Language Curriculum Design by I.S.P. Nation and John Macalister. Chapter 9 Approaches to Curriculum Design

1. Chapter 9
Approaches to
Curriculum Design
By: Shidak Rahbarian
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2. Models of Curriculum Design
 This book is based on a model of curriculum design which is represented by
the curriculum design diagram.
How adequate is the model?
 To answer this question it is good to compare Language Curriculum Design
model with two other models
1- Kathleen Graves (2000).
2- Murdoch’s model (1989).
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3. Grave’s Models of Curriculum Design
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4. Murdoch’s Models of Curriculum Design
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5. Tessmer and Wedman’s model
 Some models of curriculum design occur as a series of steps in a fixed order
and is called
“waterfall” model
where one stage of curriculum design, is done thoroughly,
and then the next stage of needs analysis is done thoroughly,
and so on.
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6. STARTING POINT
 Curriculum designers and teachers can start from nothing. They are responsible for all parts of the
curriculum design process.
 They can draw on a bank of existing materials from which they select the most appropriate material
for the course. Such a bank could include
(1) activities prepared by themselves for other courses
(2) published supplementary materials
(3) from newspapers or magazines, radio or TV, or photocopied material from texts or course books.
 Some curriculum statements and some course books deliberately provide only some of the material
needed for a complete course. The advantages of this split responsibility for different parts of the
curriculum design process are as follows:
(a) The course can be made more suitable for the environment
(b) Adjustments can be easily made to suit a range of needs.
(c) The teacher is seen as a professional who has to make important curriculum design decisions
(d) The material produced by the curriculum designer can be used in different teaching situations
 The teacher chooses a published course book and uses that as the only material or the main material
for the course.
Curriculum design begins either with no existing resources
or some existing resources
1) The design of a completely new course may start from nothing except the
knowledge of the curriculum designer.
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7. STARTING POINT
 That is, a teacher chooses a course book for a course and, becomes dissatisfied
with the book. This results in making some changes to the book by skipping parts
of it, spending a longer time than usual on some parts and by supplementing or
replacing some of the material in the course book with other material.
 the original course book are no longer used and the teacher works with the
materials that were developed in response to the inadequacies of the original
course.
 This approach to a course has many advantages.
(A) The course is simply taught from the course book.
(B) It allows for careful work to be done on aspects of the course that really
deserve attention. This work can be done, adequate parts of the course.
(C)The teacher/curriculum designer develops curriculum design skills in a safe,
gradual way.
2) Much curriculum design begins with the results of someone else’s
curriculum design.
Dangers
1- the most pressing one could be copyright.
2- material from the original course may still be retained
3- in a process of gradual change, important aspects of the curriculum design process could be overlooked.
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8. The Process of Curriculum Design
We will look at the ways of going through the process of curriculum design
 the waterfall model
 The focused opportunistic approach
 and the layers of necessity approach.
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9. The waterfall model
 Macalister and Sou (2006) draw on a “waterfall” model in their description of
a course’s design. The output of one stage becomes the input of the next.
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10. The waterfall model
 Murdoch (1989) describes a similar sequence,
1- (needs analysis)
2- (environment analysis)
3- (content)
4- (format and presentation)
5- (ideas content)
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11. A focused opportunistic approach
 material is prepared to teach the course
 with each re-teaching of the course, one part of the curriculum design
process is developed
 The attractiveness of this model is that it allows a concentrated focus with
high-quality improvements to a course.
 Warnings against this approach:
1- Tessmer and Wedman (1990) believe that working thoroughly on one
aspect of curriculum design may result in wasted effort.
2- This approach requires a tolerance of some inadequacies in other aspects
of curriculum design
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12.  the course is taught using whatever material is available
 during the teaching, the teacher may do some kinds of needs analysis
 assessment will also need to be developed
 after the first teaching of the course, the teacher might make some changes
so that the second delivery of the course is a bit more organized
 This do-what-you-can-when-you-can approach is typical of most curriculum
design carried out by teachers.
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13. A “layers of necessity” model
 A “layers of necessity” model is similar to the previous one, except that it
covers all the parts of the curriculum at the same time.
 In Tessmer and Wedman (1990) model, curriculum design is seen initially as a
choice between various layers.
 Each layer is complete in itself and includes the major parts of the curriculum
design process
environment analysis needs and goals
strategies materials evaluating
 But each layer differs in the detail. The curriculum designer has to decide what
layer of curriculum design will be chosen.
 If more time and resources were available then a layer could be chosen which
involved a more detailed set of steps.
 If the time and resources available are very limited for example, the curriculum
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14. Deciding on an Approach
 Choosing which path to take will depend on the starting point,
 Clearly the least challenging approach is to choose an existing course book as
a source of material, and then apply a focused opportunistic approach to
gradually improve and eventually replace it
 the advantage of following a systematic approach to curriculum design
involving all the parts of a model is that parts of the process are not missed
out.
 Summary of the Steps
1 Decide on your starting point
2 Decide what kind of path to follow through the process of curriculum
design.
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15.  Tessmer and Wedman (1990) suggest some guidelines for using a “layers of
necessity” model:
(1) the level of necessity has been chosen it is best to cover all the steps at that
level with the same degree of thoroughness.
(2) at any level all the major parts of the curriculum design process should be
touched.
(3) the same piece of curriculum design can be done choosing a more detailed
layer at a later
(4) It is thus important that the difference between the layers is not seen as a
difference between careful work and hasty work.
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