UNIT 1
EDM21ES
CURRICULUM STUDIES
WHAT IS CURRICULUM
What is curriculum ?
• Curriculum is plans or prescriptions for what teachers should teach
• The subjects comprising a course of study in a school, college or university.
• Curriculum is from a Latin word which IS “CURRERE”
• It means to run a course
Different levels of curriculum
• Curriculum is prescribed at different levels
1.National prescriptions such as national curriculum
2.Provincial guidelines
3.Teaching plans of individual teachers
The intended curriculum:
Curriculum- as -plan
• The prescribed or intended curriculum sets out what its designers
intend should be taught
• The curriculum is only what is planned
• Prescribed to be taught to learners or what is intended.
• Its presents teachers and learners with a plan of the ideal course of
action
What is a curriculum plan
• Curriculum as a “course to be run.
• curriculum is only what is planned and prescribed to be taught to
learners or what is intended.
• Curriculum presents teachers with a plan of the ideal course of action
Textbooks are similar to curriculum plan in
this way,
They list content and concepts to be learnt
They organise and sequence learning
They provide ideas about how learners should learn.
and how teachers should teach
They answer the curriculum question ‘what should we teach’.
and involve a selection of particular content for teaching
Why is the intended curriculum
important?
• Teachers are sure about what content they should teach or of the order in which
concepts should be taught
• Sometimes teachers find an intended curriculum to be not specific enough.
• (in other words, it does not prescribe clearly enough or that a curriculum
specifies what is to be taught too tightly.
• leaving them little space for their own decision-making about what to teach
The absence of a clear national curriculum plan leads to several difficulties
• If every teacher taught something entirely different,
this could cause problems for learners who move
from one school to another. A national curriculum
serves to standardise what is learnt throughout a
country in order to prevent these problems.
• Some teachers may construct their own curricula that
exclude essential knowledge.
The absence of a clear national curriculum
plan leads to several difficulties
• If every teacher taught something entirely different, this could cause
problems for learners who move from one school to another.
• A national curriculum serves to standardise what is learnt throughout
a country in order to prevent these problems.
• Some teachers may construct their own curricula that exclude
essential knowledge.
Four different forms that the prescribed
curriculum can take:
• An official syllabus document or learning guide
• A teachers teaching plan from one school
• A textbook
• A curriculum framework (or broad policy document)
All of these curriculum plans come from or would probably be
approved by the Department of Education
CAPS
• Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement(CAPS) tries to include
everything in one document and to specify the content very clearly.
• A national curriculum (CAPS) outlines a nations educational priorities
It defines school subjects and the knowledge included in them
It gives guidance on how this knowledge might be taught in the classroom
It serves as a guide for teachers in that it provides the minimum
knowledge, skills and values that learners are required to learn
It provides a statement of knowledge, skills and values that the curriculum
designers believe are important for the individual learners and society
The enacted curriculum: curriculum in
practice
• The enacted curriculum refers to instructions( e.g. what happens in the
classroom)
• What is set out in the intended curriculum is not always what occurs in practice
• The government prescribes a curriculum or teachers receive a planned
curriculum cannot guarantee that:
• Teachers will teach the curriculum in the manner in which the planners may
intend
• Learners will learn what has been prescribed in the curriculum or even in the
adapted curriculum
What causes the planned and enacted
curricula to be different?
Curriculum is altered by both teachers and learners
• Large number of learners in class.eg Practical environmental
constraints create a gap between the planned curriculum and the
practiced curriculum
• Lack of knowledge as well as low level planning and preparedness
Why is important to understand the
concept of the enacted curriculum?
• Firstly, it provides a more complete view of teaching
and learning.
• It makes it possible to explain why learners often learn
very different things from what teachers teach them.
• It encourages questions such as:
- Are teachers teaching certain kind of knowledge and
values without knowing that they are doing this?
Why is important to understand the
concept of the enacted curriculum?
• Secondly , a curriculum-in- practice(or enacted curriculum)
emphasizes the teacher’s role as an interpreter of the curriculum.
• It demonstrates how teachers’ actions- both good and bad,
thoughtful and thoughtless
The notion of the enacted curriculum emphasizes the centrality of
instruction( or teaching and learning) in any consideration of
educational process, including that of curriculum
Explicit curriculum
• “Obvious or apparent” curriculum
• It is what is official and planned.
• The subjects to be taught, mission of the school and knowledge and skills to be
taught.
Implicit curriculum
• There are things that learners learn at school that are not explicitly (or
overtly) included in lesson planning or in curriculum plans.
• These can be termed as implicit curriculum.
• The implicit curriculum includes all those things learners learn at
school that are not part of the official, explicit curriculum.
Implicit curriculum
• Hidden curriculum
• Learning that is not recorded
• Lessons that arise from culture of the school and the behaviors,
attitude and expectations that characterizes that culture.
• Difficult to identify and articulate
……………END………………..
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