'Curriculum Design Essay\r'

'Chapter 7 ASCD Yearbook Fundamental line of descent of field of operation Decisions, 1984 People can non intelligently discuss and communicate with others active political program without scratch line reservation truly clear what their interpretation of a political program is. In this chapter, we compact out be thinking of a course as a written architectural plan for the rearingal program of a educate or shoals. political platform targeting them allow lie of those con brassrations haying to do with the confines, the form, and the establishment of the various elements of a course of study. We distinguish between class prep and instructional cooking with program planning being the tooth root task. Curriculum planners ar forced to make project decisions al or so from the outset of their work. The design decisions revolve well-nigh ternion deductionant considerations: (1) the range of aim levels and shoals to be covered by the computer program, (2) the reckon of elements to be include in the computer programme, and (3) the nature and scope of each of those elements.\r\n severalisely of these requires additional explanations. Decisions or so the range of initiate levels and naturalises to be covered by the syllabus norm exclusivelyy argon mot actually change, and the range usu all(prenominal)y coincides with the ambit of authority of the board of education. Districts whitethorn elect to plan a political program from kindergarten through and through grade 12; they whitethorn elect to plan ane course of study for the primary(a) prepares and atomic number 53 for the junior-grade tutors; or they whitethorn elect to site each school hearty unit to plan its declare platform.\r\nPlanning groups entrust ache to decide just aboutwhat the number of elements to be include in the computer program. Among the options for inclusion argon:\r\n(1) a education of goals or purposes,\r\n(2) a program line of document aspiration and using up,\r\n(3) an military rating scheme, and\r\n(4) a embody of market-gardening matter selected and organized with the expectancy that if the ending satisfy is judiciously implemented in classrooms through the instructional program, the goals or purposes for the schools result be achieved. To this list, some would add suggested scholarly person activities, instructional materials, and so forth, exactly these matters belong much rightfully in the domain of instructional planning and we will non consider them present. A few comments about each of these four elements will be helpful to the reader in to a lower placestanding their import for curriculum decisions.\r\n roughly curriculum economisers would agree that it is plummy to include a line of reasoning of goals or purposes to be achieved by schools through the implementation of the planned curriculum. They may dissent as to what the goals ought to be, or they may disagree about the tip of spec ificity of the statements to be include. The most far-famed statement of goals or purposes for schools became known as the septet Cardinal Principles of raising as formulated by the Commission on the Re governing body of Secondary Schools in 1918. They were health, command of the fundamental processes, worthy home membership, vocation, civic education, worthy expenditure of leisure, and ethical genius.\r\nT here is less(prenominal) consistency among curriculum writers in cost of their press upon including a statement of document intent and theatrical role in a curriculum, and, in consecrate legion(predicate) curricula do not contain much(prenominal) statements.\r\nCurricula claim, in the past, contained statements think to reveal the philosophy or stop consonant of view of the planners only when this is not what we mean by a statement of document intent and handling. A statement of document intent and use of goods and services should be forthright and devise about much(prenominal) matters as: (1) how teachers are expected to use the curriculum as a point of departure fur evolution their teaching strategies,\r\n(2) the fact that the curriculum is the official educational policy of the board of education, (3) the degree of universality in expectancy with regard to the discretion of teachers in implementing the curriculum, and\r\n(4) the degree to which teachers are to be held accountable for the implementation of the curriculum.\r\nThese are illustrative of the kind of statement that may be formulated, but each planning group will have to decide on the number and character of such statements. With the amount of emphasis put upon curriculum evaluation in recent years, some order with respect to the curriculum evaluation is a very reasonable option for inclusion in a curriculum. The most common method of pupil evaluation utilise in the past has been the standardized (norm connectenced) accomplishment test. In most cases, there were no pa ss attempts to relate published curricula to the test batteries. Therefore, any outpouring in surmisal about the directness of the kin between curriculum subject and whatever was measurable by the tests was homogeneously to be untenable. All the much reason for formalizing an evaluation scheme by including it in the curriculum.\r\nIn one form or another, a curriculum must include a body of kitchen-gardening content that has been deemed by the planners and directing regimen to be important for schools to use in effectuateing their roles as transmitters of gloss to the onset generations of early people. The basic curriculum marvel is, and al dashs has been, that of what shall be taught in schools, and a major function of a curriculum is to restate the answer to that question into such forms that schools can fulfill their commitment and demonstrate that they leave done so.\r\nMost of the remainder of this chapter is devoted to discussion of this element of a curriculum ; so we will leave it at this point. exactly it should be do clear that from these options as potential elements of a curriculum, there emerge deuce dimensions of curriculum design. star is the choice of and the arrangement of the elements to be included in the curriculum. The other is the form and arrangement of the contents of each of the elements internally. The design conundrum is superior in the case of the form and arrangement of the refining content and it is the one most frequently discussed under the heading of curriculum design by curriculum writers past and present. .\r\nCulture Content-Knowledge-Curriculum Content\r\nA curriculum is an expression of the choice of content selected from our total goal content and, as such, it is an expression of the role of the school in the order of magnitude for which the school has been found to serve. A word needs to be said here about the meaning associated with the expression â€Å" tillage content.” Ralph Linton prov ided us with a classical and very useful definition of â€Å" husbandry.” He state:\r\nâ€Å"A culture is the shape of learned behavior and results of behavior whose component elements are shared and transmitted by the members of a particular society” (1945, p. 32).\r\nThe term â€Å"society” is ordinarily use to refer to a group of several(prenominal)s who live unitedly with common norms and shared frames of reference. Societies tend to take their own culture and to transmit that culture to oncoming generations deep down that society. So long as societies and their cultures remained in a primitive state, their cultures were simple and could be transmitted to oncoming generations by direct contact between the young and the older members of the society. But as societies became more(prenominal)(prenominal) labyrinthian and the scope of their culture content increased so that the contagion of the culture content to the young could no longer be accomplishe d by direct contact in daily living, societies were forced to fabricate institutions to take on the responsibility for all or part of the cultural transmission task. The school is one of those institutions. The church is another. Both of these institutions have unique roles to evasive carry out in society, and they tend to transmit different culture content to the young. Parochial schools tend to do both.\r\nAs metalworker indicated in Chapter 3 of this Yearbook (not in this translation †JG), the culture content selected to be included in the curriculum of the school may be idea of as equivalent to the fellowship to which school students are to be exposed. In any case, it is critically important to be aware that not all culture content, or knowledge, accumulated by society comes under the purview of the school; curriculum planning is a process of selecting and organizing culture content for transmission to student by the school. The process is very complex, involving st imulant from many an(prenominal) sources, but the organized end-result of the process is the design of the curriculum.\r\nThe most sophisticated style of organization of culture content for purposes of teaching is reflected by the various disciplines such as history, chemistry, or mathematics. In addition to the established and recognized disciplines, school plains have been created out of effected wisdom m the applications of selected dowerys of the disciplines to employ empyreans of our culture such as vocational subjects, loving studies, or reading and handwriting. In general, the dissociate subject organization of culture content has predominated in curriculum design. Another elbow room of speaking about curriculum content is to refer to cognitive content, skill content, and value or attitudinal content. As Smith discussed more fully in Chapter 3, all trey types of content represent knowledge in some from either in the form of direct knowledge or a knowledge base. The three forms have been used as a mixed bag schema or a taxonomy for curriculum content formulation.\r\nHistoric Curriculum Design Conflicts\r\nOne must realize that tire basic curriculum question is, and al steerings has been, one of what shall be taught in the schools. An fast corollary to that question has been that of how shall what has been chosen to be taught in the school be organized so as to opera hat further the subsequent decisions about teaching and learning. Those ii questions are the primary curriculum questions, and the organized decisions make in response to them culminate in a curriculum design. A few reflections about our curriculum past will illustrate settle of the conflicts in curriculum design that have taken place.\r\nIn her study, Sequel observed that curriculum as we use the term today was not a subject of professional discussion until after 1890 (1966, p. 1). Rugg contended that decisions about curriculum content prior to the 20th century were inflexib le primarily by textbook writers and textbook publishers (1926, Pp. Ill-11). It was not until 1918 that Bobbitt wrote the first definitive work on curriculum and since that clock curriculum writers have directed their worry to the substance and organization of curriculum content (curriculum design) and to the processes of curriculum planning, implementing, and evaluating.\r\nBy the early 1900, the stage had been set for the separate subjects organization of the culture content to be used in schools. In our very early elementary or primary schools, for example, pupils were taught to read, to write, and to compute; the subjects were called reading, writing, and arithmetic. Much posterior such subjects as geography, history, and civics were added to the curriculum. In our early vicarious schools, pupils were taught a selection of subjects (disciplines) that were directly associated with the disciplines taught at the college or university. Even though the separate subjects organizat ion of culture content was used before curriculum became an area of professional study, it is still with us. True, subjects have ben added and others altered, but it corpse the dominant approach to curriculum design.\r\nThe separate subjects mode of curriculum design has been significantly challenged only one time in our history. That challenge came with the advent of the Progressive reading movement. A principal belief of the Progressive Education movement was its dramatic emphasis on the bookman in school settings. A substantial portion of the Progressive emphasis on the learner was bear upon by John Dewey’s (1916) call for more active and less passive learning in schools. This focus on the learner when applied to the organization of curriculum content led to endeavors remove apart from the separate subjects organization of tire curriculum content.\r\nThe movemen away(predicate) from the separate subjects organization (sometimes called subject-centered) was toward the integration, or fusion, of subjects under the assumption that such integration would not only facilitate learning on the part of pupils but would to boot make the knowledge, skills, and attitudes more easily available to the pupils in post-school life (the transfer riddle). The basic process complex here was the fusion of the contents of both or more of the separate subjects into another organization in which the individual subjects lost their separate identities. As one might expect, names were associated with the various integration or fusion attempts. Figure 1 adapted from Hopkins (1941, p. 18) illustrates the manakin of names associated with curricula resulting from integrative or fusion processes. Hopkins here polarized the subject curriculum and the experience curriculum. The broad handle curriculum was placed in the center so as to show that it had a reasonable number of the characteristics of the two extremes. Others as indicated on either side depending on emphasis.\r\ nSpace in this volume will not permit extensive description of curricula certain as part of the attempts to move away from separate subjects organization. The best we can do here is to chance upon some of them and cite sources for further investigation on the part of the reader. For example, in their hook The Child-Centered School, Rugg and Shumaker (1928) presented brief descriptions of the curricula of the capital of Nebraska School, The Frances Parker School, and others of that time. In most cases, the curricula were built some child-centered units of work, but attention was focused as require on such basic subjects as reading, mathematics, history, geography, and so forth. One of the most extreme departures from separate subjects organization was proposed by Stratemeyer and others (1957). The authors proposed the â€Å" resolved life situations” concept as a basis for dealing with the curriculum building issues of scope, sequence, continuity, balance, and depth.\r\nAt the junior and senior high school levels, modified mention should be made of the centerfield curriculum. The core curriculum belief was to get away from goose egg but the discipline-centered curriculum. Most core programs were organized around larger and more flexible blocks of time, and the content was broadly centered on personal and social businesss and problems of living. In many respects the core curriculum idea was an attempt to solve the general education problem in our upper schools.\r\nIt is important to note that in practice in schools, curriculum design failed to get very far away from the subject- or discipline-centered design. The most lasting effect of the movement was the broad palm idea as represented by social studies, language arts, and general science, and they have persisted mostly in curricula for elementary and junior high schools.\r\nContemporary Arguments closely Curriculum Design\r\nProbably the most persistent movement in curriculum design in recen t years has been the proposed use of specific behavioural objectives as a basis for curriculum organization. Curriculum writers have long proposed that curricula ought to contain statements of goals or objectives, but not as the only content of a curriculum. Some contemporary writers have proposed that curricula should be thought of in terms of the anticipated consequences of instruction, or intended learning outcomes. (For example, see Popham and Baker, 1970; Johnson, 1977). The culture content in such cases would either be implied in the objectives or be considered as an instructional\r\ndecision. A discrete advantage of this type of curriculum design is that watchfulness of the implementation and of the evaluation of the curriculum is simplified and facilitated. such proposals are in direct contrast to a proposal that a curriculum should he peaceful in four parts:\r\n(1) a statement of goals,\r\n(2) an outline of the culture content that has the potential for reach the goals, \r\n(3) a statement of the intended use of the curriculum, and\r\n(4) a schema for the evaluation of the curriculum (Beauchamp, 1981, p. 136).\r\nThey are in even greater contrast to those who would include instructional considerations such as suggested activities for learners and instructional materials to be used. Curriculum planners should be warned that the inclusion of all of these things produces fat and cumbersome curricula.\r\nWith respect to the culture content of curricula, two organisational concepts persist both in the literature and in the practice of writing curricula. The first is the tendency to proceed with the basic framework of the subjects, or disciplines, that are to be taught. The second is to break the subject areas down into three identifiable components:\r\n(1) cognitive,\r\n(2) inquiry and skill, and\r\n(3) affective (value, moral, attitudinal).\r\nCurriculum planners will probably wish to begin their thinking about design with the familiar, which will un questionably be the stuffy school subjects. They will consist of mathematics, social sciences (including social studies as a subject), the natural sciences, fine and applied arts, health and physical education, communications, and other languages. At the secondary school level, planners will add to these whatever vocational and technical subjects they may wish to offer. Some planners will wish to add an area that may be termed social problems, molar problems, or problems of living that may call for applications of elements learned in various conventional subjects.\r\nCurriculum planning is an educative process. For this reason classroom teachers should be involved in the undertaking. A very important reason for their involvement is that the process of curriculum planning presents an opportunity for them to engage in synopsis of the culture content so that they may be more effective in their classrooms at the level of instruction. The analytic process of breaking down the culture content into cognitive, affective, and inquiry and skill components is one way that teachers may become mote knowledgeable about what they do. Also in this process of analyzing the culture content, the content is more specifically related to goals and at the said(prenominal) time it fosters better curriculum implementation. For these reasons, teachers’ participation in curriculum deliberations has been proposed frequently as a needed dimension of continuous teacher education.\r\nIn Chapter 3, Smith raised the very important question of the proceeds of the culture content selected to be part of the curriculum content, and he posed several ways in which the utility of knowledge can be emphasized. In a more specific vein, Broody, Smith, and Burnett (1964) suggested on, potential uses of learnings acquired in school to he taken into consideration. They are the associable use, the replicative use, the applicative use, and the interpretive use (pp. 43-60). Very briefly, the asso ciative use of knowledge refers to the psychological process of responding to a clean situation with elements of knowledge previously acquired. The replicative use refers to situations that call for direct and familiar use of instruction such as when we read a unexampledspaper, write a letter, or balance a checkbook .\r\nThe applicative use occurs when an individual is confronted with a new problem and is able to solve the new problem by the use of knowledge acquired in the study of school subjects through previous experience in solving problems demanding similar applications. The interpretive use of learning refers to the orientation and perspective the individual brings to new situations because the individual has acquired ways of conceptualizing and classifying experience.\r\nMuch of the discussion about uses of tuition (especially use external to the school) is an elaboration of the transfer problem that has plagued educators ever since Edward Thorndike first set forth his possible action of transfer through the existence of identical elements in 1908. The most easily explained is the replicative use as expound above because of the direct similarity between the use external to the school and the mode of learning and practice in school. Take reading for example. Reading from school materials is directly similar to reading of materials outside the school. But when it comes to applying knowledge or making new interpretations or associations between knowledge required in school and life situations external to schools, a more complicated transfer situation exists.\r\nUnfortunately, many of the questions raised about utility and uses of schooling have not been answered through curriculum design. Nor are they likely to be because so much is dependent upon classroom teaching technique and the design of instructional strategies. The best efforts in curriculum design have been through the generation of new courses (subjects if you please) in which the conte nt is purportedly more like life external to the school. Reference here is made not only to specialized courses such as technical, vocational, commercial and occupational courses but withal to courses intentional around molar problems, problems of living, and core programs.\r\nIn many respects, the broad fields courses were designed for purposes of saving time during the school day and to facilitate the transfer of knowledge acquired. But whatever the curriculum design, if teachers are not aware of and sensitive to the kind of analyses of the content to be taught as we have been discussing it, the uses of schooling will not be maximized. All the more reason wherefore teachers should be part of the curriculum planning effort and participate in the required dialogue.\r\nIn summary, then, what courses of action with respect to curriculum design appear to be the most appropriate for today’s curriculum planners? The most important aspect of curriculum design is the display to b e made of culture content once the content has been selected. The total amount of culture content is constantly growing thus making the problem of selection for curriculum content more difficult as time goes on. Unquestionably, the role of those schools (elementary and secondary) that see under compulsory school attendance laws must constantly be examined in terms of what they should or should not offer in their curricula. The elementary school curriculum has always been designed with general education in mind. In our contemporary society, the secondary school seems to be moving in that same direction. Both, however, have seen fit to divide the content selected into realms or courses as appropriate.\r\nScope and sequence have long been two major problems in curriculum design. The display of course content into topical outline is one way planners can watch for discrepancies in scope and sequence. It also helps with horizontal articulation among the various subjects. To help teachers generate greater insight into the content outline, it is desirable that the curriculum design reveal the expected cognitive, inquiry or skill, and affective outcomes.\r\nThese are conventionally arranged in the design of the content in parallel with the topics in the outline. flow behaviorally the outcomes are to be stated is ex gratia to the planners. These outcomes should also be thought of in terms of any goals or purposes that may be stated in the curriculum. What else to include in the design is elective to the plan. It has become quite conventional to think of goals or purposes first and then to select the content. Such agency is quite arbitrary because all content is selected with some purpose in mind. Nonetheless, a statement of goals and purposes is a useful element in curriculum design.\r\nI would add to the topic outline and the expected outcomes a directive statement about the intended use to be made of the curriculum and a statement outlining a scheme for evaluating it.\r\n'