AIOU

1. Assignment No. 1
Q.1 Discuss the concept and scope of Curriculum.
An organized developmental scope and sequence outlines what the early childhood curriculum
focuses on and how the plans and materials support children at different stages of development.
The scope refers to the areas of development addressed by the curriculum. Scope includes both
the breadth (the curriculum addresses development across all of the Head Start Early Learning
Outcomes Framework (ELOF) domains) and depth (curriculum content addresses specific
developmental goals within each sub-domain). A content-rich curriculum ensures that this scope
is sufficiently deep that it engages and sustains children's interests across multiple learning
experiences. The sequence includes plans and materials for learning experiences to support and
extend children's learning at various levels of development. A sequence of learning experiences
progress from less to more complex, with the goal of supporting children as they move through
the developmental progressions.
An organized developmental scope and sequence:
 Helps education staff support children's development of skills, behavior, and knowledge
described in the ELOF and a state's early learning and development standards
 Includes examples of materials, teaching practices, and learning experiences that support
children at different levels of development
 Allows flexibility to respond to the needs of individual children, including dual or tribal
language learners and children with disabilities (or those suspected of having delays) and other
special needs
 Provides information to education staff that helps them plan and communicate with families
and other education partners
To be effective, curricula must be comprehensive in scope and provide learning experiences
specifically designed to support children at various levels of development. A scope and sequence
can be a helpful tool that education staff use to plan learning experiences tailored to children’s
ages and developmental levels. It helps staff look ahead to see where development is going, and
intentionally scaffold their learning. It also helps education staff implement research-based
teaching practices that support children as they move through the developmental progressions,
including those described in the ELOF. Elmwood Head Start education staff review their
curriculum in the area of mathematics development. The scope of the curriculum includes number
sense, operations and algebra, measurement, and geometry. The materials and plans for learning
experiences are organized around a sequence designed to support children at various levels of
development. The curriculum offers multiple learning opportunities that support children as they
learn to understand simple patterns.
For example, the curriculum includes learning experiences that invite children to experience
patterns through movement (e.g., tap-clap-tap-clap) and to describe patterns while playing with
colored blocks. Children are encouraged to say the pattern aloud as a group (e.g., red-blue-red-

2. blue) or to fill in the missing element in a pattern (e.g., red-blue-red-). The curriculum also includes
learning experiences that invite children to copy simple patterns (e.g., with stringing beads). At a
more advanced level, the curriculum provides learning experiences in which children, with teacher
guidance, can create and extend patterns using objects, movements, or sounds.
The lesson plans within each of these learning opportunities describe how education staff can
scaffold children’s learning and development at various levels (e.g., asking a child earlier in the
developmental progression to identify what would come next in a simple pattern, and asking a
child later in the developmental progression to describe a pattern the child has created). This
sequence of learning experiences supports children as they move along the developmental
progression of understanding patterns.
Q.2 Explain the relationship Between Culture and curriculum.
His classmates, their families, and the press rallied to resist what Western educated Sierra
Leoneans interpreted as an effort by their British rulers to keep them in their place. Cole knew that
unless he and his classmates took school-leaving examinations set abroad, they could not attend
Oxford or Cambridge and thereby gain access to occupational mobility. What colonial
policymakers perceived as a fitting curriculum --of which tests surely are an integral aspect- -
Sierra Leoneans deemed unfitting and staunchly resisted. Clearly, one person's good fit is another
person's crunched opportunities. What curriculum suits what cultural orientation as seen by whom
is the subject of this report? It is a complex topic because the culture of most contemporary nations
is a tangled tapestry of subcultural variants. The variants have curricular ramifications. Different
groups may agree about what language to conduct instruction in and whose history to teach, and
disagree about what other languages to offer and what topics with what emphasis to include in the
history course. The translation of some aspect of culture or subculture into its curricular terms is
undertaken by persons who often have high stakes in what they support. Indeed, as we see with
Chief Poropot and Portuguese, the Diallo be and French, and Sierra Leonean Cole and the setting
of external examinations, what is at stake is no less than fundamental well-being and survival as
some agent defines them. (I will use agent to designate who, in light of some cultural orientation,
proposes or supports some curricular element). The concept of culture is having a heyday. The
ubiquitous appearance of the term in social science and education literature testifies to its being
construed as necessary; in the process, it has become fashionable, as well. Such is the case in the
field of educational scholarship, whose writers adopt established definitions of culture and
construct definitions of their own. Not with standing that it is over defined and that if one looks
long enough one can find conception to match any purpose, there is reasonable convergence on
the referents of culture so that we borrowers need not feel that our choice of definitions is arbitrary.
Some writers prefer to state what culture is not. Metz, for example, writes that culture "is not a
systematic set of logically interrelated propositions about values, norms and the nature of the
empirical world;" but, she adds at once, it is "a broad, diffuse, and potentially contradictory body
of shared understanding about both what is and what ought to be" (1986, p. 54; see also Rossman,
Corbett, and Firestone, 1988, p. 5). I value Metz's reference to "what ought to be" because it
captures a common aspect of the translation of culture into curriculum: the often imperative tone
of the agents' curricular recommendations. This tone is implied in Goodenough's definition that "a

3. society's culture consists of whatever one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner
acceptable to its members" (quoted in Mehan, 1982, p. 64). When Good enough speaks of what
"one has to know and believe," he points to categories of curricular experience for which agents
will have particular recommendations. Cazden and Mehan "think of culture as the normal,
expected ways of perceiving, thinking, and behaving of large social groups" (1989, p. 49), nations,
or communities; they exclude the smaller social groups whose "normal, expected ways" are those
of a subculture. For my purposes, both culture and subculture are important for examining the
culture-curriculum relationship Erickson picks up on the subcultural factor in his view of culture
as "learned and shared standards for ways of thinking, feeling, and acting," so that he can identify
the problem or misfit in the case of the classroom teachers' "learned ways of thinking and acting
that have not yet been learned by their students" (1986, p. 117). An issue in culture-curriculum fit
arises from the discrepancies among the involved subcultures, those of teachers and students, in
Erickson's example. Based on her research on magnet middle schools, Metz identifies a teacher
subculture. It develops by virtue of shared "meaning systems" (see also Maehr, 1987, pp. 295-
296), and she usefully adds, "has roots in the larger culture of the society" (1986, p. 221). Given
the prospect of a range of subcultural "meaning systems" operating within the shared space of a
school, and within the larger society where subcultures abound, we see the occasion for conflict
over what curriculum should prevail. In practice, what strictly speaking are subcultures, writers
often refer to as cultures. Thus, Rossman et al. (1988) refer to "teacher culture," Metz (1983) to
"home culture," Shakeshaft (1987) to "female culture," and Maehr (1987) to "organizational
culture." It is well to bear in mind that subcultures are rooted in the "larger culture of the society"
because this suggests the legitimacy of what is an inevitable fact of complex societies: to varying
degrees, subcultures are in competition with each other as they try to enact their "meaning systems"
in the curricula of their society's schools. It is, therefore, a matter of good guys doing battle with
each other as they contend for the right to define what goes on in school.
Agents may take large units as their charge, referring to an entire culture, society, or the world, as
does Bennett in the above example. Bennett takes as the basis for her agency what she perceives
as salient about American society it is multicultural, and about the world--it is interdependent. Out
of the numerous possible focal points of culture, Bennett, imbedded in particular cultural and
subcultural alternatives, gives voice to two expressions. The number of such expressions is
unlimited. Bennett would not soon exhaust what she could say about American society and the
world. Of the many possibilities she could identify, she chose two. They came not from out of the
blue but, rather, from the complex of her personal cultural and subcultural orientations. They
represent the cause she wants served by some aspect of curriculum; they are the warrant for the
curricular means she endorses. Bennett did not focus on health, unemployment, or pollution. Had
she done so, she would have tendered other bases for thinking about schools, offered warrant for
endorsing other aspects of curriculum to fit other aspects of culture. As I have discussed them,
agents appear as conscious activists. This image misrepresents a whole set of agents--teachers,
students, and parents, for example--whose behavior "makes" curriculum out of some cultural
orientation but not necessarily in a conscious way or with specified, articulated bases in mind.

4. Their agency is performed in the normal course of playing their role as teacher, student, or parent,
although each may join groups and organizations that have been formed to give them voice.
Examples below that relate to resistance illustrate this point. When, say, students and parents resist
what happens in school, their actions contribute to the null curriculum. They become agents for
undoing some aspect of curriculum, such as tests they should be fewer and easier; homework--
there should be less of it; books which ones are acceptable to read; and sex education--an
unsuitable subject for classroom instruction.
Q.3 critically examine the significance of situational analysis in curriculum development.
The Importance of Situational Analysis and needs assessment in the initial stages of curriculum
development. An article for education. Situational analysis is the systematic process of analyzing
the situation before the curriculum is developed effectively. However, Hilda Taba (1962) describes
situational Analysis as a diagnosis of needs. In this simpler form, we can define situational
Analysis as the process of examining factors that exist in the environment or society where the
curriculum is going to be implemented. Situational analysis factors include knowledge about the
environment in terms of mountains, rivers, flora and fauna including places where the programme
or curriculum is going to be implemented, the social or power structure of that society, the
traditions, norms, needs and aspirations of the community and the language of instruction.
Bishop (1985) argued that the situational Analysis must incorporate members of the general public
and not only ‘experts’. These members should be invited to play their past in situational Analysis.
This is because Education itself is not a discipline like English and History but an area involving
a wide variety of society with different backgrounds. Hence, Parents Teachers Association (P.T.A)
and religious Organizations would feel to say something pertaining to the lives and future of their
children. This simply means that there is a way parents and society at large would want the
curriculum to shape their attitudes of their children. Simpson Yinger (1958) argued that situational
Analysis involve careful observation and an acute understanding of the variables influencing a
given situation. The particular role of a researcher in situational Analysis is to contribute to our
knowledge by isolating one by one each of the many variables that are involved in every situation
and then studying the effects of their interaction. The scientists in this regard measures the
influence of each factor alone and later how these variables interact with each other. In short, every
stakeholder must be analyzed in details. To ensure effective results curriculum developers need to
undertake SWOT analysis of the stakeholders involved. The importance of situational analysis and
needs assessments is that they provide us with up to date information which can be used to solve
the problems, set providers, identify groups which require special need intervention and can create
a basis or platform for discussion in as far as curriculum development is concerned.
Another importance of situational analysis and needs assessments is that Policy makers
(Government officials) and decision makers (curriculum specialists) can make strong arguments
in as far as allocation of resources is concerned. A needs assessment can be a powerful tool used
to develop strategies to address the curriculum needs. Will provide the met and unmet needs within
the targeted groups e.g. (i) met needs may be availability of teachers and pupils, supplementary
readers (ii) unmet may be the distance between the school and the learner’s home.
The importance of situational analysis and needs assessments is that they will help in the

5. formulation of curriculum intent, content, selection of learning and teaching activities.
It help educationalists meet the needs and expectations of the society. Ordinarily, the content of
subjects in curriculum intent is too formal and academic to meet the needs of the majority of the
children who do not proceed on to higher studies especially if it was developed without situational
analysis. What pupils do in schools neither satisfies the developing needs of the child nor prepares
the child adequately for the world/environment he/she lives in (no wonder we have more street
kids in Zambia). Practical and aesthetic subjects such as wood work and music are therefore not
given enough time and attention. This is because curriculum is mainly designed to transmit factual
knowledge rather than to provide learning experiences.
Q.4 Define curriculum design in term of sources and element.
Teachers design each curriculum with a specific educational purpose in mind. The ultimate goal
is to improve student learning, but there are other reasons to employ curriculum design as well.
For example, designing a curriculum for middle school students with both elementary and high
school curricula in mind helps to make sure that learning goals are aligned and complement each
other from one stage to the next. If a middle school curriculum is designed without taking prior
knowledge from elementary school or future learning in high school into account it can create real
problems for the students.
Subject-Centered Curriculum Design
Subject-centered curriculum design revolves around a particular subject matter or discipline. For
example, a subject-centered curriculum may focus on math or biology. This type of curriculum
design tends to focus on the subject rather than the individual. It is the most common type of
curriculum used in K-12 public schools in states and local districts in the United States.
Subject-centered curriculum design describes what needs to be studied and how it should be
studied. Core curriculum is an example of a subject-centered design that can be standardized across
schools, states, and the country as a whole. In standardized core curricula, teachers are provided a
pre-determined list of things that they need to teach their students, along with specific examples
of how these things should be taught. You can also find subject-centered designs in large college
classes in which teachers focus on a particular subject or discipline.
The primary drawback of subject-centered curriculum design is that it is not student-centered. In
particular, this form of curriculum design is constructed without taking into account the specific
learning styles of the students. This can cause problems with student engagement and motivation
and may even cause students to fall behind in class.
Learner-Centered Curriculum Design
In contrast, learner-centered curriculum design takes each individual's needs, interests, and goals
into consideration. In other words, it acknowledges that students are not uniform and adjust to
those student needs. Learner-centered curriculum design is meant to empower learners and allow
them to shape their education through choices.
Instructional plans in a learner-centered curriculum are differentiated, giving students the
opportunity to choose assignments, learning experiences or activities. This can motivate
students and help them stay engaged in the material that they are learning.

6. The drawback to this form of curriculum design is that it is labor-intensive. Developing
differentiated instruction puts pressure on the teacher to create instruction and/or find materials
that are conducive to each student's learning needs. Teachers may not have the time or may lack
the experience or skills to create such a plan. Learner-centered curriculum design also requires that
teachers balance student wants and interests with student needs and required outcomes, which is
not an easy balance to obtain.
Problem-Centered Curriculum Design
Like learner-centered curriculum design, problem-centered curriculum design is also a form of
student-centered design. Problem-centered curricula focus on teaching students how to look at a
problem and come up with a solution to the problem. Students are thus exposed to real-life issues,
which helps them develop skills that are transferable to the real world.
Problem-centered curriculum design increases the relevance of the curriculum and allows students
to be creative and innovate as they are learning. The drawback to this form of curriculum design
is that it does not always take learning styles into consideration.
The following curriculum design tips can help educators manage each stage of the curriculum
design process.
 Identify the needs of stakeholders (i.e., students) early on in the curriculum design
process. This can be done through needs analysis, which involves the collection and
analysis of data related to the learner. This data might include what learners already know
and what they need to know to be proficient in a particular area or skill. It may also include
information about learner perceptions, strengths, and weaknesses.
 Create a clear list of learning goals and outcomes. This will help you to focus on the
intended purpose of the curriculum and allow you to plan instruction that can achieve the
desired results. Learning goals are the things teachers want students to achieve in the
course. Learning outcomes are the measurable knowledge, skills, and attitudes that students
should have achieved in the course.
 Identify constraints that will impact your curriculum design. For example, time is a
common constraint that must be considered. There are only so many hours, days, weeks or
months in the term. If there isn't enough time to deliver all of the instruction that has been
planned, it will impact learning outcomes.
 Consider creating a curriculum map (also known as a curriculum matrix) so that you
can properly evaluate the sequence and coherence of instruction. Curriculum
mapping provides visual diagrams or indexes of a curriculum. Analyzing a visual
representation of the curriculum is a good way to quickly and easily identify potential gaps,
redundancies or alignment issues in the sequencing of instruction. Curriculum maps can be
created on paper or with software programs or online services designed specifically for this
purpose.
 Identify the instructional methods that will be used throughout the course and consider
how they will work with student learning styles. If the instructional methods are not

7. conducive to the curriculum, the instructional design or the curriculum design will need to
be altered accordingly.
 Establish evaluation methods that will be used at the end and during the school year
to assess learners, instructors, and the curriculum. Evaluation will help you determine if
the curriculum design is working or if it is failing. Examples of things that should be
evaluated include the strengths and weaknesses of the curriculum and achievement rates
related to learning outcomes. The most effective evaluation is ongoing and summative.
 Remember that curriculum design is not a one-step process; continuous improvement
is a necessity. The design of the curriculum should be assessed periodically and refined
based on assessment data. This may involve making alterations to the design partway
through the course to ensure that learning outcomes or a certain level of proficiency will
be achieved at the end of the course.
Q.5 Different individuals need different types of learning experience for self-development.
Support this.
Personal development is a lifelong process. It is a way for people to assess their skills and qualities,
consider their aims in life and set goals in order to realize and maximize their potential. This page
helps you to identify the skills you need to set life goals which can enhance your employability
prospects, raise your confidence, and lead to a more fulfilling, higher quality life. Plan to make
relevant, positive and effective life choices and decisions for your future to enable personal
empowerment. The extent to which people are able to develop depends on certain needs being met
and these needs form a hierarchy. Only when one level of need is satisfied can a higher one be
developed. As change occurs throughout life, however, the level of need motivating someone’s
behavior at any one time will also change.

8.  At the bottom of the hierarchy are the basic physiological needs for food, drink, sex and
sleep, i.e., the basics for survival.
 Second are the needs for safety and security in both the physical and economic sense.
 Thirdly, progression can be made to satisfying the need for love and belonging.
 The fourth level refers to meeting the need for self-esteem and self-worth. This is the level
most closely related to ‘self-empowerment’.
 The fifth level relates to the need to understand. This level includes more abstract ideas
such as curiosity and the search for meaning or purpose and a deeper understanding.
 The sixth relates to aesthetic needs of beauty, symmetry and order.
 Finally, at the top of Maslow’s hierarchy is the need for self-actualization.
Maslow (1970, p.383) says that all individuals have the need to see themselves as competent and
autonomous, also that every person has limitless room for growth.
Self-actualization refers to the desire that everybody has ‘to become everything that they are
capable of becoming’. In other words, it refers to self-fulfillment and the need to reach full
potential as a unique human being.