Sociological Dimensions in Curriculum Development

1. Sociological Dimensions in
Curriculum Development
Glenn Villanueva | Jevie Ramos

2. Introduction
• Several social forces are at work
during the process of
curriculum development.
• Modern careers require skills
that are more technologically
complex, and also more
interactive.
• Probably the most powerful is
the national economy, because
schools are challenged
constantly to meet the
workforce demands of a
changing world.

3. Introduction • Successful workers in the
modern world must possess
both an understanding of
electronic technology and
the ability to work
cooperatively with others.
• The curriculum must change
to meet these needs.

4. Social Forces that Influence
Curriculum Development

5. Social Forces
that Influence
Curriculum
Development
• Social phenomena must be taken into
consideration, without forgetting that
the individual must maintain his
identity and individuality.
• Behaviors in situation such as
compassion, understanding, sensitivity,
awareness, affection, acceptance,
initiative and inquiry.
• The curriculum must foment a
reasonable conformity to social norms
and standards without going against
individual expression.

6. Social Forces that Influence
Curriculum Development
• Education must enrich society, improve the living conditions
of its people and make possible its optimum development.
• The curricular offering must be made relevant to the
economic demands of society if we are to achieve the goal of
producing people who are to provide direction and guidance
in the operation of commerce ad industry.
• Reorient the curriculum in both contents and emphasis on
liberal education.

7. Guidelines to Social Considerations
in Curriculum Development

8. Guidelines to
Social
Considerations in
Curriculum
Development
• There are basic agencies in society that
demand from educational curriculum
some special skills, attitudes and
knowledge.
• School curriculum developers must
take into consideration not only
national and international needs but
also local, regional and provincial
needs.
• Sense of identity among people in the
country, cultural pluralism should be
respected, thus taking into
consideration the rich cultural heritage
of all people, including the minorities.

9. Guidelines to Social Considerations
in Curriculum Development
• Analysis of society and culture, of tradition and
heritage, social pressures and established social
habits.
• Analysis of culture and society thus provides some
guide for determining the main objectives of the
curriculum, for the selection of content, and for
deciding what the stress in learning activities.
• Diagnosing of the gaps, deficiencies, and variations of
the backgrounds of development is an important
step in determining what the curriculum should be.

10. Guidelines to Social
Considerations in
Curriculum
Development
• The task of selecting and organizing learning experiences
in curriculum development must take into consideration
the culture of society.
• Society’s concept of the function of the school
determines to a great extent what kind of curriculum
schools will have.
• Education preserves and transmits the cultural
heritage. Since all cultural traditions have roots,
cultural continuity is possible only if education
preserves this heritage by passing on the truths
worked out in the past to the new generation.
• Education is an instrument for transforming
culture. Education can and does play a creative
role in modifying and event reshaping the
culture in which it functions.

11. Guidelines to
Social
Considerations
in Curriculum
Development
• Educations results in
individual development.
Some progressive
educators emphasize the
creative role of education
in society by stressing the
development of a creative
individual.
• Continuous examination of the goals
and demands of this changing society
and the forces operating in it is in order
to keep the curriculum reality-oriented:
to determine what knowledge is most
worthwhile, which skills must be
mastered, which values are relevant.
• Sustained study of the culture in which
education functions and a sustained
effort to mobilize the resources of the
social sciences such as biology,
anthropology, sociology and social
psychology and to translate whatever is
learned about society or culture into
educational policy are needed.

12. Guidelines to Social
Considerations in
Curriculum
Development
• Gaining social perspective in curriculum development is
by analyzing the impact of technology and the changes it
has produced or is producing in society. Expansion of
technology has brought vast changes in what modern
man is required to do.
• There are new conditions which set new tasks for
curriculum developers:
• A tremendous enlargement of the environment to
be understood and the culture to be transmitted.
There is an unprecedented expansion of
knowledge.
• An ever increasing demand for increasingly skilled
and literate workers. As new occupations have
sprung up, demands have been made on the
educational institutions to prepare the nation’s
workers.

13. Guidelines to Social Considerations
in Curriculum Development
• The necessity for the establishment of
intercultural communication among the diverse
cultures as a basis for building a world and
national community.
• The difficulties involved in sustaining wide
latitudes of free individual choice in a world of
magnified power and shrunken space and time.
There is competition among nations, school
systems, provinces and among individuals.

14. Guidelines to Social Considerations in Curriculum
Development
• Shifts in political control of a nation, province or
community in themselves may cause curriculum
changes. The incoming political power may seek to
alter the school curriculum so as to bring them
more in line with their social and political beliefs.
• A constantly accelerating rate of change which
makes forecasting hazardous and out speeds the
efforts of education to draw abreast of needs.

15. SUMMARY
Many forces today influence society.
Each social institution, including
educational system, affects and is
affected by other facets of society.
Social customs and aims in cultural,
political, and economic matters also
shape school curriculum. Each of
society’s institutions is accorded
important functions to perform in
relation to the system as a whole
and to its various parts.

16. SUMMARY
• Decisions of governmental agencies, for example, affect
the school and home. And operations of these two
institutions in turn affect governmental
practice. Probably the most powerful is the national
economy, because schools are challenged constantly to
meet the workforce demands of a changing world.
• Modern careers require skills that are more
technologically complex, and also more interactive.

17. QUESTIONS?

18. THANK YOU!
Act as if what you do makes a difference. Believe me, it
does.