Choose one of the lists - Assignment Example

This has resulted in progression of disunity in the country causing extremist tendencies while indicating urgent need of a curriculum that can appreciate diversity as strength and inculcate expectations of an enlightened country and the enlightened globe. In this regard, it is very imperative that educators and leaders should have a sound knowledge and understanding of existing curriculum that will enable them to deal effectively with diversity issues that exist in curriculum. Discussion Curriculum has often been defined as the “planned interaction of students with instructional content, instructional resources, and instructional processes for the attainment of predetermined educational objectives” (Ashraf, n.d, pg. 69).

This clearly indicates that the curriculum is not a confined document, and that many factors play around the aspects of curriculum that need consideration, as in this paper, diversity of learners is the main focus. Principally, the teaching and learning activities are predominantly the notions that enable curriculum to include ‘how’ factor in its characteristics, and thus, I believe curriculum cannot exist in confinement but it always need presence of teaching, learning, as well as assessment to ensure its existence.

In other words, the curriculum refers to ‘what is taught’, whereas, the teaching and learning can indicate ‘how it is taught’ that clearly signifies the interdependent relationship that exist between these notions and the curriculum and that will be very helpful in management of diversity issues in education. Traditionally, the curriculum was limited to the narrow scope of “set of courses, coursework, and their content, offered at a school of university” (Riehl & Firestone, 2005).

However, after detailed analysis of different curriculum documents and from course readings and discussions, I admire the 1968 definition of Kerr, where curriculum exists as “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” (Lawton, 2012). This definition has somehow exceeded the bounded vision of traditional perspective of curriculum that used to confine the curriculum as only course and content and this definition, thus, can act as a basis for educational leaders to recognize and resolve diversity issues in the curriculum.

Kerr’s definition obviously acknowledges the importance of teaching and not keeping it in the mode of ‘jug and mug theory’ only but the usage of term ‘guided’ itself is an indication of the role of teacher as a facilitator that was also observed during the analysis. Moreover, while relating this definition once again, I came across the understanding that the knowledge is not limited to the range of content only. Rather, it goes beyond the levels of content producing a complex set of relationships that play their role during the processes of teaching and learning after the development of curriculum and its objectives.

Briefly, one cannot remove the curriculum from these factors and their relationships, which falsify traditional definition of curriculum in which it was viewed as an “