The concept of Curicullum
In form education, a curriculum plural is the planned interaction of pupils with
instructional content, materials, resources, and processes for evaluating the
attainment of educational objectives. This process includes the use of literacies and datagogies that are interwoven through
the use of digital media and/or texts that address the complexities of
learning.
Other definitions combine various elements to
describe curriculum as follows:
All the learning which is planned and guided
by the school, whether it is carried on in groups or individually, inside or
outside the school. (John Kerr)
Outlines the skills, performances, attitudes,
and values pupils are expected to learn from schooling. It includes statements
of desired pupil outcomes, descriptions of materials, and the planned sequence
that will be used to help pupils attain the outcomes.
The total learning experience provided by a
school. It includes the content of courses (the syllabus), the methods employed
(strategies), and other aspects, like norms and values, which relate to the way
the school is organized.
The aggregate of courses of study given in a
learning environment. The courses are arranged in a sequence to make learning a
subject easier. In schools, a curriculum spans several grades.
Curriculum can refer to the entire program
provided by a classroom, school, district, state, or country. A classroom is
assigned sections of the curriculum as defined by the school. For example, a
fourth grade class teaches the part of the school curriculum that has been
designed as developmentally appropriate for students who are approximately nine
years of age.
Contents; Etymology, Beliefs ,Historical
conception, Primary and
secondary education, and Higher education
Etymology.
As an idea, curriculum
came from the Latin word
which means a race or the course of a race (which in turn derives
from the verb "currere" meaning to run/to proceed). As early
as the seventeenth century, the University of Glasgow referred to its
"course" of study as a curriculum, and by the nineteenth
century European universities routinely referred to their curriculum to
describe both the complete course of study (as for a degree in Surgery) and
particular courses and their content. By the beginning of the twentieth
century, the related term curriculum vitae ("course of one's
life") became a common expression to refer to a brief account of the
course of one's life.
A curriculum is prescriptive, and is based on
a more general syllabus which
merely specifies what topics must be understood and to what level to achieve a
particular grade or standard. Curriculum has numerous definitions, which can be
slightly confusing. In its broadest sense a curriculum may refer to all courses
offered at a school. This is particularly true of schools at the university
level, where the diversity of a curriculum might be an attractive point to a
potential student.
A curriculum may also refer to a defined and
prescribed course of studies, which students must fulfill in order to pass a
certain level of education. For example, an elementary school might discuss how
its curriculum, or its entire sum of lessons and teachings, is designed to
improve national testing scores or help students learn the basics. An
individual teacher might also refer to his or her curriculum, meaning all the
subjects that will be taught during a school year.
On the other hand, a high school might refer
to a curriculum as the courses required in order to receive one’s diploma. They
might also refer to curriculum in exactly the same way as the elementary
school, and use curriculum to mean both individual courses needed to pass, and
the overall offering of courses, which help prepare a student for life after
high school.
Beliefs.The
fundamental beliefs and principles underlying a curriculum are very important.
Traditionally high school prepared students for college. Those students who did
not intend to go to college often dropped out of high school. During the middle
of the 20th century it was believed that high school was valuable for all
students so the high schools began tracking students. Some took more rigorous
classes to prepare for college while others took a general track. Later high
schools added courses to prepare for vocations that did not require college.
Now high school is desired for all students;
Should
curriculum be designed as pieces or as a whole? One concern in the 1990s and
after is the fragmented curriculum. This has resulted from adding courses and
content without aligning them to what is already being taught. The curriculum
today has many pieces, but seems not to have wholeness about it. For example,
even in the primary grades, there may be classes in phonetics, reading,
language arts, and writing. This is very fragmented as reading and writing are
part of the whole system of communicating with symbols.
What is a good balance between academic
achievement and developmentally appropriate curriculum is an ongoing question.
Academic achievement sets levels of standards to meet in certain grade levels
which is advocated by those who believe all students should attain the same
skills; however, those who are aware of developmental stages and the problems
of late development believe that levels of standards should be more flexible
and compared over multiage levels.
Should it be a spiral or mastery curriculum is
a major design question. The American curriculum has been a spiral curriculum
in which many ideas are introduced at each grade and then repeated at following
grades to add depth of understanding. The Outcome Based curriculum advocated by
Spade used a different approach, that of mastery. For this, the students study
a topic in depth until it is mastered. The question of “what is mastery?” has
been discussed by many curriculum committees as they implement this type of
curriculum.
Traditional Points of View
of Curriculum.
In the early years of the 20th century, the
traditional concepts held of the "curriculum is that it is a body of
subjects or subject matter prepared by the teachers for the students to
learn." It was synonymous to the "course of study" and "syllabus".
Robert M. Hutchins views curriculum as
"permanent studies" where the rules of grammar, rhetoric and logic
and mathematics for basic education are emphasized. Basic education should
emphasize 3 Rs and college education should be grounded on liberal education.
On the other hand, Arthur Bestor as an essentialist,
believes that the mission of the school should be intellectual training, hence
curriculum should focus on the fundamental intellectual disciplines of grammar,
literature and writing. It should also include mathematics, science, history
and foreign language.
Thus curriculum can be viewed as a field of
study. It is made up of its foundations (philosophical, historical,
psychological, and social foundations); domains of knowledge as well as its
research theories and principles. Curriculum is taken as scholarly and
theoretical. It is concerned with broad historical, philosophical and social
issues and academics.
Progressive Points of View
of Curriculum.
On the other hand, to a progressivist, a
listing of school subjects, syllabi, course of study, and list of courses of
specific discipline do not make a curriculum. These can only be called
curriculum if the written materials are actualized by the learner. Broadly
speaking, curriculum is defined as the total learning experiences of the
individual. This definition is anchored on John Dewey's
definition of experience and education. He believed that reflective thinking is
a means that unifies curricular elements. Thought is not derived from action
but tested by application.
Caswell and Campbell viewed curriculum as
"all experiences children have under the guidance of teachers." This
definition is shared by Smith, Stanley and shores when they defined
"curriculum as a sequence of potential experiences set up in schools for
the purpose of disciplining children and youth in group ways of thinking and
acting."
Marsh and Willis on the other hand view
curriculum as all the "experiences in the classroom which are planned and
enacted by teacher, and also learned by the students.
Historical
conception. In The
Curriculum the first textbook published on the subject, in 1918, John Franklin Bobbitt said that curriculum, as an
idea, has
its roots in the Latin word for race-course,
explaining the curriculum as the course of deeds and experiences through which children become the adults they should be, for
success in adult society.
Furthermore, the curriculum encompasses the entire scope of formative deed and
experience occurring in and out of school, and not only experiences occurring
in school;
experiences that are unplanned and undirected, and experiences intentionally
directed for the purposeful formation of adult members of society.
To Bobbitt, the curriculum is a social engineering arena. Per his cultural
presumptions and social definitions, his curricular formulation has two notable
features these are; scientific
experts would best be qualified to and justified in designing curricula based
upon their expert knowledge of
what qualities are desirable in adult members of society, and which experiences
would generate said qualities; and curriculum defined as the deeds-experiences
the student ought to have to
become the adult he or she ought to
become.
Hence, he defined the curriculum as an ideal,
rather than as the concrete reality of the
deeds and experiences that form people to who and what they are.
Contemporary
views of curriculum reject these features of Bobbitt's postulates,
but retain the basis of curriculum as the course of experience(s) that forms
human beings into persons. Personal formation via curricula is studied at
the personal level and at the group level, i.e. cultures and
societies (e.g. professional formation, academic discipline via historical experience).
The formation of a group is reciprocal, with the formation of its individual
participants.
Although it formally appeared in Bobbitt's definition,
curriculum as a course of formative experience also pervades John Dewey's work
(who disagreed with Bobbitt on important matters). Although Bobbitt's and
Dewey's idealistic understanding of "curriculum" is different from
current, restricted uses of the word, curriculum writers and researchers
generally share it as common, substantive understanding of curriculum.
Primary
and secondary education. A curriculum may be partly or entirely
determined by an external, authoritative body (e.g., the National Curriculum
for England in English
schools).
In the U.S., each state, with
the individual school districts, establishes the curricula
taught. Each state, however, builds its curriculum with great participation of
national[7]
academic subject groups selected by the United States Department of Education, e.g.
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) nctm.org for mathematical
instruction. In Australia each
state's Education Department establishes curricula with plans for a National
Curriculum in 2011. UNESCO's International Bureau of Education has the primary
mission of studying curricula and their implementation worldwide.
Curriculum means
two things, these are; the range of courses from which students choose what subject
matters to study, and second, a specific learning program. In the latter case,
the curriculum collectively describes the teaching,
learning, and assessment materials available for a given course of study.
Currently, a spiral curriculum is
promoted as allowing students to revisit a subject matter's content at the
different levels of development of the subject matter being studied. The constructivist approach proposes that
children learn best via pro-active engagement with the educational environment,
i.e. learning thru discovery.
Crucial to the curriculum is the definition of
the course objectives that usually are expressed as learning outcomes'
and normally include the program's assessment
strategy. These outcomes and assessments are grouped as units (or modules), and, therefore,
the curriculum comprises a collection of such units, each, in turn, comprising
a specialized, specific part of the curriculum. So, a typical curriculum
includes communications, numeracy, information technology, and social skills
units, with specific, specialized teaching of each.
A core curriculum is a
curriculum, or course of study, which is deemed central and usually made
mandatory for all students of a school or school system. However,
this is not always the case. For example, a school might mandate a music
appreciation class, but students may opt out if they take a performing musical
class, such as orchestra, band, chorus, etc. Core curricula are often
instituted, at the primary and secondary levels, by school boards,
Departments of Education, or other administrative agencies charged with
overseeing education.
In the United States, the Common Core State Standards Initiative
promulgates a core curriculum for states to adopt and optionally expand upon.
This coordination is intended to make it possible to use more of the same
textbooks across states, and to move toward a more uniform minimum level of
educational attainment.
Higher
education. Core curriculum has typically been highly
emphasized in Soviet and Russian universities and technical institutes. In this
photo, a student has come to the university's main class schedule board on the
first day of classes to find what classes he and all students in his
specialization (sub-major) – will attend this semester.
Many educational institutions are currently
trying to balance two opposing forces. On the one hand, some believe students
should have a common knowledge foundation, often in the form of a core
curriculum; on the other hand, others want students to be able to pursue their
own educational interests, often through early specialty in a major, however,
other times through the free choice of courses. This tension has received a large
amount of coverage due to Harvard University's reorganization of its
core requirements.
An essential feature of curriculum design,
seen in every college catalog and at every other level of schooling, is the
identification of prerequisites for each course. These prerequisites can be
satisfied by taking particular courses, and in some cases by examination, or by
other means, such as work experience. In general, more advanced courses in any
subject require some foundation in basic courses, but some coursework requires
study in other departments, as in the sequence of math classes required for a
physics major, or the language requirements for students preparing in literature,
music, or scientific research. A more detailed curriculum design must deal with
prerequisites within a course for each topic taken up. This in turn leads to
the problems of course organization and scheduling once the dependencies
between topics are known.
Core
curriculum. At the undergraduate level,
individual college and university
administrations and faculties sometimes mandate core curricula, especially in
the liberal
arts. But because of increasing specialization and depth in the
student's major field of study, a typical core curriculum in higher education
mandates a far smaller proportion of a student's course work than a high school or elementary school core
curriculum prescribes.
Amongst the best known and most expansive core
curricula programs at leading American colleges are that of Columbia College at Columbia University, as well as the University of Chicago's. Both can take up to two
years to complete without advanced standing, and
are designed to foster critical skills in a broad range of academic
disciplines, including: the social sciences, humanities, physical and
biological sciences, mathematics, writing and foreign languages. Further, as
core curricula began to be diminished over the course of the twentieth century
at many American schools, several smaller institutions became famous for
embracing a core curriculum that covers nearly the student’s entire
undergraduate education, often utilizing classic texts of the western canon to
teach all subjects including science.
Distribution requirements . Some
colleges opt for the middle ground of the continuum between specified and
unspecified curricula by using a system of distribution requirements. In such a
system, students are required to take courses in particular fields of learning, but
are free to choose specific courses within those fields.
Open
curriculum. Other institutions have largely done away with
core requirements in their entirety. Brown University offers
the "New Curriculum," implemented after a student-led reform movement
in 1969, which allows students to take courses without concern for any
requirements except those in their chosen concentrations (majors), plus two
writing courses. In this vein it is certainly possible for students to graduate
without taking college-level science of mathematics or math courses, or to take
only science or math courses. Amherst College
requires that students take one of a list of first-year seminars, but has no
required classes or distribution requirements. Others include Evergreen State College, Hamilton College, and Smith College.
REFERENCE
Bilbao,
Javier, B. (2008). Curriculum Development.
Quezon City: Lorimar Publishing, Inc.
Jackson,
Philip W. (1992). Conceptions of Curriculum
and Curriculum Specialists. In Handbook
Of Research on Curriculum: A Project of
the American Educational Research .New York: Macmillan Publisher Company.
Pinar,
W. F., William M., Patrick S., and Peter M.(1995). Understanding Curriculum: An
Introduction to the Study of Historical
and Contemporary Curriculum Discourses. New York: Peter Lang.
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