PROCESS OF CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT

PROCESS OF CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT

1. Assessment of Educational Needs

   • Need assessment is an important fist step in determining what the curriculum should be for a given population during a particular period of time. We should, identify the target students and prepare their profile.
   • There are two means of needs assessment
     • First, we assess educational needs through specially mounted surveys.
     • The second means of needs assessment is the analysis of existing data, such as education commissions' reports, and government policies.

2. Formulating Educational Objectives

   • Now you have to transform the needs into aims and objectives.
     • Matching: The objectives should be related to the broad goals of education from which they are derived.
     • Worth: Worth relates to whether attaining an objecrive has value in the life of the student in the present or future
     • Wording: The statements of the objectives should be worded properly, so that students can easily understand the intended outcomes.
     • Logical grouping: The objectives should be grouped according to some common idea or in terms of domains - cognitive, affective and psychomotor.
     • Revision: The objectives require periodic revision because students' needs, the realm of knowledge, instructional strategies change at a very fast.

3. Criteria for Content Selection

   • By content, we imply learning experiences, besides subject matter.
   • The curriculum content should enable students to gain and apply knowledge in day to day life.
   • The content selected should contribute to the student's knowledge or understanding of the reality of human life.
     • Some of the criteria for content selection
       • Significance
       • Validity
       • Interest

4. Organising the Content

   • One of the most potent factors that determines the way learning takes place is the organisation of the curriculum.
   • Sequencing
     • Putting the content and materials into some sort of order of succession.
   • Curriculum organisation is both a difficult and a complex task.
   • Continuity
     • The students should be provided with experiences step by step, leading to the examination of more complex forms of criticism and analysis of ideas.
   • Integration
     • It is recognised that learning is more effective when facts and principles Curriculum Development from one field can be related to another.

5. Selecting Learning Experiences

   • It refers to the teaching-learning process, the methods followed and the activities planned to facilitate the teaching-learning process.
   • Both the content and learning experiences comprise the overall curriculum.
   • Questions which should be addressed before we select learning experiences.
     • Do the learning experiences enable students to develop thinking skills and rational powers?
     • Do the learning experiences allow students to address their needs and interests?
   • The educational environment should address social needs as well as the development of awareness, appreciation and empathy for others. It should stimulate purposeful student activity and allow for a range of activities that facilitate learning.

6. Evaluating the Curriculum

   • The aim of evaluation is to produce empirical evidence about the nature, direction and extent of behavioural changes which arise from educational endeavours
   • Evaluation is both qualitative and quantitative.
   • There are two types of evaluation.
     • Student evaluation
       • Student evaluation aims at assessing the changes in the student's behaviour.
     • Cupiculum evaluation
       • The purpose of curriculum evaluation is to collect and use feedback for improving the curriculum

7. Development Try-out

   • Development try-out is a formative evaluation which is carried out at every stage of curriculum development.
   • It aims at improving every component of the curriculum during its planning and development.
   • Emperical data are collected so that decisions can be made to revise the cumculum while it is being developed.

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