This document discusses child-centered curriculum design in education. It defines child-centered design as an approach where children take control of their own learning by following their interests and passions, with teachers providing support. Key characteristics are that children co-create learning objectives with teachers, are emotionally invested in exploring topics in depth. The design acknowledges individual differences in learners and sees play as how children learn. Benefits include maintaining children's interest and independence, while minimizing conflicts. Some challenges are that it can be time-consuming and difficult for some educators to implement effectively. The document provides examples of how child-centered techniques could be applied to biology education.

1. FACULTY OF EDUCATION
SCHOOL OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
DEPARTMENT
BIOLOGY EDUCATION
GROUP 15
UNIVERSITY OF
LAGOS

2. CHILD-CENTERED
DESIGN
 AYOLE IDOWU OLUFAYO
199037005
 OKEKWUO ESTHER NGOZI
130310023
 ONAYEMI TEMILADE REBECCA
140310522

3. INTRODUCTIO
N
Child centered curriculum design is a type
of curriculum design where the children
take command of their own of learning.
Teachers are there to provide support and
facilitate child’s learning but the children
determine the direction of their own
learning following their natural curiosities,
interests and passions.

4. INTRODUCTION
In child centered curriculum design, children co-create
their learning objectives and goals together with the
teacher; It capitalize on the children’s interest and
empower them to take an active role, children are
emotionally invested, they are willing to explore in-
depth and are able to reach deeper levels of
understanding. It acknowledges that learners are not
uniform but individuals, and therefore should not, in all
cases, be subject to a standardized curriculum. For
children, child-centered curriculum is just like fun!

5.  Active Learning: Child-centered curriculum design seeks
to meet a child’s needs on all levels social, cognitive,
physical, and emotional.
 Explore: This type of design allows children to be mentally
and physically active using their whole bodies and their
senses to explore and learn about their world.
 It views play as children’s work: Children are allowed to
plan, test, question, experiment to contrast their own
knowledge about people, objects, events and ideas, in
other words it encourages creativity of the child.

6. CHARACTERISTICS OF CHILD
CENTERED CURRICULUM
DESIGN
 Evaluation is Continuous and Remedial: In child-centered
curriculum, the evaluation procedure is continuous and
remedial. Child’s deficiencies are identified and remedial
measures are instituted in progressive manner.
 It Emphasizes Child’s Individual Differences; The child-
centered curriculum approach in no way minimizes the
importance of the teacher as he has to study the child
psychologically and has to adopt his methods of teaching to
suit individual differences. In spite of transmitting knowledge
alone, his function now is to develop the entire personality of
the child.
CHARACTERISTICS OF CHILD CENTERED CURRICULUM DESIGN

7.  In Child Centered Design, children co-create their learning
objectives and goals together with teachers. This is because it
capitalizes on the children’s interests and empowers them to take
an active role. So, the children are emotionally invested in their
own learning and are willing to explore in-depth to reach deeper
levels of understanding. For children, child-centered curriculum
just feels like fun.
 Child Centered Design maintains children’s interest by allowing
them to do what is important to them. It gives children the
opportunity to develop skills with which to take care of their own
needs and solve problems.
 Child Centered Curriculum minimizes adult-child conflicts and
prevents boredom.
MERITS OF CHILD CENTERED CURRICULUM DESIGN

8.  In Child Centered Design, Teaching and Learning focuses on
the needs, abilities, interests, and learning styles of the
students.
 Child Centered Curriculum is an “active learning” educational
approach that seeks to meet a child's needs on all levels
social, cognitive, physical, and emotional.
 Child Centered Curriculum helps children develop executive
skills (self control) and gain knowledge and skills in content
areas such as creative representation, language and literacy,
initiative and social relations, movement and music,
classification and serration, number, space and time.
MERITS OF CHILD CENTERED CURRICULUM DESIGN

9.  Child centered curriculum is an approach to learning with
not as much structure as the traditional method, hereby
causing students to feel overwhelmed and may not pull as
much from learning as they would normally do.
 Child centered curriculum gives the learners too much
independence
 It is very difficult for some educators as the teacher has to
know each of the students personally or have a close
relationship with his/her student to be able to meet them in
their individual's developmental level.
DEMERITS OF CHILD CENTERED CURRICULUM DESIGN

10.  Child centered curriculum is time consuming as it requires a
longer time for students to achieve their goals hence it is
difficult to achieve curriculum targets.
 In child centered curriculum design, the teacher here serves
as a guide and not a recipient of knowledge. The students
have to be handy in the learning activities. Therefore,
students who do not have team skills will find it hard to
follow with their team. This is a major constraint in child
centered design because in child centered curriculum
design all the learners are to be carried along.
Consideration of specific nature of student demands, such
as the ability to work together proves to be a daunting task.
DEMERITS OF CHILD CENTERED CURRICULUM DESIGN

11. For Biology, here some of the ways child centered
curriculum design may be applied:
1.CLASSROOM SET UP: Desks are arranged in small
group and they face each other
2.TEACHING STYLE: Learners learn in pairs or in small
groups as well as from the teacher. Teacher adjusts
instruction to individual learning style
3.EXPERIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE: Learner’s
experience and knowledge are regularly used in
instruction.
TECHNIQUES

12. 4.LEARNER’S CREATIVITY: Highly encouraged most of
the time.
5.ASSESSMENT: Learners are continuously assessed
and assisted.
6.RAPPORT: Teachers enquires how learners are doing
and uses their names.
7.KNOWLEDGE OF THE WHOLE CHILD: Teacher knows
learner’s profile and background.
TECHNIQUES

13. REFERENCES
 Mascolo, M. F. (2009) Beyond student‐centred and
teacher‐centred pedagogy: teaching and learning as
guided participation, Pedagogy and the Human Sciences,
1(1), 3– 27.
 Google Scholar.
 National Teachers Institute (2012), Basic Classroom
Teaching Methods and Techniques, Manual for Retraining
of Primary School Teachers (TESSA)
 Nelly C.A(2016). Effect of child centered methods of
teaching and learning science activities in Pre-school in
Kenya. Journal Of Education and Practice, 1(27),1-9.
 Nkutumba,R.(2020) advantages and disadvantages of
student centered learning . Journal Of English Language
and Literature 8(1), 132-134.
 R.O Igwe, 2000.Fundamentals of Curriculum and
Instruction

14. THANKS FOR LISTENING