Course: Curriculum Development and Instructions (838)
Semester: Spring, 2022
Assignment No. 01
Q.1 Discuss the meaning and significance of curriculum development.
Curriculum development is defined as planned, a purposeful, progressive, and systematic process to create positive improvements in the educational system. Every time there are changes or developments happening around the world, the school curricula are affected. There is a need to update them to address the society’s needs. People taught their children knowledge and skills to survive by catching fish or hunting animals for food during ancient times. They had no formal education during that time, but their children learned and acquired the knowledge and skills for survival. During that time, they already had a curriculum that other educators call as, the saber-tooth curriculum. This type of curriculum refers to a kind of curriculum that existed during ancient times in which the purpose of teaching was for survival.
However, when the effects of discoveries and inventions became inevitable, ancient people’s way of life had changed for the better. As a result, education became formal, and curriculum development evolved as systematic, planned, purposeful, and progressive.
Curriculum development has a broad scope because it is not only about the school, the learners, and the teachers. It is also about the development of society in general.
In today’s knowledge economy, curriculum development plays a vital role in improving a country’s economy. It also provides answers or solutions to the world’s pressing conditions and problems, such as threats to the environment, issues on politics, socio-economic problems, and other issues related to poverty, climate change, and sustainable development.
Q.2 explained the need for sociological foundation of curriculum.
Curriculum bring about social change and social factors have an influence on curriculum. A country, like Pakistan, may teach Islamic literature as a part of school curriculum, but a secular country like India can’t teach any religious literature.
Therefore, curricular planners have to be concerned about social factors and the way they can be used to plan and develop responsibility to social problems. We as curriculum planners, need to be concerned about characteristic of present society as well as expected future social features.
Social Foundations of Education draws upon several disciplines and fields to examine education, namely history, philosophy, comparative/ international education, cultural studies, sociology, and political science. Social Foundations inquiry helps to sharpen students’ capacities to understand, analyze, and explain educational issues, policies, and practices in order to improve education.
Thus, the purpose of Social Foundations study is to draw upon these humanities and social science disciplines to develop students’ interpretive, normative, and critical perspectives on education, both inside and outside of schools (Council for Social Foundations of Education, 1996, 2004). The development of such perspectives helps educators to “exercise sensitive judgments amidst competing cultural and education values and beliefs” (CSFE, 1996).
Rather than reducing education to a formula for best practice, courses in the Social Foundations of Education challenge students to think deeply about the relationships between education (formal and informal) and society(ies) at large. Social Foundations encourages educators to use “critical judgment to question educational assumptions and arrangements and to identify contradictions and inconsistencies among social and educational values, policies, and practices”
Q.3 Describe how culture influence curriculum?
Culture is the content of education. Thus education has to draw its content from culture. Education transmits culture through formal and informal curriculum. Formal curriculum comprises of the various subjects taught such as languages, mathematics, physical sciences, biological sciences, social sciences, technical subjects and Religious studies.For culture to be transmitted, it must have content. The values that the school transmits can be seen as the culture of the society. It is culture that forms the content of education.
In promoting culture therefore, the school curriculum through the various subjects promotes and enhances the learning of culture. The subjects taught transmit certain values:
Society must provide its members with the tools of communication language become crucial for education. Kenyan schools teach English and Kiswahili as the major languages of communication
Society must teach its members skills and knowledge related to material culture. Disciplines like agricultural science, natural sciences, vocational education are taught in schools.
Aesthetic values are taught through arts, music among others.
Spiritual or moral education is taught through religion and by precept.
Members of the society learn about their environment by studying geography and natural sciences.
Individual learn how to live in society through study of history, sociology, anthropology, government procedures and laws, political science and others.
Q.4 Write short note on:
a. Content objectives
Culture is basically the customs, beliefs and the way of living shared by a particular society/community/country. It refers to the values and norms shared by a specific group of people.
Culture influences how we see the world, how we see the community that we live in, and how we communicate with each other. Being a part of a culture influences our learning, remembering, talking and behaving. Therefore culture determines to a great extent the learning and teaching styles also.
How is culture important for the child?
· · Culture teaches values, beliefs and traditions.
· · It influences the social interaction with parents, siblings, peers and teachers.
· · It influences their language and communication.
Culture-based education is an approach in which teaching and learning happen based on the values, norms, beliefs and practices that are the foundation of any culture. Harvard Professor Jerome Bruner notes “Culture shapes mind, it provides us with the tool kit by which we construct not only our world but our very construction of ourselves and our powers”.
Q.5 critically examine the consensual procedure for content selection.
The micro curriculum employs the seven criteria for the selection of subject matter below. For the macro curriculum, the subjects needed for the curricular program or course comprise the content.
SELF-SUFFICIENCY
To help learners attain maximum self-sufficiency most economically is the central guiding principle of subject matter or content selection (Scheffler, 1970) as cited by Bilbao et al. (2008). Although the economy of learning implies less teaching effort and less use of educational resources, students gain more results. They can cope up with the learning outcomes effectively.
This criterion means that students should be given a chance to experiment, observe, and do field study. This system allows them to learn independently.
With this principle in mind, I suggest that there should be a one-day independent learning activity each week for a high school curriculum or preparatory year. However, this should be carefully planned by the teacher. When the students return, they should present outputs from the activity.
