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Unit VI- Core III

Unit VI

 

Curriculum - Its meaning, nature and scope concept of curriculum - Definition Scope - Sequence - Types - Balance in the curriculum - curriculum development - need - Determinants of curriculum - cultural and social changes - Value system

Etymological meaning of curriculum

                        The latin word for the word “Curriculum” means “race course”. In education it means “work field of student”. It simply means a “a course of study”.

 Definition

“Curriculum is a tool in the hands of the artist (the teacher) to mould his materials (the pupils) according to his ideals (aims and objectives) in his studio (the school)” –

Cunningham.

                        “Curriculum is plan for learning”        - Hilda Taba, 1962.

                        “Curriculum is concerned not with what students will do in the learning situation, but what they will learn as a consequence of what they do”        - Johnson.

Nature of curriculum

The word ' Curriculum ' has been used in many ways. It usually stands for :

• a school's written courses of study and other curriculum materials;
• a subject content taught to the students;
• the courses offered in a school; and
• the totality of planned learning experiences offered to students in a school.

Curriculum is that which makes a difference between maturity and immaturity, between growth and stasis, between literacy and illiteracy, between sophistication (intellectual, moral, social and emotional) and naiveté. It is the accumulated heritage of man’s knowledge filtered through the prisms of contemporary demands and pressures.  It is that wisdom considered relevant to any age in any given location. It is that we choose from our vast amount of heritage of wisdom to make a difference in the life of man.

Scope of curriculum

                        Scope refers to the ‘What’ of the curriculum. As time changes, new knowledge and information emerge. Curriculum planners must decide what knowledge is currently worth and important before they begin constructing a curriculum. Scope indicates what educators expect the student to learn.

                        Curriculum is, very comprehensive in its scope. It touches all aspects of the life of the pupils

¨      The needs and interests of pupils

¨      Environment which should be educationally congenial to them

¨      Ways and means in which their interests can be handled and warmed up

¨      The procedures and approaches which cause effective learning among them

¨      The social efficiency of the individuals and how they fit in with the community around

¨      It is intimately related with the individual as a member of the society

¨      It embodies the educational philosophy, the values which it aims to achieve, the purposes it wants to realize and the specific goals that it wants to achieve.

            The emphasis is on the child. In the total education of the child, all the subjects like history, geography, science and language are nothing but tools of acquiring human knowledge. They are the means and therefore the children must not be made to fit in such frame of study.

Curriculum (or curricula) is defined broadly to include four basic components that form the scope of curriculum:

1. Goals: The benchmarks or expectations for teaching and learning often made explicit in the form of a scope and sequence of skills to be addressed;

2. Methods: The specific instructional methods for the teacher, often described in a teacher’s edition;

3. Materials: The media and tools that are used for teaching and learning;

4. Assessment: The reasons for and methods of measuring student progress.

The term curriculum is often used to describe only the goals, objectives, or plans, something distinct from the “means” of methods, materials, and assessment. Yet since each of these components are essential for effective learning-and since each includes hidden barriers that undermine student efforts to become master learners-curriculum design should consider each of them as a piece.

Characteristics of curriculum

1.      Curriculum is a tool in the hands of the teacher which is used to realize the objectives.

2.      It is pivotal, around it whole human knowledge concentrates.

3.      It includes those activities which are used by the school to attain the purpose of education.

4.      It is more than teaching and learning and includes practice, activities and for acquiring knowledge.

5.      It has been described as the environment in motion (Physical, social and psychological).

6.      The curriculum is made up of everything that surrounds the learner in all his working terms.

7.      Curriculum includes total learning experience that a child receives at school.

8.      All the learning inside or outside the school which is planned and guided by the teacher.

9.      It includes content method of teaching and purpose of education.

10.   A programme of activities designed to realize the objectives is known as curriculum.

Some issues in curriculum

Some of the issues in curriculum are scope, sequence and integration or balance. These all relate to how to select and organize the essence of a curriculum, be it content (things children understand and information children acquire), learning experiences (out of which children make their own meanings and that stimulate their own unique growth), skills (specific competencies that children acquire), or values (moral and ethical stances and perspectives on our world).

• Scope relates to what should be taught or learned.
• Sequence relates to when different parts of the curriculum should be learned with respect to the other parts of the curriculum.
• Integration relates to how different strands of a piece of curriculum relate to other things occurring in students’ lives, either in other school subjects or outside school in their homes and community.
• Continuity relates to how previous learning and future learning relate in terms of cumulative effects of learning.

Scope

Scope refers to the breadth of the curriculum- the content, learning experiences and activities to be included in the curriculum. The scope can be arrived at by answering the following questions:

What do young people need in order to succeed in the society?

What are the needs of the locality, society, nation and world?

What are the essentials of the discipline?

Sequence

Sequence relates to when different parts of the curriculum should be learned with respect to the other parts of the curriculum.

There are many ways in sequencing:

Simple to complex                  chronological

Easy to difficult                      developmental

Prerequisite learning                close at hand to far away

Whole to parts                         easy to difficult

Parts to whole                         known to unknown

Balance or integration

The curriculum should integrate:

1. Cognitive, affective and psychomotor objectives and abilities

2. Knowledge and experience

3. Objectives and content

4. Child’s activity and needs with the society.

            It should be related to the social environment of the students. Here the equal/balance importance should be given to the needs of the child and needs of the community.

Curriculum development

Curriculum development is a comprehensive, ongoing, cyclical process to determine the needs of a group of learners; to develop aims or objectives for a program to address those needs; to determine an appropriate syllabus, course structure, teaching methods, and materials.

Curriculum development is a specialised task which requires systematic thinking about the objectives to be attained, learning experiences to be provided, evaluation of changes brought out by the curricular activities and so on. Curriculum development is needed to arrive at a thoughtfully planned and dynamically conceived curriculum. The process of curriculum development is very essential for the following reasons:

Ø  Assessment of educational needs

Ø  Formulation of objectives

Ø  Selection and organisation of content

Ø  Selection and organisation of learning experiences

Ø  Evaluation of content and learning experiences

Determinants of curriculum

                        Curriculum construction is a complex task. Many things are found to influence the composition and texture of the curriculum, of which the following are important:

               i.     Individual, social and national needs and aspirations

             ii.     Culture

           iii.     Social change

           iv.     Value system and the

             v.     Philosophical, Sociological and Psychological  foundations.

Curriculum construction based on human needs

Individual Needs

            A curriculum should promote the growth and development in the student. The curriculum should have adequate provisions for

¨      Physical development

¨      Intellectual development

¨      Social development

¨      Moral development

¨      Aesthetic development

¨      Spiritual development

Social Needs

            A curriculum should satisfy the social needs. The curriculum should

¨      Provide basic skills for living in a civilized society

¨      Preserve, pass on and renew the culture of the society’

¨      Prepare the student for a satisfying member of a family or home

¨      Prepare the student for undertaking a suitable occupation in the society

¨      Prepare the student for a worthy use of one’s leisure time

¨      Prepare the student for active democratic participation and produce active and good citizens.

Academic Needs

            A curriculum should satisfy the academic needs of the students. The curriculum should promote

¨      Cognitive development (Understanding)

¨      Affective development (Feelings)

¨      Psychomotor development (Skills)

Vocational Needs

            A curriculum should promote vocational development of the student. The curriculum should promote:

¨      Vocational knowledge

¨      Vocational awareness

¨      Vocational skills/competence

¨      Vocational maturity

National Needs

            A curriculum should fulfill the national goals of education and contribute to the development of the country. For this education should be linked to

¨      Increase productivity

¨      Achieve social and national integration

¨      Strengthen democracy

¨      Accelerate the process of modernization

¨      Cultivate social, moral and spiritual values and tolerant study of all the religions.

Culture and the curriculum

¨      Culture denotes the system of customs, norms, values, beliefs, techniques, institutions and set of meanings which characterize social living.

¨      The needs of pupils are the elements within the culture, the forms and fields of knowledge, the instructional methods, the learning resources are all drawn from the culture. Curriculum should be designed as a ‘cultural map’.

¨      The cultural map approach to curriculum consists of

o    Identifying the key areas

o   Analyzing the modes of expression

o   Communication which characterize these areas

o   Devising appropriate techniques and strategies whereby pupils may become initiators, bearers and indeed transformers of the culture which they inherit.

¨      The idea behind a cultural map curriculum is that schools should play a larger role in unifying groups of communities and in encouraging both individual and group social creativity.

¨      The map is not still –life picture from the past, but a set of features and signposts concerning the present and the future. 

The Value System

                        It is a fact that values play a crucial part in the formulation and implementation of educational ideologies. So it is clear that value judgements are made of educational efforts and curricula. 

            Generally, two kinds of values enter into curriculum making. They are:

·         The ultimate values

·         The instrumental values

1.      The ultimate values determine the ends (aims or purposes) of education.

The ultimate values can be classified into two types:

 a.       Global values which are frequently determined completely outside the school.

E.g:

               i.     The aim of one’s life is to accumulate wealth.

             ii.     Simple living and noble thoughts only determine the quality of one’s life.

           iii.     Spiritual emancipation is the ultimate goal of life.

           iv.     Human efforts should be to make the worldly bliss within one’s reach.

b.      Particular Values are determined outside the school but incorporated into learning situations by teachers.

            These ultimate goals of life greatly affect the educational system and its curricula since the aim of education is after all to prepare the youth for a successful life.

2.      The instrumental values are related to the means of education.

·         The instrumental values concern the ways of organizing and presenting materials for learning.

·         Eg: Teachers make instrumental value choices, when they believe that group work is preferable to individual study in science, teacher-centered methods are more suitable than student-centered methods in the teaching of mathematics.

·         It is always difficult to accommodate all kinds of values in the curriculum. But the necessity to act corporately in a democracy underline the need for some commonly accepted values which could structure both ends and means in the curriculum process such as

·         Rational thinking and reflectiveness

·         Acceptance of diversity

·         Honesty and integrity

·         Freedom of choice and expression and

·         Concern for the well-being of others.

·      We should recognize the right of the public as a whole to participate in discussions about the content of schooling, which in fact concerns the future of the whole society.