Curriculum development - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages... Lewis and Arthur (1972) identified definition of curriculum in the following categories: course of study, intended learning outcomes, intended opportunities for engagement learning opportunities provided, learner’s actual engagement, and learner’s actual experiences. They defined curriculum as “a set of intentions about opportunities for engagement of persons-to-be-educated with other persons and with things (all bearers of information, processes, techniques, and values) in certain arrangements of time and space.”
Tanner and Tanner (1980) traced the history of curriculum definitions showing that “curriculum has been variously defined as: 1) the cumulative tradition of organized knowledge; 2) modes of thoughts; 3) race experience; 4) guided experience; 5) a planned learning environment; 6) cognitive/affective content and process; 7) an instructional plan; 8) instructional ends or outcomes; and 9) a technological systems of production.”
Historically and currently, the dominant concepts of the curriculum is that of subjects and subject matter therein to be taught by teachers and learned by students. In high schools and colleges, the term curriculum has been and still is widely used to refer to the set of subjects or courses offered, and also to those required or recommended or grouped for other purposes; thus, terms as the college preparatory curriculum, science curriculum, and premedical curriculum are commonly used. In curriculum terminology, program of studies is more properly used in these connections.
Despite efforts for over a half century to achieve broader and different curriculum foci, the concept of curriculum as subject matter persists as the basis of the dominant curriculum design. It was central to and emphasized by the wave of curriculum development in the subject fields that began in the 1950s and was stimulated by the Russian advance into out space and subsequent pressure to improve American education.
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