Curriculum Development and Learning Styles - Literature review Example

Curriculum Development And Learning Styles Introduction: The focus in meeting education has traditionally been on the content that was believed to be required for a particular course of study and not on the students who were targets of the educational process. A more recent development in the field of education is the realization that students are individuals with different learning styles and learning needs and the traditional uniform content for learning on different courses may be responsible for the failure of meeting the objectives of education in the case of all students, which is leading to a rethinking on the manner in which the content of different courses of study need to be reformed. Curriculum and Curriculum Development: According to Pinar, 2004, p. 16, curriculum may be taken as “courses of study leading to competence in the academic disciplines”. Expanding from this definition curriculum makes up the statement of objectives, course content, and materials to be employed and the manner in which these employed in the classrooms to provide the learning experience that leads to competency in the students. Curriculum thus is not a static entity, but a dynamic one depending on the competency requirements of academic disciplines and is the basis of curriculum development. However, according to English, 1999, p. 9, conventional ideas on curriculum cause it to become “an epitome of local control of the content of teaching, responsive to local demands and priorities, optimizing the peculiar interests and strengths of the teaching staff”. In essence such an observation makes curriculum and the development of curriculum giving more focused on teaching rather than the learning experience, and hence the change in modern curriculum development to bring into relevance the students and their learning. The development of curriculum in modern times in the United States of America has become more complex with the increasing demands on accountability of what is taught by the teachers and how they teach along with the diversity of the students have enhanced the impact of issues like global religions, ethnicity, multi-cultural communities, and socio-political groupings, which have an influence on the learning styles of students (Slatterly, 2006). Furthermore the purpose of the curriculum is in fulfilling certain learning objectives through the course content, materials employed and manner in which these materials are used. Assessment of the success in meeting these objectives is through the testing of students and is the basis of further changes in curriculum development. Yet, the outcomes of these tests are influenced by the learning styles of the students and curriculum in addressing the different learning style requirements of students (Glennon, 2008). Learning Styles: Elaborating on learning styles of students, Graf, Lin & Kinshuk, 2008 present the Felder-Silverman model of learning styles of students, which considers learning styles being present as four dimensions. In the first dimension there is a differentiation of learning styles informing us of that students’ process information in two ways consisting of an active way and a reflective way. Students with active learning styles prefer active interaction with learning materials, while reflective learners prefer to think about the learning materials. The second dimension is made up of sensing in comparison to intuitive learning. Students with sensing learning styles have the preference of learning facts and concrete learning material based upon their sensory experiences as the primary source. In contrast intuitive learners prefer abstract learning materials, like theories and their implications on general principles in place of concrete instances as sources of information. This makes students with sensing learning styles more patient with the details of the learning material and more practical, as they tend to relate the learning material to the world that they live in, while intuitive learners search for possibilities and relationships and are more innovative and creative in their learning approach. The result of this differentiation is that sensing style learners do better in tests that pose problems that have a single answer, while intuitive learners perform better when the tests are open ended (Graf, Lin & Kinshuk, 2008). The third dimension takes into consideration the preferences of students in the input mode of visual and verbal modes in their learning styles. Some learners imbibe more of the information, when the information is presented in a textual form, while others tend to remember more when the information is presented as pictures, diagrams, and flow charts regardless of whether they are written or. Hence the mode of presenting information has an impact on the retention capabilities of students. (Graf, Lin & Kinshuk, 2008). The final dimension in the Felder-Silverman model of learning styles takes into consideration the understanding of students and characterizes them accordingly as sequential learners and global learners. Sequential learners tend to take small incremental steps in their learning process, which may be considered as a linear learning progression. This means they employ logical stepwise progress in finding solutions. On the other hand global learners learn in leaps and bounds by employing holistic thought processes. Through these processes global learners absorb learning material in a random manner, without recognizing the connections, and after they have absorbed sufficient learning material the whole picture all of a sudden becomes clear to them. Subsequent to this they develop the ability to solve complex problems and see things in an innovative manner, yet may express difficulty in their explanations on how these solutions were arrived at (Graf, Lin & Kinshuk, 2008). Learning Styles and Curriculum Development: Every student has a learning style that has one of the factors of every dimension in the Felder-Silverman model of learning styles. Hopper and Hurry, 2000, p.28, in their emphasis on the curriculum being developed in such a manner as to cater to the different intellectual capacities and learning styles of students use this quote from Gardner, 1997, “So long as materials are taught and assessed in only one way, we will reach only one kind of child. But everything can be taught in several ways. The more we can match youngsters to congenial approaches of teaching, learning and assessing, the more likely it is that those youngsters will achieve educational success”. Echoing such an approach in the development of curriculum with more focus on the students, Wood, 2003, lays the claim that pupil perspectives remain an important source for improving curriculum, pedagogy, and pupil achievement, giving credence to the significant influence of learning styles on curriculum development. Based on the Felder-Silverman model of learning styles the curriculum should incorporate elements of intuition, feeling, sensing, and imagination in addition to the conventional stress of skills in analysis, reason and sequential problem solving. The course materials and the design in imparting the course materials should lean on the four dimensions of learning styles of students to provide a combination of experience, reflection, conceptualization, and experimentation to the students in meeting the different learning style requirements. Given that different learning style make for students being proficient in different assessment methods, the assessment techniques should be tailored to test the information acquired and employed by the intellect of the student in keeping with their different requirements (Graf, Lin & Kinshuk, 2008). Conclusion: Curriculum and its development is in essence the means to provide educational success to the students. Yet, students do not have a single learning style, but multiple learning styles. The objective of the curriculum and its development is in the educational success, and this puts the onus on developing the curriculum in such a manner as to cater to the demands of the varying learning styles of students. Literary References English, W. F. (1999). Curriculum Alignment: A Facilitator’s Guide to Deciding What to Teach and Test. California: Corwin Press. Glennon, F. (2008). Promoting Freedom, Responsibility and Learning in the Classroom: The Learning Covenant a Decade Later. Teaching Theology and Religion, 11(1), 32-41. Graf, S., Lin, T. & Kinshuk. (2008). The relationship between learning styles and cognitive traits - Getting additional information for improving student modeling. Computers in Human Behavior, 24(2), 122-137. Hopper, B. & Hurry, P. (2000). Learning the MI Way: The Effects on Students’ Learning of Using the Theory of Multiple Intelligences. Pastoral Care in Education, 18(4), 26-32 Pinar, F. W. (2004). What is Curriculum Theory. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: Slatterly, P. (2006). CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT in the POST MODERN ERA. Second Edition. New York: Routledge. Wood, E. (2003). The power of pupil perspectives in evidence-based practice: the case of gender and underachievement. Research papers in Education, 18(4), 365-383. Read More