Book Summary Curriculum Design Curriculum and Instruction Courses - IPSE FPMIPA UPI Assignment

 Curriculum and Instruction

Book Summary Curriculum Design

Book                   : Curriculum: Foundation, Principles, and Issues (5^th edition)

Authors              : Allen Ornstein and F. Hunkins

Topic                  : Curriculum Design, p181-206

Summary           :

Opinions differ regarding how to design curriculum. David Orr discusses four myths about education that educators and general public embrace, and curriculum’s proper aims. Those are as following:

1.      Education, the right curriculum and curriculum design, can eliminate ignorance.

2.      Education and well-designed curricula can supply all the knowledge needed to manage society and the Earth.

3.      Education curricula are increasing human goodness: well-designed curricula instil wisdom.

4.      Education’s primary purpose is to enable students to be upwardly mobile and economically successful.

In response to Orr’s discussion of myths, some people might argue that education can reduce ignorance, help people manage society and the Earth, increase wisdom, and foster upward mobility. How one contemplates education, curriculum, and curriculum design is influenced by myriad realms of knowing and feeling. Individuals draw from their experiences, their lived histories, their values, their belief systems, their social interactions, and their imaginations.

Components of Design

Because a curriculum’s parts must be interrelated and addresses the essence of curriculum design, in designing curriculum, curriculum developer or teacher should consider philosophical and learning theories to determine if our design decisions are consonant with our basic beliefs concerning people, what and how students should learn, and how students should use their acquired knowledge.

Curriculum design is concerned with the nature and arrangement of four basic parts or components: objectives, content, learning experiences, and evaluation. These parts are rooted in Harry Giles’s ‘’The Eight-Year-Study’’. Curriculum design’s four components suggest these questions:

·         What should be done?

·         What subject matter should be included?

·         What instructional strategies, resources, and activities should be employed?

·         What methods and instruments should be used to appraise the results of the curriculum?

Curriculum design involves philosophical and theoretical, as well as practical, issues. One’s philosophy influences interpretation and selection of objectives, selection and organization of content, decisions about how to teach or deliver the curriculum content, and judgments about how to evaluate the success of the developed curriculum. In Ronald Doll’s view, curriculum design is the parent of instructional design. Curriculum arranges objectives, content, instruction, and evaluation. In contrast, instructional design ‘’maps’’ out pedagogically and technologically defensible teaching methods, teaching materials, and educational activities that engage students in learning the curriculum’s content. Curriculum design draws from knowledge theory, social theory, political theory, and learning theory. Essentially, a curriculum results from a blend of curriculum design and instructional design.

Sources of Curriculum Design

Doll describe four sources of curriculum design which are:

1.        Science

Some educators think the curriculum should prioritize the teaching of thinking strategies. With knowledge increasing so rapidly, the only constant seems to be the procedures by which we process knowledge.

2.        Society

School is an agent of society and should draw its curriculum ideas from analysis of the social situation. School must realize that they are part of, and designed to serve the interests of, their local community and larger society. As Arthur Ellis notes, no curriculum or curriculum design can be considered or created apart from the people who make up our evolving society.

3.      Moral doctrine

Some curriculum designers look to the past for guidance regarding appropriate content. These people emphasize what they view as lasting truth advanced by the great thinkers of the past. William Pinar comments that viewing curriculum as religious text may allow for a blending truth, faith, knowledge, ethics, thought, and action.

4.      Knowledge

Knowledge is the primary source of curriculum. Herbert Spencer placed knowledge within the framework of curriculum when he asked, ‘’what knowledge is of most worth?’’

5.      The Learner

Curriculum should derive from our knowledge of students: how they learn, form attitudes, generate interests, and develop values. For progressive curricularists, humanistic educators, and curricularists engaged in postmodern dialogue, the learner should be the primary source of curriculum design. Learner-based curriculum design seeks to empower students and foster their individual uniqueness.

Conceptual Framework: Horizontal and Vertical Organization

Curriculum design, the organization of curriculum’s components, exists along two basic organizational dimensions: horizontal and vertical. Horizontal organization blends curriculum elements, for example by combining history, anthropology, and sociology content to create a ‘’Contemporary Studies’’ course or by combining math and science content. Vertical organization refers to the sequencing of curriculum elements. Placing ‘’the family’’ in first grade social studies and ‘’the community’’ in second grade social studies is an example of vertical organization. Frequently, curricula are organized by grades in school.

Design Dimension Consideration

Curriculum design addresses relationships among curriculum’s components. It should achieve scope, sequence, continuity, integration, articulation, and balance.

1)      Scope: Scope includes all the types of educational experiences created to engage students in learning.

2)      Sequence: Curriculum must foster cumulative, continuous learning. Specially, in how content and experiences can build on what came before?

3)      Continuity: Vertical repetition of curriculum components.

4)      Integration: Linking all types of knowledge and experiences contained within the curriculum plan.

5)      Articulation: The vertical and horizontal interrelatedness of various aspects of the curriculum, to the ways in which curriculum components occurring later in a program’s sequence relate to those occurring earlier.

6)      Balance: Educators strive to give appropriate weight to each aspect of the design. In balanced curriculum, students can acquire and use knowledge in ways that advance their personal, social, and intellectual goals.

Representative Curriculum Designs

            Curriculum components can be organized in numerous ways. However, despite all the discussion about postmodern views of knowledge and creating curricula for social awareness and emancipation, most curriculum designs are modifications and/or interpretations of three basic designs:

1)   Subject-centered designs include subject designs, discipline designs, broad field design, correlation designs, and process designs.

2)   Learner-centered designs are those identified as child-centered designs, experience-centered designs, romantic/radical designs, and humanistic designs.

3)   Problem-centered designs consider life situations, core designs, or social problem/constructional designs.

Citation

Ornstein, A., & Hunkins, F. (2009). Curriculum Design. In Curriculum: Foundations, Principles, and Issues (5^th Ed). Pp. 181-206. Boston, MA: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon.

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