Curriculum Development The Curriculum Design Process Architect Aristides N. de Paz Mapua Institute of Technology, Manila, Philippines
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Author/s:
Abstract:
The concept of curriculum design brings into focus the way in which curricula are created, especially the actual arrangement of the parts of the curriculum plan. The term curriculum design, sometimes called curriculum organization, refers to the arrangement of the elements of a curriculum into a substantive entity. Which design someone actually selects is influenced by his or her curriculum approach and philosophical orientation. The parts, sometimes called components or elements, that are arranged in a curriculum design are (1) aims, goals, and objectives; (2) subject matter; (3) learning experiences; and (4) evaluation approaches. The nature of these components and the manner in which they are organized in the curriculum plan com prise what we mean by curriculum design. Although most curriculum plans have within their design these four essential elements, often they are not given equal weight. Frequently, content or subject matter receives the primary emphasis. But, sometimes, schools do create designs that stress primarily objectives and evaluation approaches. Other designs give primary emphasis to learning experiences or activities.
Keywords:
curriculum, Learner centered, Subject centered, Problem Centered, Core learning
INTRODUCTION Curriculum components can be organized in numerous ways. However, most curriculum designs are modifications and/or integrations of three basic design types: (1) subject-centered designs, (2) learnercentered designs, and (3) problem-centered designs. Each category comprises several examples. Subjectcentered designs include subject designs, discipline designs, broad field designs, correlation designs and process designs. Learner-centered designs are those identified as -hild-centered designs, experience designs, ronantic/ radical designs, and humanistic deigns. Problem-centered designs consider life situations, core designs, and social problem/reconstructionist designs.
1.1
Subject Centered Designs Subject-centered designs are by far the most popular and widely used curriculum designs. This is because knowledge and content are well accepted as integral parts of the curriculum. Schools have a strong history of academic rationalism; furthermore, the materials available for school use also reflect content organization. The category of subject-centered designs has the most classifications of any of the designs. This richness may result from our greater understanding of knowledge or from our very strong tradition knowledge or content has in our culture. Concepts central to a culture are more highly elaborated than peripheral ones. In our culture, content is central to schooling; we thus have this concepts to depict our diverse organizations. (Eisner, 1993)
1.1.1
Subject Design. The subject design is both the the oldest school design and the best known—to both teachers and laypeople. It is so well known because teachers and laypersons are usually educated and/or trained in schools employing it. It is also popular because it corresponds to textbook treatment and how
teachers are trained as subject specialists. This design is based on a belief that what makes humans unique and distinctive is their intellect; the searching for and the attainment of knowledge are the natural fulfilment of that intellect. In the subject matter design, the curriculum is organized according to how essential knowledge has been developed in the various areas. With the explosion of knowledge, a resulting specializations in the various fields of knowledge, subject divisions have increased in number and sophistication. For instance, has been divided into cultural history, cc( history, and geographic history. English divided into literature, writing, speech, reading, linguistics, and grammar as major subject divisions. This organization of curricular curricular conten assumes that subjects are best outlined in textbooks. The teacher usually assumes the role. Lecture, recitation, and large group discussion are major instructional techniques utilized with this design. Usually, discussion proceeds from simple to complex ideas. Logic is emphasized. (Tyler, 1949)
1.1.2
Discipline Design. The discipline design that appeared in the post-World War 11 era evolved from the separatesubject design. This new design grew rapidly in popularity during the 1950s and reached its zenith during the mid-1960s. Its popularity was tarnished somewhat during the student protests of the 1970s, but it is still present in much curriculum organization in secondary schools and colleges. Like the separate-subject design, the discipline design's basis is the inherent organization of content. However, whereas the subject design does not make clear the foundational basis upon which it is organized or established, the discipline design's orientation does specify its focus on the academic disciplines.
1.1.3
Bread Fields Design The bread fields design, another variation of the subject-centered design, appeared as an effort to correct what many educators considered the fragmentation and compartmentalization caused by the subject design. It was an attempt to integrate that appeared to fit together 1ogically. Thus the separate social sciences of geography, economics, political science, anthropology, sociology, and history were fused into social studies. Linguistics, grammar, literature, composition, and spelling were collapsed into language arts. Biology, chemistry, and physics were integrated into general science. The idea was both bold and simple. Educators essentially had only to meld two related subjects, already well known the schools, into a single broad or fused study. However, it was a change from the traditional subject pattern of the perennialists and essentialists. While the design first appeared shortly after the first decade of this century at the college level, it gained its most popularity in the elementary and secondary levels of schooling. This continues to the present day. Its use today in the college level really is only seen in the introductory courses but it is widespread with K-12 curriculum.
1.1.4
Correlation Design. Correlation is a design employed by those who do not wish to go as far as creating a broad fields design, but who realize that there are times when separate subjects require some linkage in order to reduce fragmentation of curricular content. Existing as a midpoint between separate subjects and total integration of content, it attempts to identity ways in which subjects can be related to one another while still maintaining their identity as subjects. Perhaps the two most frequently correlated subjects are English literature and history at the secondary level and language arts and social studies at the elementary level While studying a period in history, students in their English class read novels that relate to the relate to the same time period. Science and mathematics are also courses frequently correlated. Students in a
chemistry course may have a unit in mathematics that deals with the mathematics required, to conduct an exeriment. However, the content areas remain distinct, and the teachers of these courses retain their subject matter specialties.
1.1.5
Process Designs. As indicated when discussing discipline-centered designs, attention is often given to the procedures and processes by which individuals advance knowledge. Thus, students is biology would learn the methods for dealing with biological knowledge; history students would the ways of historiography, and students studying anthropology would learn the various ethnographic procedures appropriate for the study of culture and society. (Hunkins, 1980) While advocates of the disciplines design urge students to learn process, other educators are suggesting curricular designs that stress the learning of general procedures, general processes not specific to any particular discipline, but applicable to all. The numerous curricula for teaching critical thinking exemplify this procedural design. Educators have always suggested that students be taught to think in schools. Curricular designs need to address process, or how learners learn, and the application of process to subject matter. Barry Beyer has written extensively on strategies of thinking. His curriculum would be organized around three key thinking strategies: problem solving, decision making, and conceptualizing. Accompanying these thinking strategies are micro-thinking skills such as analysis and synthesis of data necessary for engaging the major thinking strategies.
1.2
Learner-Centered Design All curricularists are concerned with creating curricula that are valuable to students. In response to those educational planners who value subject matter, educators early in this century asserted that students are the center or focus of the program. Supporters of this posture, largely progressives, advocated what have come to be called learner-centered designs. These designs are found more frequently at the elementary school level where teachers tend to stress the whole child. At the secondary level, the emphasis is more on subject-centered designs largely because of the influence of textbooks and the colleges and universities at which the discipline is a major organizer for the curriculum. (Tanner, 1990)
1.2.1
Child-centered Designs. Advocates of the child-centered or student-centered design believed that if we are to optimize learning then the student must be active in his or her environment. Learning should not be separated from the ongoing lives of students, as is often the case with the subject-centered designs. Indeed, it should be based on students lives, their needs and interests. Noted educator Hilda Taba noted that the rational for this design was that "people learn only what they experience. Only learning that is related to active purposes and is rooted in experience translates itself into behaviour changes. The shifting of emphasis from the of subject matter to the needs and interests of children was part of Rousseau's educational philosophy demonstrated in his book on the education of Emile first published in 1762. Rousseau believed that children should be taught in context with their natural environment, drawing on their needs and interests in creating an educational program. However, Rousseau did not believe that just by letting children run free. They required guidance from the teacher. But the manner the teacher stimulated the student's curiosity had to be appropriate for the particular developmental level of the child. In a very real sense, Rousseau was the first to advocate a developmental approach to teaching and learning. ((Tyler, 1949)
1.2.2
Experience-centered Designs. Experience-centered curriculum designs closely resembled the child-centered designs in that they used the concerns of children as the basis for organizing the children's school world. However, they differed from child-centered designs in their view that the interests and needs of children cannot be anticipated and, therefore, a curriculum framework cannot be planned for all children. This notion-that a curriculum could not be preplanned, that everything had to be done "on the spot" by each teacher reacting to each child-made this design almost impossible to implement. It also put people in a posture of ignoring the vast amount of infornation they had about children's growth and development-cognitively, affectively, emotionally, and socially. (Hunkins, 1980) Those favoring the child-centered or experience-centered curriculum placed heavy emphasis on the learners interests. Pupils' interests have received much attention throughout this century. However, cautions about relying solely on children's interests have been made frequently. Harold Rugg and Anti Shumaker wrote in 1928, "We do not dare leave longer to chance---to spontaneous, overt symptoms of interest on the part of occasional pupils—the solution of this important and difficult problem of construction of a curriculum for maximum growth
1.2.3
Romantic (Radical) Designs. The view of the child as central has been stressed in more recent times by reformers who advocate radical school modification. Many of these individuals essentially adhere to Rousseau's posture on the value of attending to the nature of individuals and Pestalozzi's thinking that individuals can find their true selves by looking to their own nature. While their thinking has a particular progressive ring to it, they also are drawing on the views of more recent philosophers: Jurgen Habermans, a German philosopher and Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator. The radical school reformers are eloquent proponents of leamer-centered designs. Some, such as John Holt and Ivan Illich, even go so far as to say that parents should not even send their children to schools since the current practices of schools actually arc detrimental to the development of children. (Hunkins, 1980) An underlying assumption of the radicals appears to be that the current society is corrupt, repressive, and unable to cure itself. Schools have used their curricula to control and to indoctrinate individuals into a particular cultural view rather than to educate and emancipate them. Paulo Freire, in his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, was influential in shaping the thinking of some present-day radicals. Freire noted that the purpose of education is to enlighten the masses about their present state of being denied their rights, to design situations in which they recognize their state of being and feel dissatisfied with it, and finally to gain those skills and competencies requisite for correcting the identified inequities.
1.2.3
Humanistic Designs. This design gained prominence in the 1960s and 1970s, partly in response to the excessive emphasis oil the disciplines during the 1950s and the early 1960s. It was this perceived imbalance regarding attention to subject matter that caused humanistic education to appear in the 1920s and 1930s as part of progressive philosophy and the whole-child movement in psychology. After World War 11, humanistic designs connected to existentialism in educational philosophy. Much of the underpinning for humanistic designs has been associated with third-force psychology or humanistic psychology. Humanistic psychology developed in the 1950s in opposition to the then dominant psychological school of behaviorism. (Tanner, 1990) This new psychological orientation emphasized that human action was much more than a response to a stimulus, that meaning was more important than methods, that the focus of attention should be on the subjective rather than objective nature of human existence, and that there is a relationship between learning and feeling.
It was in this context that the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development published its 1962 yearbook entitled, Perceiving, Behaving, Becoming." It represented a new focus for education, all approach to curricular design and instructional delivery that would allow individuals to become fully functioning persons. Arthur Combs, the chairperson of the yearbook, noted some key questions. "What kind of person would it be who has truly achieved the ultimate in selfrealization? How do they come about? What factors went into making this kind of person?" fie suggested that the curriculum be designed to stress human potential and to enable the student to be involved in the process of becoming.76 The emphasis was on empowering individuals—what today is called postpositivistic thinking, whereby a person is involved with his or her reality, participating in it, and is aware of the notion of becoming. (Combs, 1962)
1.3
Problem-centered Designs The third major type of curriculum design, which is problem-centered, focuses on the problems of living—on the perceived realities of institutional and group life—both for the individual and for society in general. Problem-centered curriculum designs are organized to reinforce cultural traditions and also to address those community and societal needs that are currently unmet. They address individuals' problems as well. Even though these designs place the individual in a social setting, they are unlike learner-centered designs in a major way. Problem-centered designs are planned before the arrival of students. However, problem-centered curricularists realize that, because their concern is with genuine life problems, they will sometimes have to adjust or cater to the concerns and situations of learners. How a curriculum is organized with this design depends in large part on the nature of the problem areas to be studied. The content selected must be relevant to the problem under consideration. For this reason, the content often cuts across subject boundaries. It must also be based, to a major extent, on the needs, concerns, and abilities of the students. This dual emphasis on both content and the development of learners distinguishes problem-centered designs from the other major types of curriculum designs. Because problem-centered designs draw on social problems and the needs, interests, and abilities of learners, several variations exist. Some focus oil persistent life situations, others center on contemporary social problems, others address areas of living, and some are even concerned with the reconstruction of society. What seems to distinguish these various types is the relal gree of emphasis they place on social ni opposed to individual needs. (Hunkins, 1980)
1.3.1
Life-situations Design. Interest in thus curriculum design emphasizing life and life situations call be traced to the nineteenth century and to Herbert Spencer's writings on curriculum for complete living. His curriculum emphasized activities that (1) sustain life, (2) enhance life, (3) aid in rearing children (4) maintain the individual's social and political relations, and (5) enhance leisure and feelings. This design, which draws legitimation from society and its social challenges, was part of the recommendation Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education, sponsored by NEA in 1918. The commission outlined in its report a curriculum that would deal with the life situations of health, command of the fundamentals, worthy home membership, vocation, citizenship, leisure, and ethical character. Fundamental to the design are three assumptions. The first is that persistent life situations are crucial to a society's successful functioning and that it makes educational sense to organise a curriculum around them. The second assumption is that students will see direct relevance to what they are studying if the content is organized around aspects of community life. Finally, by having students study social or life situations, they will not only study ways to improve society, but will be directly involved is such improvement. (Tyler, 1949) This design was popularized in the 1930s and 1940s, with several states using the design as a framework for creating curriculum guides. For example, the Virginia State Curriculum developed
nine areas of life situations for attention in the schools. 1.Protecting life and health 2.Getting a living 3.Making a home 4.Expressing religious impulses 5.Satisfying the desire for beauty 6.Securing education 7.Cooperating in social and civic action 8.Engaging in recreation 9.Improving material conditions 1.3.2
Social Problems and Reconstructionist Designs. Whereas some educators, have urged that children's interests should guide the selection of curriculum content and experiences, other educators still feel that rite curriculum should address contemporary social problems and even social action projects aimed at reconstructing society. Many such educators consider themselves to be in the social orientation camp, or what some have called social reconstructionism. These individuals, interested in the relation of the curriculum to the social, political, and economic development of society, believe that through the curriculum educators will effect social change and ultimately create a more just society. Interestingly, even though many of the schools' current critics are of this opinion, aspects of reconstructionism actually first appeared in the 1920s and 1930s. (Tanner, 1990) Perhaps this concern for reconstructionism, or social reconstruction, was a response to the Great Depression. To many reconstructionists, the problems lay with the schools, as did the solutions. Some critics during this period classified the reconstructionists as "leftists" or communists who were plotting the overthrow of the government by their urgings for actions in the classroom.
1.4 Core Design. Core design is, actually part of the curriculum list for Problem-centered design. This particular curriculum design, sometimes called "social functions" core, is carefully planned. It centers on general education and is based on problems arising out of common human activities. There are several variations of core designs. Subject matter core designs, for example, would be classified as subject-centered designs. Areas-of-living core designs are rooted in the progressive education tradition. However, making areas of living the core of the curriculum leaves no doubt about the focus of the curriculum. This type of core is problem-centered rather than learner-centered. It is carefully planned before the students arrive. but with the notion that adjustment can be made if necessary. This design is usually taught in a block-time format, whereby two or more normal periods for teaching the core component are scheduled together. One teacher assumes responsibility for this block of time and also manages a counselling function. Although content is part of this design, the common needs, problems, and concerns of learners comprise the central focus. The focus on problems proceeds in different ways in each core class, but certain characteristics for problem solving are recommended by the advocates of core, as illustrated below. These recommendations make sense today, as they did when core was popularized by Faunce and Bossing. 1. The problem is selected by either the teacher or students. 2. A group consensus is made to determine important problems and interest of the class.
3. Problems are selected oil the basis of developed criteria for selection. 4. The problem is clearly stated and defined. 5. Areas of study are decided, including dividing the class by individual and group interests. 6. Needed information is listed and discussed. 7. Resources for obtaining information are listed and discussed. 8. Information is obtained and organized. 9. Information is analyzed and interpreted. 10.
Tentative conclusions are stated and tested.
11.
A report is presented to the class on an individual or group basis.
12.
Conclusions are evaluated.
13.
New avenues of exploration toward further problem solving are examined."
The advantages of the core design are that it unifies content, presents subject matter relevant to students, and encourages active processing of information. Furthermore, because it presents subject matter in a relevant form, it fosters intrinsic motivation in students. Albertsy and Alberty state that this design makes it possible for students to attack directly problems they consider crucial in the contemporary society. It encourages students to view the community as a laboratory for leaming. Because the design encourages cooperative learning, its advocates claim it fosters democratic practices in the classroom. But, the design has weaknesses, too. Perhaps the major one, which may also be its strength, is that it departs too significantly from the traditional curriculum. People attack it as ignoring the fundamentals. It also requires materials that are hard to find. Conventional textbooks, in fact, do not support this design. Nor is it commonly used because manv educators have not accepted the idea that general education is worthwhile. Furthermore it requires an exceptional teacher, well versed in subject matter, problem solving skills, and general knowledge. (Hunkins, 1980)
CONCLUSION It is obvious that the curriculum design stated have educators in themselves their own motives for advocating their own point of view and philosophy for curriculum design. However, we may suppose that the curriculum designs mentioned all focus on the learning of the students and that we as educators must adjust accordingly to the times. With the advent of so many advances in technology it is not surprising that a new technology based curriculum design shall be developed forthwith. In any case curricular adjustments should be made by educators and must answer the call of the times, more so that school based education is being threatened by so many avenues of learning. In today's environment, it would be easy to advocate one type of curriculum design but leaning towards and eclectic approach is highly advised. A mixture of these designs could assist curriculum developers in answering the requirements of the present as well as the future while facing the problems of competition from other educational institutions. Further, Curriculum design is more than just making sure that the parts of a curriculum are neatly organized in a document. Design is a complex phenomenon requiring of educators careful attention so that the curriculum conceived will have merit and will succeed in getting students to learn those concepts, altitudes, and skills considered worthwhile and essential. The issue of design is likely to continue to draw the attention of curriculum specialists and
generalists. Designing a curriculum, after all, is really dealing with a vision, which most educators have but don't always apply. The concepts related to design help them put flesh on their visions and to increase their probability of becoming reality. Various design options exist from which curricularists can select-subject centered, learner centered, and problem centered. Each of these has a history and philosophy associated with it. Each has its advocates. Each, when implemented, gives the school a particular character. However, many school's meld these designs. often so much that it is almost impossible to determine just what the curriculum design is.
REFERENCES Combs, Arthur W. Perceiving, Behaving, Becoming, Washington DC. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Develeopment. Yearbook, 1962) Eisner, Elliot W. The Educational Imagination. 3rd Ed. New York. Macmillian. 1993 Hunkins, Francis P. Curriculum Development: Program Improvement. Columbus Ohio. Merrill. 1980 Tanner, Laurel. The History of Curriculum. New York. Macmillian. 1990 Tyler, Ralph. Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction. Chicago. Chicago University Press. 1949
