A. Nature and Concepts of Curriculum In General
The popular meaning of
curricluum is “ A curriculum is an organized set of formal educationan and
or training intentions.” The scope of term varies from a curriculu m for a
small unit within a single subject to a muloti – year sequence that includes
several academic subjects.
The implications of the above definition
need to be made explicit.
1.
A curriculum is intentions, or plans. They may
be merely mental plans, but more commonly exist in written form.
2.
A curriculum is not activities that result from
the implementation of a curriculum.
3.
A curriculum contains many other kinds of
intentions, such as what learning students are to develop, the means of
evaluation to be used to assess learning, the criteria according to which
students will be admitted to the program, the materials and equipment to be
used, and the qualities required of teachers.
4.
A curriculum involves learning, it does not
include random, unplanned, or non learning activities.
5.
As an organized set intention, a curriculum
articulates the relationship among its different elements (objectives, content,
evaluation, etc), integrating them into a unified and coherent whole. In a
word, a curriculum is a system.
6. Both
education and training are referred to in the definition to avvoid
misunderstanding that occurs if one is ommited.
The term “curriculum” and “syllabus”
often appear in our daily activity as the students. Unfortunately, some people
include us, often think that “curriculum” and “syllabus” are same, but in the
reality, both are really different. To know the differences between curriculum
and syllabus, we have to know about the concept and definition of both.
In the broadest sense the term “curriculum” ordinarily is
used by specialists in the field in two ways: (1) to indicate, roughly, a plan
for the education of learners, and (2) to identify a field of study. Curriculum
as a plan for the education of learners usually is referred to as curriculum or
the curriculum.
Curriculum as a field of study, like most specialized
fields, is defined by (1) the range of subject matters with which it is
concerned (the substantives, structure), and (2) the procedures of inquiry and
practice that it follows (the syntactical structure). Thus, the curriculum
field, for our purpose, may be describes in term of (1) the subject matters and
(2) the many processes with which specialists are characteristically concerned.
B. Concepts
of the Curriculum.
The word “curriculum” comes from a Latin root
meaning “racecourse”, and traditionally the schools’ curriculum has represented
something like that figuratively speaking.
·
Curriculum as the Program of Studies.
When asked to describe the curriculum of
particular high school, the informed layman often recites a list of the subject
offered (or required) by the school. Furthermore, reflection on our own
experience will serve to remind us that course titles ordinarily reveal very
little with regard to learning out comes and the experiences that students can
expect to have while taking the course. For these reason, therefore specialists
in the field prefer to use the term “program of studies” rather than curriculum
to refer to school’s subjects and/or course offerings.
·
Curriculum as Course Content.
The content of particular courses in the
program often is regarded as the curriculum. This concept of curriculum, like
the one described above, was prevalent among most professional educators before
the advent of the curriculum movement.
It conceives of curriculum solely as the data or information recorded in
guided or textbooks and overlooks many
additional elements that need to be provided for in learning plan. Such
a conception of curriculum limits planning to the selection and organization of
information that learners are acquire. Clearly, other elements in the
educational arena (e.g. the conditions under which learners are to interact
with content) need to be included in the definition of curriculum.
·
Curriculum as Planned Learning Experiences.
A curriculum conceived of as planned learning
experiences is one of the most prevalent concepts among the specialists in the
field today. For example, Krug (1956:4) refers to curriculum as “All the means
employed by the school to provide students with opportunities for desirable
learning experiences,” and Doll (1964:15) writes: “The commonly accepted
definition of the curriculum has changed from content of courses of study and
lists of subject and courses to all the experiences which are offered to
learners under the auspices or direction of the school. This development is
achieved through the experiences that the learners have, and so it seems
reasonable to conclude that the curriculum, as a blueprint for education,
consist ultimately of the experiences that it is planned for learners to have.
·
Curriculum as Experiences “Had” under the Auspices of the School.
Writers who favor the broader definition of the
curriculum sometimes refers to the “invisible curriculum” or the “hidden
curriculum”. Those aspect of the curriculum that are unplanned or unintended,
and therefore overlooked. They point out that certain planned curriculum
experiences are designed. For example to teach students to read, but as a
result of certain other experiences “had” by students, they may also learn to
dislike reading. Thus, both the experiences that teach students to read and
those that teach dislike of reading must
be counted as part of the curriculum, even though the latter experiences were
not planned for and are unintended.
·
Curriculum as a Structured Series of Intended Learning Outcomes.
Among the writers who view “planned learning
experiences” as too broad a definition of the curriculum is Mauritz Jhonson. In
a widely debated essay, this curriculum theories point out that “there is. .
.no experience until an interaction between the individual and his environment
actually occurs. Clearly, such interaction characterized instruction, not
curriculum. He argues that because a curriculum constitutes a guide for
instruction, it must be viewed as “anticipatory, not reportorial”. Curriculum
“prescribes (or at least anticipates) the result of instruction,” and “does not
prescribe the means, the activities, materials, or even the instructional
content to be used in achieving the result”. Thus, he maintains, the curriculum
can consist only of “a structured series of intended learning outcomes”
[Jhonson, (1967:130)].
·
Curriculum as a (Written) Plan for Action.
Macdonald (1965:3) proposes that schooling be
conceptualized as the interaction of four systems. The first of these,
teaching, is defined as the “professionally oriented behavior of individual
personality systems, called teachers...”. The second system, learning consist
of the “actions that students perform which teachers perceive to be task related...”.
Combining these two systems, Macdonald defines the third instruction, as “the
action context within which formal teaching and learning behaviors take place”.
In other words, the teaching learning system. He point out that while teaching
and learning taken separately are personality systems, their combination,
instruction, is a social systems. The
fourth system of schooling is the curriculum system, which like instruction, is
a social system. The curriculum system consist of those individuals whose
behaviors eventuate in a curriculum. Macdonald then defines a curriculum as a
plan for action. A plan which guides instruction.
C. Definition
of Curriculum and Syllabus (in ELT context)
1. Curriculum
The word
“curriculum” comes from a Latin root meaning “racecourse,” and traditionally,
the school’s curriculum has represented something like that – figuratively
speaking, of course – to most people.[1] The term “curriculum”
ordinarily is used by specialists in the field in two ways: (1) to indicate,
roughly, a plan for the education of learners, and (2) to identify a field of
study.[2]
The term curriculum
is open to a variety of definitions. Kelly (1989:14) says that any
definition of curriculum must include:
The intention of
the planners, the procedures adopted for the implementation of those
intentions, the actual experiences of the pupils resulting from the teachers’
direct attempts to carry out their or the planner’s intentions, and the ‘hidden
learning’ that occurs as a-by product of the organization of the curriculum,
and, indeed, of the school.[3]
From the field of
applied linguistics, a similar definition of curriculum is proposed by
Richard, Platt and Platt in the Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics
(1992:94):
Curriculum is an educational program which
state:
a. The educational purposes of the program (the ends)
b. The content, teaching procedures and learning experiences which
will be necessary to achieve this purpose (the means)
c. Some means for assessing whether or not the educational ends have
been achieved[4]
Some specialists
believe that the definitions of curriculum should be variable. Mann, for the
example holds that defining curriculum “is a matter of how, for the convenience
of enacting a commitment,” the student of curriculum “decides to imagine the in
fact unsliced and unsliceable pie to be sliced”[5]
let’s see defenition of
Curriculum according to some specialist :
Experts
|
Explanation
|
Robert: 1976
|
standarized
ground covered by students
|
A.V. Kelly:
1989
|
the
educational program of an institution and argues.
|
Richards,
Platt and Platt: 1992
|
An
educational program which states:
a.
The educational purposes.
b.
The content, teaching procedures,
and learning experiences.
c.
Some means for assessing.
|
Denise Finney
|
aspects of
the planning, implementation and evaluation of an educational program.
|
Richards: 2001
|
determining knowledge, skills, and values students, experiences, planned,
measured, and evaluated in school.
|
Richards: 1990
|
concerned with principles and procedures for the planning, delivery,
management, and assessment of teaching and learning.
|
From defenition above we can conglude
that curriculum is a number of ideas
that contain instruction, a plan, process, time and everything which are need
to make a better way og getting education in school.
2.
Syllabus
Syllabus is a more detailed and operational
statement of teaching and learning elements which translates the philosophy of
the curriculum into a series of planed steps leading towards more narrowly define
objectives at each level. Dubin & Olshtain, (1997: 28).
This term covers the teaching learning items, materials,
equipments and the evaluation tools. A finished syllabus is an overall plan the
learning process. It must specify what components, or learning items, must be
available, or learned by a certain time; what is the most efficient sequence in
which the are learned; what items can be learned simultaneously; what items are
available from the stock, and the whole process is determined by consideration
of how long it takes to produce or learn a component or item. The process is
under continual scrutiny by means of stock checks, or tests and examinations.
If we point out the main ideas of syllabus it comes as follows:
1. A syllabus is a specification of work of a particular department
in a school or college, and it might be broken down into subsections, which
will define the work of a particular group or class.
2. In practice, it is often linked to time semesters, terms, weeks,
or courses, which are tied to these. But this link is not essential, and may be
counter productive in that the time is teacher based rather than learner based.
But a syllabus must specify a starting point, which should be related to a
realistic assessment of the level of beginning students, and ultimate goals,
which may or may not be realized by the end of the course, depending on the
abilities of the learners and their progress in a particular course.
3. It will specify some kind of sequence based on-
·
Sequencing intrinsic to a theory
of language learning or to the structure of specified material relatable to
language acquisition;
·
Sequencing constrained by
administrative needs, materials.
4. A syllabus is a document of administrative convenience and will
only be partly justified on theoretical grounds. Hence it will be negotiable
and adjustable, enshrining the most useful experience of the past in order to
ease the workload of the present.
5. A syllabus can only specify what is taught; it cannot organize
what is learnt. It can, methodologically, allow for opportunities for
acquisition and/or learning, but such opportunities cannot spelt out in detail
as they will reflect the personalities of learners and continuing relationships
established as the class progresses.
6. Not to have a syllabus is to refuse to allow one’s assumptions to
be scrutinized or to enable different teachers to relate their work to each
other’s. It is consequently an essential feature of work in a democratic
profession or as part of democratic education
D. Relationship
Between Curriculum and Instruction
We
may simplistically view curriculum as that which is taught and instruction a
the means used to teach that which is taught. Curriculum can be conceived as
the “what”, and instruction, the “how.” We may think of the curriculum as a
program, plan, content, and learning experience wheeas we may characterize
instruction as methodology, the teaching act, ijmplemaentation, and
presentation.
Distunguishing
instructin from curricuulum, Johnson defined instruction as “ the instruction
between a teachiong agent and one or more individuals intending to learn.” [6] James B. Macdonald
viewed curriculum activity as the production of plans for further action and
instruction as the putting of plans into operation. Thus according to
Macdonald, curriculum planning precedes instruction.
In
the course of planning for either the curriculum of instruction, decisions are
mad. Decisions about the curriculum relate to plans or programs and thus are programmatic,
while those about instruction (and thereby implementation) are methodological.
We may consider both curriculum and instruction as two subsystem or subdimension
of a large system or enterprise called schooling or education.
E. Curriculum
Development and Curriculum Design: Difference and Similiarities
a) Similarities
Curriculum
design and development are held together by the principle of constructive
alignment. In a well-designed curriculum there will be alignment between
courses, modules, modes of teaching, assessment and grading criteria and this
is achieved by linking everything to clearly stated learning outcomes.
Constructive
alignment is the dominant theory underpinning curriculum design processes(John
Biggs)
b) Differences
Curriculum development refers
to a process which determines how curriculum contruction will proceed. The
proceses usually overlap, with develpoment and construction decisions being
made at the same time. For example, a curriculum devbelopment decision to emply
english teachers to structure the high school literature curriculum implies
certain priorcurriculum construction decisions regarding the nature of english
(literature) and organization of the curriculum along subject lines.
Curriculum desigtn refers to
the arrangement of the components or elements of a curriculum. The components
or elements included in a curriculum are a. aims, goals, and objectives b.
subject matter or content c. learning activities and d. evaluation.
F. Language
Curriculum Development
Language curriculum
development is an aspect of a broader field of education activity known as
curriculum development or curriculum studies. Curriculum development focuses on
determining what knowledge, skills, and values students learn in schools, what
experiences should be provided to bring about intended learning outcomes, and
how teaching and learning in schools or educational system can be planned,
measured, and evaluated. Language curriculum development refers to the field of
applied linguistics that addresses these issues. It describes an interrelated
set of processes that focuses on designing, revising, implementing, and
evaluating language program.
G. Historical
Background of Language Curriculum Development
The history of curriculum
development in language teaching starts with the nation of syllabus design.
Syllabus design is one aspect of curriculum development but it is not identical
with it. A syllabus is a specification of the content of course of instruction
and list what will be taught an tested. It includes the processes that are used
to determine the needs of a group of learners, to develop aims or objectives
for a program to address those needs, to determine an appropriate syllabus,
course structure, teaching method, and materials, and to carry out an
evaluation of the language program that result from these process. Curriculum
development in language teaching as we know it today really began in the 1960s,
though issues of syllabus design emerged as a major factor in language teaching
much earlier.
If we look back at the
history of language teaching throughout the twentieth century, much of impetus
for change in approaches to language teaching came about from changes in
teaching methods. The methods concept in teaching-the nation of systematic set
of teaching practices based on a particular theory of language and language
learning-is a powerful one and the quest for better methods has been a
preoccupation of many teachers and applied linguistic since the beginning of
the twentieth century. Many methods have come and gone in the last 100 years in
pursuit of the “best method,” as the following chronology illustrates, with
dates suggesting periods of greatest dominance :
1. Grammar
Translation Method (1800-1900)
2. Direct
method (1890-1930)
3. Structural
Method (1930-1960)
4. Reading
Method (1920-1950)
5. Audio-lingual
Method (1950-1970)
6. Situational
Method (1950-1970)
7. Communicative
Approach (1970-present)
The oral-based method known
as the Direct Method, which developed in opposition to the Grammar Translation
Method in the late of the nineteenth century, prescribes not only the way a
language should be taught, with an emphasis on the exclusive use of the target
language, intensive question-and-answer teaching techniques, and demonstration
and dramatization to communicate meanings of words; it also prescribes the
vocabulary and grammar to be taught and the order in which it should be
presented.
Harrold Palmer summarized the
principles of language teaching methodology at that time as follows:
1. Initial preparation- orienting the students
toward language learning.
2. Habit-forming- establishing correct habits.
3. Accuracy- avoiding inaccurate language.
4. Gradation- each stage prepares the students
for the text.
5. Proportion- each aspect of language given
emphasis
6. Concreteness- movement from concrete to the
abstract.
7. Interest- arousing the students’ interest at
all times.
8. Order of Progression- hearing before
speaking, and both before writing.
9. Multiple line of approach- many different
ways used to teach the language.
(Palmer {1922} 1968, 38-39).
[1]
Robert (1976:6).
[2]
Beauchamp (1968:6) proposes a third meaning: “A . . . legitimate use of the tem
curriculum is to refer to a curriculum system . . . . A curriculum
system in schools is the system within
which decisions are made about what the curriculum will be and how it will be
implemented.” In this text we prefer to
employ such compound terms as “curriculum development” and “curriculum
implementation” to indicate the process that Beauchamp includes in term
“curriculum system.”
[3]
See “THE ELT Curriculum: A Flexible Model for a Changing World” chapter
7 by Denise Finney, page
[4]
See “THE ELT Curriculum: A Flexible Model for a Changing World” chapter
7 by Denise Finney, page 2.
[5] In
Mills (1971:731)
[6] Johnson, p. 138. See also
Saylor, Alexander, and Lewis, Curriculum Planning for Better Teaching and
Learning, 4th ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981),
pp. 9 – 10 for definition of instruction
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