curriculum
The term curriculum is used in a number of different ways by parents, educators, and businesses. Some see curriculum as the "academic stuff that is done to children in school." Others view it as teacher directions and student activities that can be purchased from any number of curriculum publishers. Teachers themselves use the term in different ways depending on their views and needs.
Webster's concisely defines curriculum as, "A course of study offered by a school" (Webster's II New Riverside Dictionary, 1984 p176). Curriculum is also often referred to as learning content, activities, and structures as experienced by students.
Ronald C. Doll, in his book, Curriculum Improvement: Decision Making and Process, goes further, stating that: The curriculum of a school is the formal and informal content and process by which learners gain knowledge and understanding, develop skills, and alter attitudes, appreciations, and values under he auspices of that school (Doll, 1996 p15).
It is this last definition that is perhaps the most useful to educators who wish to affect and improve student learning. Partially this is because it lacks the vagueness that many definitions have, and partially it is because curriculum, as Doll has defined it, can have outcomes that may be measured, allowing for the curriculum to be acted upon and improved.
II. Other definitions:
1. Tyler (1949). In 1949 Tyler identified four questions as the parameters for curriculum study: What educational purposes should the school seek to accomplish? How can learning attaining these objectives? How can earning experiences be organized for effective instruction? How can the effectiveness of learning experiences be evaluated?
2. Schubert (1986). "A quick survey of a dozen curriculum books would be likely to reveal a dozen different images or characterizations of curriculum. . . To analyze and discuss all of the images that have been advanced would be a massive undertaking, since more than eleven hundred curriculum books have been written in the present century. . . What can be done more economically is to categorize major conceptions of curriculum:" (a) curriculum as content or subject matter, (b) curriculum as a program of planned activities, (c) curriculum as intended learning outcomes, (d) curriculum as cultural reproduction, (e) curriculum as discrete tasks and concepts, (f) curriculum as an agenda for social reconstruction, and (g) curriculum as "currere" (interpretation of lived experience)."
3. Ornstein and Hunkins (1988). "A curriculum approach reflects a holistic position, encompassing the foundations of curriculum, domains of curriculum, and the theoretical and practical principles of curriculum. Five curriculum approaches are (a) behavioral-rational approach, (b) systems-managerial approach, (c) intellectual-academic approach, (d) humanistic-aesthetic approach, and (e) reconceptual approach."
4. Cornbleth (1990) "Curriculum construction is an ongoing social activity that is shaped by various contextual influences within and beyond the classroom and accomplished interactively, primarily be teachers and students. The curriculum is not a tangible product but the actual, day-to-day interactions of students, teachers, knowledge and milieu. The curriculum encompasses what others have called curriculum practice or the curriculum -in-use. Curriculum as product or object, the conventional view, is seen as one aspect of the context that shapes curriculum practice. . . .. . . Curriculum as contexualized social process encompasses both subject matter and social organization and their interrelations. Social organization, including teacher and student roles (and their attendant rights and obligations) and patterns of interaction, provides a setting for academic activities that can extend or constrain students' learning opportunities. Recitation activities, for example, reflect the super and subordinate roles to teachers and students respectively, and the limited communication patterns found in many classrooms. Learning opportunities are constrained by the recitation organization insofar as students are discouraged from pursuing ideas, raising questions, or offering personal observations. Social organization and academic activities also communicate normative messages including the meaning of knowledge, authority, responsibility, work and success.
The curriculum knowledge or subject matter of interest here is primarily but not solely academic (e.g., mathematics, history). It also includes the personal, social, and world knowledge that is communicated or otherwise made available to students and what might be characterized as knowledge about knowledge - Its nature, sources, limits and change. While knowledge typically is treated as an object or commodity to be acquired, that is not the intention here. Curriculum knowledge as the knowledge made available to students refers to opportunities to construct, reconstruct, or critique knowledge. Knowledge selection and organization refer both to the information that is communicated directly and the opportunities that are provided for students to create and critique knowledge. The selection and organization of curriculum knowledge can be purposeful or tacit as seems to be the case when teachers and students follow a textbook. Knowledge treatment refers to what others have distinguished as pedagogy or instruction; it also includes the playing out of assumptions about the nature of knowledge. Knowledge distribution refers to the kinds of knowledge opportunities made available to different groups of students."
Instruction is the creation and implementation of purposefully developed plans for the teaching of curriculum content. It is what teachers often concisely refer to as "planning" and "teaching." The relationship between curriculum and instruction is so intimate that "curriculumandinstruction" is frequently spoken as if it were one word (perhaps we should refer to it as "curstruction" or "instriculum"). With curriculum being the content of what is taught along with an overall process of how that content is to be taught, and instruction being the more detailed plans and the way those plans are implemented in order to teach the curriculum content, it becomes easy to understand that the two must be compatible in order to maximize student learning.
The Bases for Curriculum Planning
When planning for curriculum improvement, two categories of bases should be understood, those that are institutional in nature and those that affect people directly. The institutional bases for curriculum planning include planning domains, the context or characteristics of the school situation, the impact of current trends and issues, and the use of strategic planning. Those bases of curriculum planning that affect people directly include student and teacher needs, local curriculum problems to be addressed, competencies of the planners, and pressures from inside and outside the school (Doll, 1996 p362-378). All of these bases affect the curriculum planning process in various ways and to differing degrees. They can also vary with each situation over time.
IV. Criteria to Plan, Develop, and Implement Curricula
These principles form the criteria of a quality curriculum development process that includes the stages of planning, development, and implementation.
Curriculum decisions should be made:
For valid educational reasons on the basis of the best available evidence in a context of broadly conceived aims of education within a context of previously made decisions and of needs for additional decision making so that balance and other important curriculum considerations may be safeguarded by achieving a resolution of forces originating in the
- nature and development of learners,
- the nature of learning processes,
- demands of the society at large, requirements of the local community,
- and the nature and structure of subject matter to be learned.
Social forces that can influence curriculum planning come from far and wide. The ideas and values of various groups of people may include their social goals, ideas about cultural uniformity and diversity, social pressures, ideas about social change, their plans for the future, and their concepts of culture (
At the foundation to every curriculum, including the planning, design, and implementation stages, is the educational philosophy of those directly involved in the process. Often this can influence to a great extent the direction a school or school district takes with its curriculum and instruction. At the school district this writer has been employed with, the philosophy has allowed for a diversity of instructional styles as a way of meeting a diversity of children's learning styles. This has led in the elementary school to several educational options available for students and parents: single-grade, single-grade clusters, multiage, looping, and home-school hybrid educational environments. Because some of these educational structures have different instructional designs than others, there are available different curricular materials. Other nearby schools offer only a single choice and a single curriculum. The basis for these decisions can be found in the above mentioned factors as well as in the educational philosophies of the decision makers.
1. http://www.multiage-education.com/russportfolio/curriculumtopics/curoverview.html#anchor1331245
2. http://www.coe.ufl.edu/Courses/TODD/curriculum.html
3.http://www.infed.org/biblio/b-curric.htm
1 comment:
hi
im new student of the department of curriculum department
andd i was search about curriculm manement
i was attracted by your title but when i read it i cant what exactly
curriculm mangement
could you help me?
thank you any way
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