Process and steps of curriculum development

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Level of curriculum planning
• Factors influencing curriculum planning
• Curriculum development- major factors
of curriculum development
• Explain the process of curriculum
development
• Illustrate its steps
• Curriculum Models, Types and frame
work

Introduction
• Curriculum development - what is it?
It is the organized preparation of
whatever is going to be taught in
schools at a given time in a given year.
• They are made into official
documents, as guides for teachers,
and made obligatory by provincial and
territorial departments.

Curriculum Plan
• A curriculum Plan is the advance
arrangement of learning opportunities
for a particular population of learners.
• Curriculum guide is a written
curriculum.
• Curriculum Planning is the process
whereby the arrangement of
curriculum plans or learning
opportunities are created.

Curriculum planning
• It is the process of preparing for the
duties of teaching, deciding upon
goals and emphases, determining
curriculum content, selecting learning
resources and classroom procedures,
evaluating progress, and looking
toward next steps.

Level of curriculum planning
• According to Goodland curriculum can
be planned at 3 levels-
1. Societal curriculum
2. Institutional curriculum
3. Instructional curriculum

Societal Curriculum
• Carlos Cortes defines Societal
Curriculum as the,
• "Massive ongoing, informal
curriculum of family, peer groups,
neighbourhoods, churches
organizations, occupations, mass
media, and other social forces that
educate all of us throughout our lives

Cont..
• Societal curriculum is the curriculum which is planned
for a large group of students/ class- e.g. B sc. nursing
• It is planned by groups outside of an educational
institution – e.g. National league of nursing
• Curriculum planning at societal level is helpful for
schools, through stimulating, initiating, and supporting
curriculum studies.
• The group concerned with-
 Determining general characteristics of curriculum
content
 Sequence
 Implementation

Institutional curriculum
• Planned by faculty for a clearly identified
group of students who will spend a
specified time period in a particular
institution.
• The curriculum committee decides this
type of curricula.
• It requires high degree of self discipline,
integrity of personal character and an
ability to cooperate with others.

Cont..
• The Institutional Curriculum was designed
to provide a curriculum that is universal to
all programs and either reflects
requirements of hospital.
• It reveals the multiple opportunities that
students have to make progress on
collectively agreed-on learning goals,
beginning with their first day on campus.

Instructional curriculum
• Consists of the content (subject
matter and learning activities).
• Planned day by day, and week by
week by a particular teacher for
a particular group of students.
• Is made in the classroom for the
students by the teacher who
largely determines the
educational fate of her students.
• Includes –
Essential facts,
information ,
concepts,
meanings
principles
• Activities
necessary for
development
• Methods useful in
teaching,
supervision and
guiding ,
evaluating.

Factors influencing curriculum
planning
• Principal’s background
• Political and agricultural factors
• Research findings
• Departmental decisions
• Circulars
• Local governing body rulings
• Programmed instructions
• Study projects
• Committees

Cont..
• Learner’s requirements-
– Health
– Family
– Vocation
– Religion & culture
– Employment opportunity
– Social, civil and economic aspects
– Psychological aspects
• Teachers and subjects to be studied
• Environment within which education
takes place

Availability of resources for
curriculum planning
• The learner and nature of their growth and
development
• The characteristic of past, contemporary and
future society
• Needs and interests of both individual and
society.
• Provision for suggested teaching learning
activities, content & measuring devices.
• Teacher student planning.
• A balance among cognitive, conative and
affective domain of learners.

Cont..
• Include provision for reflective thinking, values,
enhancement of self concept and self esteem.
• It must provide continuous evaluation of aspects
of curriculum.
• Adequate preparation of teachers to meet the
changed requirements of the curriculum.
• Adequate supply of equipments and teaching
aids for student learning
• Adequate preparedness of students to accept the
new curriculum, adequate supervisory and
guidance facilities for teachers needed for
effective implementation of the curriculum.

Curriculum planning cycle
Curricular
cycle
Needs assessment
Design
Implementation
Output
Peyton and Peyton, 1998

Approaches of curriculum
• Approach means a way of dealing with a
situation or problem. It is an initial
proposal or request made to someone.
• Curriculum is a way of dealing with a
curriculum, a way of doing/creating/
designing or thinking about a
curriculum.
• Curriculum practitioners and
implementers may use one or more
approaches in planning, implementing
and evaluating the curriculum.

Approaches of curriculum
Knowledge approach Activity approach Living approach
Belongs to various
segments of
knowledge called
subjects.
Subjects are
selected to transmit
the desirable
knowledge to
younger's.
But sometimes it is
difficult to transmit
encyclopedic
knowledge to them
because of its
specialized branches.
Here subjects are pushed into
background
Activities are selected from
the curricula.
Students engaged themselves
in different activities.
They acquire knowledge of
different activities.
Acquire knowledge of
different subjects incidentally.
Teachers assume the role of
consultants or directors of
activities.
Education becomes learner
centered.
Here education is life
centered.
According to this,
living is learning.
Students learn as
they live their learning
experience.
They learn to the
extent they accept
what they have lived
and retain what they
have accepted.

Principles of curriculum construction

 Curriculum development describes all the
ways in which a training or teaching
organization plans and guides learning.
• This learning can take place in groups or
with individual learners. It can take place
inside or out side a classroom.
• It can take place in an institutional setting
like a school, college or training centre or in a
village or in a field. It is central to the
teaching and learning process (Rogers and
Taylor 1998).

• Systematic planning of what is to be taught and
learned in schools as reflected in courses of
study and school programs.
• The primary focus of a curriculum is on WHAT is
to be taught and WHEN, leaving to the teaching
profession decisions as to HOW this should be
done.
In practice.
• There is no clear distinction between curriculum
content and methodology - how a topic is taught
often determines what is taught.

Definition
• Curriculum development is defined as
planned, purposeful, progressive, and
systematic process to create positive
improvements in the educational system.
•
• Curriculum development is a process of
improving the curriculum.
• Every time there are changes or
developments happening around the world
by which the school curricula are affected.

Various approaches for
curriculum development
1. Analysis (i.e. need analysis, task
analysis)
2. Design (i.e. objective design)
3. Selecting (i.e. choosing appropriate
learning/teaching methods and
appropriate assessment method)
4. Formation ( i.e. formation of the
curriculum implementation committee /
curriculum evaluation committee)
5. Review ( i.e. curriculum review
committee)

 Curriculum development has a broad scope
because it is not only about the school, the
learners and the teachers.
 It is also about the development of a society in
general.
 In today’s knowledge economy, curriculum
development plays a vital role in improving the
economy of a country.
 It also provides answers or solutions to the
world’s pressing conditions and problems, such
as environment, politics, socio-economics, and
other issues on poverty, climate change and
sustainable development.

 There must be a chain of developmental process
to develop a society.
 First, the school curriculum particularly in higher
education must be developed to preserve the
country’s national identity and to ensure its
economy’s growth and stability.
 If universities have curricular programs that are
innovative and in demand in the local or global
markets, many students even from foreign
countries will enroll.
 Higher number of enrollees would mean income
on the part of the universities.

1. Philosophy of nursing education
 Education is the deliberate and systematic
influence exerted by the mature person upon the
immature person through instruction, discipline
and harmonious development of all powers of
the human being.
 Physical, social, intellectual, aesthetic and
spiritual according to their essential hierarchy, by
and for their individual and social uses and
directed towards the union of the educator and
with his creator as the final end.

2. Natural bonds – there is a natural association
between spiritual life and education as well
as between ideals and the cultural standards.
3. Logical bonds – when ideals established
logically a system of education must be set
up to perpetuate(make continue identically)
them.
4. Social bonds – education aims at
perpetuation of social situation which are
based on philosophy of life and progress of
society.

5. Cultural bonds – culture includes the ideals and
the virtues after which people strive. Philosophy
determines the ideals cultures and it is
transmitted through the institution.
6. Human bonds – psychology is the basis for
education which helped to develop the
personality of the student. The teacher must
know the individual student, must help them to
meet the need of wisdom & knowledge.
7. Religious bonds – religion has an extraordinary
penetrative influence in education. Main aim of
education is to bring changes in behavior of
student and religion has its strong effect
behavior of students.

8. Educational psychology
• It forms the basis for development of
principles and methods of teaching.
•The information obtained through educational
psychology applied to nursing education,
through research and experience provides
information and principles which serve to
help in selection, organization and evaluation
of learning experiences in the curriculum.

9. Society
 Nursing students
 Nursing Man.
 Individual
 The nation changing needs of society the
curriculum.
10. the student
 Meeting the nursing needs.
 Guidance programs
 Adjustment of the student

 A study of the social changes and their
influence.
 The need for an enormous increase in the
supply of nursing care required to meet
demands.
 Nursing is inextricably tied up with the social
culture in which it is carried on, nursing is
affected by the society in which it flourishes
and the school of nursing must prepare the
number and the kind of nurses essential to
fulfill nursing needs of society.

 Activities: the nursing and the personal
activities in which the student will engage as
a nurse and as a person.
General categories of life activities:
•Professional
•Family
•Civic
•Leisure
•Spiritual

Effective preparation for life activities:
 The growth of the student in individual
capacities and in social participation.
 The curriculum of the nursing should provide
opportunities for the development of both.

Factors affecting the life activities:-
 Changes in the health of the nation.
 In nursing functions
 In nursing education
 Political forces
 In socio economic
 In technologic resources

Life activities through
Maximum growth in
individual capacities in
spiritual, moral, physical,
mental, intellectual and
aesthetic aspects
Maximum growth in
social participation in
group membership,
group relationship
Dependent on some dynamic factors affecting learner
Changes in
health of
nation
Changes
in nursing
function
Changes in
nursing
education
Socioeconomi
c & political
forces
Technologi
c resources

 It is substantive dimension of the educative
process. Knowledge is the stock is trade of all
school curricula which consists of:-
•Subject matter courses in which mastery of
content is not pursued as the end, but is used
as a resource.
•Mastery of content is pursued as an end in
itself.
•Change in every phase of life is probably the
greatest challenge to education today.

 Descriptive knowledge-
 Statements about the things that can be
perceived directly. Like – facts, laws, rules,
theories, principles
 Normative knowledge-
 these are the rules, norms, standards, morals,
or esthetic choices.

 Two Schools of Thoughts are Predominated
Throughout History of Curriculum
Development:
1. The Essentialist School
2. The Progressive School

 It considers the curriculum as something
rigid consisting of discipline subjects.
 It considers all learners as much as the same
and it aims to fit the learner into the existing
social order and thereby maintain the status
quo
 Its major motivation is discipline and
considers freedom as an outcome and not a
means of education.

 Its approach is authoritative and the teacher’s
role is to assign lessons and to recite
recitations.
 It is book-centered and the methods
recommended are memory work , mastery of
facts and skills, and development of abstract
intelligence.
 It has no interest in social action and life
activities.
 Its measurement of outcomes are standard
tests based on subject matter mastery.

 Body of subjects or subject matter prepared
by the teachers for the students to learn.
 Synonymous to “course study”.
 “ Permanent studies” where the rule of
grammar, reading, rhetoric, logic and
mathematics for basic education
emphasized.(Hutchins)
 Most of the traditional ideas view curriculum
as written documents or plan of action in
accomplishing goals.

 It conceives of the curriculum as something
flexible based on areas of interest.
 It is learner-centered, having in mind that no
two persons are alike.
 Its factor of motivation is individual
achievement believing that persons are
naturally good.
 The Role of the teacher is to stimulate direct
learning process.
 It uses a life experience approach to fit the
student for future social life.

 Constant revision of aims and experimental
techniques of teaching and learning are
imperatives in curriculum development in
order to create independent thinking,
initiative, self-reliance, individuality, self-
expression and activity in the learner.
 Its measurement of outcomes are now
devices taking into consideration subject
matter and personality values.

 Listing of subjects, syllabi, course of study
and list of courses or specific discipline can
only be called curriculum if these written
materials are actualized by the learner.
 Total learning experiences of the individual.
 All experiences children have under the
guidance of teachers. – Caswell & Campbell
 Experiences in the classroom which are
planned and enacted by the teacher, and also
learned by the students. – Marsh and Willis

 Tyler’s Questions of Curriculum Development
will provide 4 steps:
1. What educational purposes should the
school seek to attain?
2. What educational experiences can be
provided that are likely to attain these
purposes?
3. How can these educational experiences be
effectively organised?
4. How can we determine whether these
purposes are being attained?

 In answering Tyler’s questions, we arrive the
following basic steps of curriculum
development:
 Selection of aims, goals and objectives;
 Selection of learning experiences and
content;
 Organization of learning experiences; and
 Evaluation of the extent to which the
objectives have been achieved.
 The 4 steps above are basic, because they
can be more than 4

Planning- to determine
needs and purposes
Development – organization & sequencing
of theory, practices
Implementation – actual
conduction of teaching & learning
activities
Evaluation –
asses student
learning

 Some curriculum experts like Tyler say that
the steps are followed in a sequence or a
straight line.
 This model that assumes that curriculum
decision making follows a straight line is
called linear model.

 Other scholars argue that curriculum decision
making is not a simple linear process that
necessarily starts with aims.
 One of them is Wheeler (1978) who believes
that curriculum decision making can start
from any point and can come back to any of
the points e.g. like a cycle.

 Kerr (1968) also believes that curriculum
process is a very complex set of activities and
decisions and they interact a lot.
 Changes made in content may necessitate
changes in experiences, which may again
bring about changes in evaluation etc.

 Evaluations-
 Assignments -

Process and steps of curriculum development

Process and steps of curriculum development

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