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Types OF curriculum

The document discusses three types of curriculum: the formal curriculum that is officially documented, the informal curriculum involving a teacher's personality and interactions, and the hidden curriculum of unrecognized lessons. It also distinguishes between the written, supported, taught, and tested aspects of curriculum. Current issues discussed include curriculum clutter, the influence of testing on teaching, and the need for alignment between written, taught and tested curriculum. Site-based management and teacher autonomy are also examined in relation to curriculum development and implementation.

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DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES OF CURRICULUM IN SCHOOLS 2.1 Three different types • formal curriculum (core) • informal curriculum • the hidden curriculum
Formal curriculum •. this is the curriculum that appears in the curriculum guides, state regulations or officially stated and documented
The informal curriculum This type of curriculum involves the subtle but important personality variables of the teacher and the way they interact with their colleagues and children. •It also includes learning how to answer tests and understanding what tests mean and the judgment about students and their potential success in schools. • Theses judgments result in children accepting them or seeing themselves as described or labelled by the teacher.
The hidden curriculum • it is the unrecognized and is taught without formal recognition, e.g being clean, being on time, etc. It is rarely contained in formal curriculum, it contains ‘structured silences’ (Aronowitz & Giroux, 1985) that embody expectations and presuppositions about social conduct and cultural differences/racial differences.
Continued… • this is the curriculum that is used to track and differentiate children by their ability • It also represents the unrecognized and unofficial aspects of designing or delivering the curriculum. • Anything being taught in schools without being in any curriculum guide is considered a hidden curriculum. The hidden curriculum is by and large not a product of conscious intention.
Distinguishing between aspects of curricula - the written - the supported - the taught and - the tested - The intentional curriculum is the set of learnings that the school system consciously offers in contradiction to the ‘hidden’.
Curriculum Co-ordination and Articulation • See Fig 1.1. and Table 1.1 on pp 4 and 5 of English (2010) • Although teachers don’t have to be doing exactly the same thing in a particular grade and subject, there has to be a connection and focus • Coordination refers to extent of focus and connectivity present in and across schools in a particular grade and subject • Articulation refers to the vertical and lateral (horizontal) connectivity and focus in a subject at a particular grade – not only in coverage of content of the grade but in preparing for the next grade.
Current Practices and Complaints About Curriculum • that it is developed to assist teachers in identifying commonalities to teach in line with local and state policies • the school textbook is independent from the curriculum and in theory is not meant to replace it but help implement it • the writing of curriculum is flawed and based more on the local content, demands and priorities instead of creating a philosophy first, followed by goals and other priorities like social needs and knowledge requirements
Continue… • Curriculum clutter • In the US, teachers complain of too much to teach with much of it unrelated because much of the curriculum is decentralized • This is not the case here where the CAPS (to be discussed in future sessions) directs what to teach at all levels of the school system • The solution to clutter, according to English, (2010) is to engage in the development of an overall rationale or philosophy that helps develop the boundaries to examine what has been a big question regarding curriculum: “What is worth putting in a curriculum?”
Continue • Testing has become widespread in identifying what is worth teaching • Testing has an influence in what has to be taught because the students must know the answers for them to do well. • Therefore many teachers teach to test • Plato believed that an ideal curriculum is the one comprising of academics, aesthetic, and athletics. This was based on the notion that the development of a human being had to involve the mind, the body, and the soul
Site-based management and Decentralization of Curriculum Development • Many countries have moved from centralization to decentralization wherein site-based management has been given more responsibilities. • Curriculum which is site-based should as a consequence also have a site- based testing. • The alignment between what is taught and tested should be carefully taken into consideration hence the relationship between what is regarded as written curriculum, the taught curriculum and the tested curriculum
Continue… • The use of ‘quality control’ agencies in most countries become a necessity to ensure that there is an alignment of the three curricula mentioned above. • Site-based management can be affectively used to optimize the selection of methods or means of the local school to optimize the ‘match’ in quality control
Loosely coupled systems and Teacher Autonomy • This refers to the looseness between schools and the system. It is not known whether this looseness is successful in improving the children performance. • Site-based management does not improve the results of the ‘cumulative’ curriculum as the cumulative impact of focused teaching is lost. • A lot has to be done to improve the correlation between the written, taught and tested curricular
Continue… • Teacher autonomy is a problem to administrators in term of adequate supervision and monitoring because amongst others, observation is always obtrusive and changes the classroom environment • The main avenue open to them regarding quality control is to tighten only required, and not every area of the curriculum • Therefore modern supervision and monitoring depend to a large extent on getting teachers to monitor themselves and on ‘training’ teachers to follow the curricular material published by relevant authorities.
The Deadening (Weaken, Lessen, diminish) Impact of Textbooks • In the US, most of the textbooks are not well-written due to the fact that government demands the use of ‘readability’ formulas to determine the level of difficulty of a text, which often leads to catering for the lowest common denominator • The use and reliance on textbooks in schools have increased resulting in a ‘watered down curriculum’ and easier content. • According to Goldstein (1978) 75% of pupil’s classroom time involves the use of a textbook
The Necessary Requirements of an Effective Curriculum • For the curriculum, to be effective, it must at least provide three essentials; • Consistency • Continuity, and • flexibility (open to some interpretations depending on the context). • One of the reason for this the individual learners’ differences and therefore standardization is not recommended
Conclusion • Good education leads to greater differences between pupils and destandardizing education becomes imperative in practice. • Much of the school ideology is aimed as ‘controlling’ students by minimizing the differences between them despite what the instruction emphasizes.
Next Two Sessions • 2nd February Test • What is curriculum • Key concepts associated with Curricula • 9th February Session • Different Views about Curriculum • Readings: English, F.E. (2010) Deciding What to Teach and Test, Corwin and Sage Publications