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Assignment No. 1
Q.1 Discuss the concept and scope of Curriculum.
An organized developmental scope and sequence outlines what the early childhood curriculum
focuses on and how the plans and materials support children at different stages of development.
The scope refers to the areas of development addressed by the curriculum. Scope includes both
the breadth (the curriculum addresses development across all of the Head Start Early Learning
Outcomes Framework (ELOF) domains) and depth (curriculum content addresses specific
developmental goals within each sub-domain). A content-rich curriculum ensures that this scope
is sufficiently deep that it engages and sustains children's interests across multiple learning
experiences. The sequence includes plans and materials for learning experiences to support and
extend children's learning at various levels of development. A sequence of learning experiences
progress from less to more complex, with the goal of supporting children as they move through
the developmental progressions.
An organized developmental scope and sequence:
 Helps education staff support children's development of skills, behavior, and knowledge
described in the ELOF and a state's early learning and development standards
 Includes examples of materials, teaching practices, and learning experiences that support
children at different levels of development
 Allows flexibility to respond to the needs of individual children, including dual or tribal
language learners and children with disabilities (or those suspected of having delays) and other
special needs
 Provides information to education staff that helps them plan and communicate with families
and other education partners
To be effective, curricula must be comprehensive in scope and provide learning experiences
specifically designed to support children at various levels of development. A scope and sequence
can be a helpful tool that education staff use to plan learning experiences tailored to children’s
ages and developmental levels. It helps staff look ahead to see where development is going, and
intentionally scaffold their learning. It also helps education staff implement research-based
teaching practices that support children as they move through the developmental progressions,
including those described in the ELOF. Elmwood Head Start education staff review their
curriculum in the area of mathematics development. The scope of the curriculum includes number
sense, operations and algebra, measurement, and geometry. The materials and plans for learning
experiences are organized around a sequence designed to support children at various levels of
development. The curriculum offers multiple learning opportunities that support children as they
learn to understand simple patterns.
For example, the curriculum includes learning experiences that invite children to experience
patterns through movement (e.g., tap-clap-tap-clap) and to describe patterns while playing with
colored blocks. Children are encouraged to say the pattern aloud as a group (e.g., red-blue-red-
blue) or to fill in the missing element in a pattern (e.g., red-blue-red-). The curriculum also includes
learning experiences that invite children to copy simple patterns (e.g., with stringing beads). At a
more advanced level, the curriculum provides learning experiences in which children, with teacher
guidance, can create and extend patterns using objects, movements, or sounds.
The lesson plans within each of these learning opportunities describe how education staff can
scaffold children’s learning and development at various levels (e.g., asking a child earlier in the
developmental progression to identify what would come next in a simple pattern, and asking a
child later in the developmental progression to describe a pattern the child has created). This
sequence of learning experiences supports children as they move along the developmental
progression of understanding patterns.
Q.2 Explain the relationship Between Culture and curriculum.
His classmates, their families, and the press rallied to resist what Western educated Sierra
Leoneans interpreted as an effort by their British rulers to keep them in their place. Cole knew that
unless he and his classmates took school-leaving examinations set abroad, they could not attend
Oxford or Cambridge and thereby gain access to occupational mobility. What colonial
policymakers perceived as a fitting curriculum --of which tests surely are an integral aspect- -
Sierra Leoneans deemed unfitting and staunchly resisted. Clearly, one person's good fit is another
person's crunched opportunities. What curriculum suits what cultural orientation as seen by whom
is the subject of this report? It is a complex topic because the culture of most contemporary nations
is a tangled tapestry of subcultural variants. The variants have curricular ramifications. Different
groups may agree about what language to conduct instruction in and whose history to teach, and
disagree about what other languages to offer and what topics with what emphasis to include in the
history course. The translation of some aspect of culture or subculture into its curricular terms is
undertaken by persons who often have high stakes in what they support. Indeed, as we see with
Chief Poropot and Portuguese, the Diallo be and French, and Sierra Leonean Cole and the setting
of external examinations, what is at stake is no less than fundamental well-being and survival as
some agent defines them. (I will use agent to designate who, in light of some cultural orientation,
proposes or supports some curricular element). The concept of culture is having a heyday. The
ubiquitous appearance of the term in social science and education literature testifies to its being
construed as necessary; in the process, it has become fashionable, as well. Such is the case in the
field of educational scholarship, whose writers adopt established definitions of culture and
construct definitions of their own. Not with standing that it is over defined and that if one looks
long enough one can find conception to match any purpose, there is reasonable convergence on
the referents of culture so that we borrowers need not feel that our choice of definitions is arbitrary.
Some writers prefer to state what culture is not. Metz, for example, writes that culture "is not a
systematic set of logically interrelated propositions about values, norms and the nature of the
empirical world;" but, she adds at once, it is "a broad, diffuse, and potentially contradictory body
of shared understanding about both what is and what ought to be" (1986, p. 54; see also Rossman,
Corbett, and Firestone, 1988, p. 5). I value Metz's reference to "what ought to be" because it
captures a common aspect of the translation of culture into curriculum: the often imperative tone
of the agents' curricular recommendations. This tone is implied in Goodenough's definition that "a
society's culture consists of whatever one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner
acceptable to its members" (quoted in Mehan, 1982, p. 64). When Good enough speaks of what
"one has to know and believe," he points to categories of curricular experience for which agents
will have particular recommendations. Cazden and Mehan "think of culture as the normal,
expected ways of perceiving, thinking, and behaving of large social groups" (1989, p. 49), nations,
or communities; they exclude the smaller social groups whose "normal, expected ways" are those
of a subculture. For my purposes, both culture and subculture are important for examining the
culture-curriculum relationship Erickson picks up on the subcultural factor in his view of culture
as "learned and shared standards for ways of thinking, feeling, and acting," so that he can identify
the problem or misfit in the case of the classroom teachers' "learned ways of thinking and acting
that have not yet been learned by their students" (1986, p. 117). An issue in culture-curriculum fit
arises from the discrepancies among the involved subcultures, those of teachers and students, in
Erickson's example. Based on her research on magnet middle schools, Metz identifies a teacher
subculture. It develops by virtue of shared "meaning systems" (see also Maehr, 1987, pp. 295-
296), and she usefully adds, "has roots in the larger culture of the society" (1986, p. 221). Given
the prospect of a range of subcultural "meaning systems" operating within the shared space of a
school, and within the larger society where subcultures abound, we see the occasion for conflict
over what curriculum should prevail. In practice, what strictly speaking are subcultures, writers
often refer to as cultures. Thus, Rossman et al. (1988) refer to "teacher culture," Metz (1983) to
"home culture," Shakeshaft (1987) to "female culture," and Maehr (1987) to "organizational
culture." It is well to bear in mind that subcultures are rooted in the "larger culture of the society"
because this suggests the legitimacy of what is an inevitable fact of complex societies: to varying
degrees, subcultures are in competition with each other as they try to enact their "meaning systems"
in the curricula of their society's schools. It is, therefore, a matter of good guys doing battle with
each other as they contend for the right to define what goes on in school.
Agents may take large units as their charge, referring to an entire culture, society, or the world, as
does Bennett in the above example. Bennett takes as the basis for her agency what she perceives
as salient about American society it is multicultural, and about the world--it is interdependent. Out
of the numerous possible focal points of culture, Bennett, imbedded in particular cultural and
subcultural alternatives, gives voice to two expressions. The number of such expressions is
unlimited. Bennett would not soon exhaust what she could say about American society and the
world. Of the many possibilities she could identify, she chose two. They came not from out of the
blue but, rather, from the complex of her personal cultural and subcultural orientations. They
represent the cause she wants served by some aspect of curriculum; they are the warrant for the
curricular means she endorses. Bennett did not focus on health, unemployment, or pollution. Had
she done so, she would have tendered other bases for thinking about schools, offered warrant for
endorsing other aspects of curriculum to fit other aspects of culture. As I have discussed them,
agents appear as conscious activists. This image misrepresents a whole set of agents--teachers,
students, and parents, for example--whose behavior "makes" curriculum out of some cultural
orientation but not necessarily in a conscious way or with specified, articulated bases in mind.
Their agency is performed in the normal course of playing their role as teacher, student, or parent,
although each may join groups and organizations that have been formed to give them voice.
Examples below that relate to resistance illustrate this point. When, say, students and parents resist
what happens in school, their actions contribute to the null curriculum. They become agents for
undoing some aspect of curriculum, such as tests they should be fewer and easier; homework--
there should be less of it; books which ones are acceptable to read; and sex education--an
unsuitable subject for classroom instruction.
Q.3 critically examine the significance of situational analysis in curriculum development.
The Importance of Situational Analysis and needs assessment in the initial stages of curriculum
development. An article for education. Situational analysis is the systematic process of analyzing
the situation before the curriculum is developed effectively. However, Hilda Taba (1962) describes
situational Analysis as a diagnosis of needs. In this simpler form, we can define situational
Analysis as the process of examining factors that exist in the environment or society where the
curriculum is going to be implemented. Situational analysis factors include knowledge about the
environment in terms of mountains, rivers, flora and fauna including places where the programme
or curriculum is going to be implemented, the social or power structure of that society, the
traditions, norms, needs and aspirations of the community and the language of instruction.
Bishop (1985) argued that the situational Analysis must incorporate members of the general public
and not only ‘experts’. These members should be invited to play their past in situational Analysis.
This is because Education itself is not a discipline like English and History but an area involving
a wide variety of society with different backgrounds. Hence, Parents Teachers Association (P.T.A)
and religious Organizations would feel to say something pertaining to the lives and future of their
children. This simply means that there is a way parents and society at large would want the
curriculum to shape their attitudes of their children. Simpson Yinger (1958) argued that situational
Analysis involve careful observation and an acute understanding of the variables influencing a
given situation. The particular role of a researcher in situational Analysis is to contribute to our
knowledge by isolating one by one each of the many variables that are involved in every situation
and then studying the effects of their interaction. The scientists in this regard measures the
influence of each factor alone and later how these variables interact with each other. In short, every
stakeholder must be analyzed in details. To ensure effective results curriculum developers need to
undertake SWOT analysis of the stakeholders involved. The importance of situational analysis and
needs assessments is that they provide us with up to date information which can be used to solve
the problems, set providers, identify groups which require special need intervention and can create
a basis or platform for discussion in as far as curriculum development is concerned.
Another importance of situational analysis and needs assessments is that Policy makers
(Government officials) and decision makers (curriculum specialists) can make strong arguments
in as far as allocation of resources is concerned. A needs assessment can be a powerful tool used
to develop strategies to address the curriculum needs. Will provide the met and unmet needs within
the targeted groups e.g. (i) met needs may be availability of teachers and pupils, supplementary
readers (ii) unmet may be the distance between the school and the learner’s home.
The importance of situational analysis and needs assessments is that they will help in the
formulation of curriculum intent, content, selection of learning and teaching activities.
It help educationalists meet the needs and expectations of the society. Ordinarily, the content of
subjects in curriculum intent is too formal and academic to meet the needs of the majority of the
children who do not proceed on to higher studies especially if it was developed without situational
analysis. What pupils do in schools neither satisfies the developing needs of the child nor prepares
the child adequately for the world/environment he/she lives in (no wonder we have more street
kids in Zambia). Practical and aesthetic subjects such as wood work and music are therefore not
given enough time and attention. This is because curriculum is mainly designed to transmit factual
knowledge rather than to provide learning experiences.
Q.4 Define curriculum design in term of sources and element.
Teachers design each curriculum with a specific educational purpose in mind. The ultimate goal
is to improve student learning, but there are other reasons to employ curriculum design as well.
For example, designing a curriculum for middle school students with both elementary and high
school curricula in mind helps to make sure that learning goals are aligned and complement each
other from one stage to the next. If a middle school curriculum is designed without taking prior
knowledge from elementary school or future learning in high school into account it can create real
problems for the students.
Subject-Centered Curriculum Design
Subject-centered curriculum design revolves around a particular subject matter or discipline. For
example, a subject-centered curriculum may focus on math or biology. This type of curriculum
design tends to focus on the subject rather than the individual. It is the most common type of
curriculum used in K-12 public schools in states and local districts in the United States.
Subject-centered curriculum design describes what needs to be studied and how it should be
studied. Core curriculum is an example of a subject-centered design that can be standardized across
schools, states, and the country as a whole. In standardized core curricula, teachers are provided a
pre-determined list of things that they need to teach their students, along with specific examples
of how these things should be taught. You can also find subject-centered designs in large college
classes in which teachers focus on a particular subject or discipline.
The primary drawback of subject-centered curriculum design is that it is not student-centered. In
particular, this form of curriculum design is constructed without taking into account the specific
learning styles of the students. This can cause problems with student engagement and motivation
and may even cause students to fall behind in class.
Learner-Centered Curriculum Design
In contrast, learner-centered curriculum design takes each individual's needs, interests, and goals
into consideration. In other words, it acknowledges that students are not uniform and adjust to
those student needs. Learner-centered curriculum design is meant to empower learners and allow
them to shape their education through choices.
Instructional plans in a learner-centered curriculum are differentiated, giving students the
opportunity to choose assignments, learning experiences or activities. This can motivate
students and help them stay engaged in the material that they are learning.
The drawback to this form of curriculum design is that it is labor-intensive. Developing
differentiated instruction puts pressure on the teacher to create instruction and/or find materials
that are conducive to each student's learning needs. Teachers may not have the time or may lack
the experience or skills to create such a plan. Learner-centered curriculum design also requires that
teachers balance student wants and interests with student needs and required outcomes, which is
not an easy balance to obtain.
Problem-Centered Curriculum Design
Like learner-centered curriculum design, problem-centered curriculum design is also a form of
student-centered design. Problem-centered curricula focus on teaching students how to look at a
problem and come up with a solution to the problem. Students are thus exposed to real-life issues,
which helps them develop skills that are transferable to the real world.
Problem-centered curriculum design increases the relevance of the curriculum and allows students
to be creative and innovate as they are learning. The drawback to this form of curriculum design
is that it does not always take learning styles into consideration.
The following curriculum design tips can help educators manage each stage of the curriculum
design process.
 Identify the needs of stakeholders (i.e., students) early on in the curriculum design
process. This can be done through needs analysis, which involves the collection and
analysis of data related to the learner. This data might include what learners already know
and what they need to know to be proficient in a particular area or skill. It may also include
information about learner perceptions, strengths, and weaknesses.
 Create a clear list of learning goals and outcomes. This will help you to focus on the
intended purpose of the curriculum and allow you to plan instruction that can achieve the
desired results. Learning goals are the things teachers want students to achieve in the
course. Learning outcomes are the measurable knowledge, skills, and attitudes that students
should have achieved in the course.
 Identify constraints that will impact your curriculum design. For example, time is a
common constraint that must be considered. There are only so many hours, days, weeks or
months in the term. If there isn't enough time to deliver all of the instruction that has been
planned, it will impact learning outcomes.
 Consider creating a curriculum map (also known as a curriculum matrix) so that you
can properly evaluate the sequence and coherence of instruction. Curriculum
mapping provides visual diagrams or indexes of a curriculum. Analyzing a visual
representation of the curriculum is a good way to quickly and easily identify potential gaps,
redundancies or alignment issues in the sequencing of instruction. Curriculum maps can be
created on paper or with software programs or online services designed specifically for this
purpose.
 Identify the instructional methods that will be used throughout the course and consider
how they will work with student learning styles. If the instructional methods are not
conducive to the curriculum, the instructional design or the curriculum design will need to
be altered accordingly.
 Establish evaluation methods that will be used at the end and during the school year
to assess learners, instructors, and the curriculum. Evaluation will help you determine if
the curriculum design is working or if it is failing. Examples of things that should be
evaluated include the strengths and weaknesses of the curriculum and achievement rates
related to learning outcomes. The most effective evaluation is ongoing and summative.
 Remember that curriculum design is not a one-step process; continuous improvement
is a necessity. The design of the curriculum should be assessed periodically and refined
based on assessment data. This may involve making alterations to the design partway
through the course to ensure that learning outcomes or a certain level of proficiency will
be achieved at the end of the course.
Q.5 Different individuals need different types of learning experience for self-development.
Support this.
Personal development is a lifelong process. It is a way for people to assess their skills and qualities,
consider their aims in life and set goals in order to realize and maximize their potential. This page
helps you to identify the skills you need to set life goals which can enhance your employability
prospects, raise your confidence, and lead to a more fulfilling, higher quality life. Plan to make
relevant, positive and effective life choices and decisions for your future to enable personal
empowerment. The extent to which people are able to develop depends on certain needs being met
and these needs form a hierarchy. Only when one level of need is satisfied can a higher one be
developed. As change occurs throughout life, however, the level of need motivating someone’s
behavior at any one time will also change.
 At the bottom of the hierarchy are the basic physiological needs for food, drink, sex and
sleep, i.e., the basics for survival.
 Second are the needs for safety and security in both the physical and economic sense.
 Thirdly, progression can be made to satisfying the need for love and belonging.
 The fourth level refers to meeting the need for self-esteem and self-worth. This is the level
most closely related to ‘self-empowerment’.
 The fifth level relates to the need to understand. This level includes more abstract ideas
such as curiosity and the search for meaning or purpose and a deeper understanding.
 The sixth relates to aesthetic needs of beauty, symmetry and order.
 Finally, at the top of Maslow’s hierarchy is the need for self-actualization.
Maslow (1970, p.383) says that all individuals have the need to see themselves as competent and
autonomous, also that every person has limitless room for growth.
Self-actualization refers to the desire that everybody has ‘to become everything that they are
capable of becoming’. In other words, it refers to self-fulfillment and the need to reach full
potential as a unique human being.
Assignment No. 2
Q.1 Explain the process of curriculum development.
The curriculum development process systematically organizes what will be taught, who will be
taught, and how it will be taught. Each component affects and interacts with other components.
For example, what will be taught is affected by who is being taught (e.g., their stage of
development in age, maturity, and education). Methods of how content is taught are affected by
who is being taught, their characteristics, and the setting. In considering the above three essential
components, the following are widely held to be essential considerations in experiential education
in non-formal settings:
Essential Considerations for Curriculum Development:
1. issue/problem/need is identified (issue ® what),
2. characteristics and needs of learners (target audience ® who),
3. changes intended for learners (intended outcomes/objectives ® what the learners will
be able to do),
4. the important and relevant content ®(what),
5. methods to accomplish intended outcomes ®(how),
6. Evaluation strategies for methods, content, and intended outcomes ® (What works?).
The CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT MODEL on the next page shows how these
components relate to each other and to the curriculum development process. It begins when an
issue, concern, or problem needs to be addressed. If education or training a segment of the
population will help solve the problem, then curriculum to support an educational effort becomes
a priority with human and financial resources allocated. The next step is to form a curriculum
develop-ment team. The team makes systematic decisions about the target audience (learner
characteristics), intended out-comes (objectives), content, methods, and evaluation strategies.
With input from the curriculum development team, draft curriculum products are developed,
tested, evaluated, and redesigned -if necessary. When the final product is produced, volunteer
training is conducted. The model shows a circular process where volunteer training provides
feedback for new materials or revisions to the existing curriculum.
PHASES AND STEPS IN CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT (See Figure 2 on the previous
page) further illustrates how the 12 essential steps progress from one to the next. It also shows the
interaction and relationships of the four essential phases of the curriculum development process:
(I) Planning, (II) Content and Methods, (III) Implementation, and (IV) Evaluation and
Reporting. It is important to acknowledge that things do not always work exactly as depicted in a
model! Each phase has several steps or tasks to complete in logical sequence. These steps are not
always separate and distinct, but may overlap and occur concurrently. For example, the curriculum
development team is involved in all of the steps. Evaluations should occur in most of the steps to
assess progress. The team learns what works and what does not and determines the impact of the
curriculum on learners after it is implemented. Each step logically follows the previous. It would
make no sense to design learning activities before learner outcomes and content are described and
identified. Similarly, content cannot be determined before learner outcomes are described. In the
experience of the author, and confirmed by other curriculum specialists, the following curriculum
development steps are frequently omitted or slighted. These steps are essential to successful
curriculum development and need to be emphasized.
Essential Curriculum Development Steps Needing Emphasis
1. Needs assessment: if not conducted, wonderful curriculum could be developed,
but the appropriate needs of the target audience may not be met.
2. Involving youth: the target audience and volunteers (or staff) who will be the
implementers of the curriculum must be involved (i.e., they participate as full
members of the curriculum development team).
3. Recruiting and training volunteer facilitators: competent and skilled
curriculum implementers are critical (the printed word
cannot teach experiential group process, it doesn't provide feedback).
4. Evaluating and reporting on the impact of the curriculum: is critical for
securing human and financial support from key policy decision makers and for
assessing whether the curriculum has achieved the intended outcome.
Two types of evaluation are included in the Phases and Steps illustration: (1) Formative provides
feedback during the process of developing the curriculum, and (2) Summative answers questions
about changes (impact) that have occurred in learners because of their learning experiences.
Summative evaluation provides evidence for what works, what does not work, and what needs to
be improved.
In every step of the curriculum development process, the most important task is to keep the learner
(in this case, youth) in mind and involve them in process. For example, the curriculum team
members, who have direct knowledge of the target audience, should be involved in conducting the
needs assessment. From the needs assessment process, the problem areas are identified, gaps
between what youth know and what they need to know are identified, and the scope of the problem
is clarified and defined. The results may prompt decision makers to allocate resources for a
curriculum development team to prepare curriculum materials.
Q.2 Explain why change as function of curriculum improvement is important.
Meaning and concept of curriculum development
Curriculum development in its word meaning stands for the development of curriculum.
1. Rogers and Taylor:-
Curriculum development describes all the ways in which teaching or training organization plans
and guides learning. This learning can take place in groups or with individual learners. It can take
place inside or outside the classroom. It can take place in an institutional setting like school,
college, training center, or in a village or a field. It is central to the teaching-learning process.
2. Curriculum development is a process involving the activities like
 conceptualizing the curriculum,
 selecting and organizing the content, material and learning experiences
 suggesting the method and ways of providing these experiences
 Evaluating the learning outcomes in terms of attainment of desired educational objectives.
What is curriculum
In simple words
A curriculum refers to a defined and prescribed course of studies, which students must fulfill in
order to pass a certain level of education.
Some influential definitions combining various elements to describe curriculum are as follows
 John Kerr:- According to John Kerr a curriculum is a planned and guided by the school, whether
it is carried on in groups, individually inside or outside the school.
 The curriculum is a total learning experience provided by the school. It includes the content of
courses (the syllabus), the method employed (strategies) and other aspects like norms and values,
which relate to the way school are organized.
 Thus a curriculum is neither a development nor a sequence of experiences. It is a plan for
facilitating learning for students.
 This plan starts with where the child is. It enumerates all the aspects and dimensions of learning
that are considered necessary. It gives a reason why such learning is considered necessary and
what educational aims it would serve.
In a nutshell,
 the curriculum is a means followed by the teachers and students for achieving the set goals and the
aims or objectives of education being provided in the school.
 Curriculum, in every sense, is supposed to be used for all experiences. These may be curricular or
co-curricular, imparted by the school for the realization of the stipulated aims and objectives of
the school education.
Need and importance of curriculum development (or construction)
 Curriculum development is a purposeful activity.
 It is undertaken to design or redesign for the realization of certain specific educational objectives.
 The curriculum is the heart of the student’s college/school experience.
 The curriculum should be reviewed and revised on a regular basis so that it is able to serve the
changing needs of both students and society.
 Following points iterates the needs and importance of curriculum development.
1. Clear purpose and goals:- Curriculum construction provide written curricular goals which are
nothing but intended student development outcomes. These goals and objectives are specified in
considerable detail and in behavioral language.
2. Continuous assessment and improvement of quality:- Valid and reliable assessment of
curriculum is necessary. The curriculum followed by an institution should be reviewed
regularly in order to maintain its effectiveness in regards to changing needs of the society
as a whole.
3. A rational sequence:- In a curriculum educational activities are carefully ordered in
developmental sequence. This developmental sequence helps to form a well-planned (or coherent)
curriculum based on intended goals and outcomes of the curriculum and its constituent courses.
4. Making strategy in teaching and learning:- Curriculum development helps in suggesting
suitable teaching-learning strategies, teaching methods, instructional materials etc. It helps in
providing for the proper implementation of the curriculum on the part of teachers and learners.
5. Helps in the selection of learning experiences:- Curriculum development is needed for
appropriate selection and organization of learning experiences. It helps in the selection of study
matter and other activities so that learners are able to acquire goals and objectives of teaching.
6. The process of curriculum development is needed for conceptualizing a curriculum in terms of the
determination of educational objectives for teaching-learning at a particular grade of school
education.
7. Helps in continuous and comprehensive education:-
Curriculum development considers the need of providing a scheme of education for CCE of the
teaching-learning outcomes. With proper feedback, it helps to bring necessary improvement in the
teaching-learning process and environment.
Q.3 critically examine curriculum development at primary and secondary level.
Curriculum Development at Primary and Secondary Level
Why Curriculum??? Education plays a vital role in nation building. Ministry of (provisional)
Education, is responsible for the cohesion, integration and preservation of the ideological
foundation of the states. Curriculum Bodies at Primary and Secondary Levels
• IN PUNJAB: PUNJAB CURRICULUM AUTHORTY (PCA) is responsible to develop
curriculum for Punjab Province.
• IN SINDH: BUREAU OF CURRICULUM AND EXTENSION WING (BCEW) is responsible
for develop curriculum for Sindh Province
• IN KPK: DIRECTORATE OF CURRICULUM AND TEACHER EDUCATION(CTE) is
responsible for develop curriculum for Khyber Paktunkhwa Province.
• IN BALOCHISTAN: No Curriculum body its in process • IN ICT, FATA, FANA and AJK:
CURRICULUM WING is responsible for the develop curriculum for these Areas.
1. Main Functions of these bodies • prepare or cause to be prepared schemes of studies,
curricula, manuscripts of textbooks, standards of education and schedules or strategy for
their introduction in various classes of an institution in connection with the implementation
of the education policy of the Government.
2. Main Responsibilities Ministry of Education (Curriculum Development Body) is
responsible in making of: 1. Curriculum 2. Syllabus 3. Planning 4. Policy and 5.
Development of Educational Standards.
3. Curriculum Design and Development Process in Pakistan 1. Evolution of Curriculum
Objectives. 2. Development of Scheme of Studies. 3. Development of Syllabus of each
subject. 4. Development of Textbook, Instructional material. 5. Approval of Textual
Material. 6. Teacher Training.
4. Evolution of Curriculum Objectives. • Prepares the draft of objectives. (Send to inter-
provincial Ministry for discussion curriculum development). • Objectives are finalized. •
Translated to the specific teaching objectives. Factors considered in finalizing the
objectives • be precise • Assist in the selection of teaching strategy • Produce a designated
behavior pattern • Enables teachers to evaluate the quality and effectiveness of learning.
5. Developing Objectives are derived from • Recommendation of the Education Policy •
Provisional Level Seminars • Forums of research studies • Inter Board Committee of
Chairmen
6. The studies Scheme (Scheme of Studies) It is based on three key factors: • The Education
policy • Market Demand • Global Issues Task work in this area is undertaken with the
participation of: • Provincial government • Research organizations and experts • Feedback
of the IBCC
7. Development of Syllabi It is based on objectives and scheme of study. 1. Subject specific
syllabi is prepared in consultation with: 2. Subject expert 3. Psychologist 4. Serving teacher
Syllabi must satisfy the following conditions: 1. based on the needs of learner. 2. Take into
account the existing knowledge and the environmental experience of the learner. 3. The
development level of the learner is considered in the cognitive, effectiveness and psycho-
motor domain. 4. Content should be focused on attaining the objectives.
8. Textbook Development • Provisional Text Book Boards are responsible for the
development of the text-books according to the approved syllabi. How textbook is
developed? 1. Establish a list of text book writers. 2. Invitation are sent to the writers to
submit the material within the syllabus parameter. 3. Selection is made on the basis of
relevance of material. 4. The selected material is transformed into a textbook.
9. Review the Approval Review committee comprises on five or six members: • At least one
expert form the syllabus Formulation Committee. Two subject experts. Two school
teachers • Textbooks Review Parameter • the books truly reflects the curriculum. • It meets
the objectives stated in the curriculum. • Book does not contain any material repugnant to
Islamic and Pakistani ideology. • In case of approval, textbook is sent for publishing and
distribution. • In case of objection, complaints are relayed with revision recommendations.
10. Teacher Training • Teacher training for curriculum implementation is the responsibility of
the provincial government. • It is now stressed that each textbook must have a teacher's
guide or included in textbook. • In some cases assistance in the training of the master’s
trainers is arranged by the provincial government.
Q.4 Vocationalization has political approach rather than educational. How?
Although this perspective on the science curriculum has a long history, in recent decades it has
received little attention. This article examines recent research into the vocational and work‐related
aspects of secondary school science, and the historical and policy background. Its empirical focus
is a late secondary course with the title “Applied Science”, which was introduced into schools in
England and Wales in 2002. It draws on the preliminary findings of a research study focusing on
the origins and implementation of this course. Overall, the article provides an overview of the
major issues and research agenda associated with the notion of a vocational or applied school
science curriculum, focusing ultimately on the key issues of educational purpose, pedagogy, and
status. The vocationalization of education is different in economically less developed countries
(LDCs) than in the economically more developed ones (MDCs). Although there may appear to be
similarities, there are also important differences between them that largely arise from three
contexts: (1) their social and economic structures and the resulting differences in demand for
skilled labor; (2) the role of the LDCs as "price-takers" rather than "price-makers" on the world
market; and (3) the development strategies they use, often without full recognition of their own
realities and resource limitations. As a result, the problems arising from the efforts by these
countries to vocationalize the curriculum of their schools are in many ways qualitatively different,
and this whole educational strategy is usually much more problematic for them than for the MDCs.
There are also major differences between the developing countries themselves, which make any
kind of overall generalization on this issue even more difficult, but there are enough commonalities
among them that would make these observations somewhat applicable to most of the LDCs. With
a more appropriate development strategy, changes in the curriculum, including the introduction of
vocational subjects, might play a more effective role in increasing the contribution that education
can make toward raising the productivity of an LDC. However, political leaders in the LDCs have
not followed this course. Therefore, to say that vocational education is or is not a useful educational
approach is by itself meaningless, despite the research results that now exist. The special priority
given to primary education since the early 1990s has also until recently deflected donor interest from
secondary education—whether vocationalized or not. But some countries have continued to pursue
vocationalization policies. Botswana, Ghana and Kenya—the case studies chosen for the present
report- - are main examples. Even if its cost-effectiveness is in dispute for some decades, many
countries will continue to have an active interest in an updated discussion of the topic, since
vocationalization purports to address the urgent concern about how to improve the relevance of what
is learned in school for the world of work. Thus the purpose of the present study to provide an update
on a topic of recurring policy importance. The study reviews literature on vocationalization and
presents three especially commissioned case studies on Botswana, Ghana and Kenya (Part Two of
the report). These case studies are substantial studies in their own right and their contribution is in no
way exhausted by the use made of them in Part One. The Case Studies made use of available
documentation but could not collect extensive primary data beyond information gathered during
brief visits to schools and consultations with government officials. It is recognized that in high-income
countries in which secondary education will include the great majority of youth (in particular the
OECD countries), models of secondary education that blend general education and vocational
training, may be achievable, affordable and appropriate. There are also middle income countries
which are pursuing such policies. However, the present question is whether vocationalized
secondary education in the medium term is appropriate for developing countries in Sub- Saharan
Africa—given the concerns which are important for Vocational Education and Training (VET). In
particular, is vocationalization superior to purely general education in preparing for labor market
entry and for subsequent vocational and technical training? Eventually, the issue is whether it is
superior in improving the productivity of labor, and at what cost? Thus, the study looks at one aspect
of secondary education—through lenses which we think are appropriate for VET.
Personal development goals
Dominant theories of general education point to the ideal of educating ‘the whole person’. A well
rounded education would develop a wide range of talents including moral, aesthetic, and physical
capacities- - not only a grasp of academically disciplined knowledge. Practical subjects are valued
because they add variety to the school week by allowing students to learn from more active ‘doing’
than what is typical in academic subjects. Under this perspective, the teaching of practical skills and
familiarization with the ‘world of work’ donot need to bejustified only as skills preparation for specific
occupations. They arelegitimate partsof general education. Oneexample is the teaching of handicrafts
skills (sløyd) within lower secondary education in the Nordic countries, or contemporary Design
and Technology courses in a number of other countries- - including Botswana (Weeks, BCS). To be
sure, preparation for the world of work is in a general way part of what such subjects usually for, but
under this perspective these subjects can be valued as general skills in practical design and problem
solution—not only in work situations but also for their private use and. Further, teaching about the
‘world of work’ is legitimately valued as a means of enabling young people to make better informed
choices about their future as well as teaching knowledge about an important part of human life. A
‘diversified curriculum’ structure in secondary schools has sometimes beenseen as an organizational
means to achieve greater equality of opportunity because it would cater to a wider range of talents
and purports to prepare for a wider range of future activity, than purely academic curricula This view
has been associated with the development of comprehensive secondary schools in many countries.
The influence of the United States helped propagate this idea of comprehensive secondary education
internationally. Socialist and social democratic policies on education have seen the inclusion of
practical and vocational subjects as a means to break down social class barriers and teach respect
for manual labor. Some African countries have also historically been influenced by respectively North
American or Soviet models of comprehensive secondary school. However, in Africa practical
subjects have a more complex history. Under colonial regimes, Africans struggled against racial
discrimination in order to gain access to academic education and to the opportunity which such
education led to. Practical and vocational subjects were then part of resented racially segregated
provisions ‘adapted’ for African subjects (see e.g., Anderson 1970,on Kenya). After Independence,
depending on the political orientation of governments, in some countries practical subjects became
part of wider measures (e.g., national youth service) intended to assure the identification of the future
educated elite with ordinary working people and build national solidarity. With passage of time
since Independence, arguments of this type now have become less important for policy making. By
teaching vocational skills the hope has beenthat students would more easily find work when they leave
school, and become more productive and trainable. Sometimes, a declared goal is even preparation
for self-employment. By easing the transition to work for school leavers, the hope has also been that
the prevalence of antisocial behavior among youth would be reduced. Carol Coombe (1988)
confirmed that economic goals were by far the most important driving motives behind
vocationalization policies in Commonwealth countries. The goals noted by her included: provision
of skilled and semi-skilled manpower, reduction of wasted resources caused by weak articulation
between education and the labor market, technological literacy, and generally facilitating economic
growth and national development. As noted in BCS, there was in the past also some influence of rural-
centered populist ideas of development which would see a high rate ofmigration to townas a problem
to be countered by educational means. In African countries, the issue at the heart of policy debate on
vocationalization has been undoubtedly been ‘economic relevance’. The recurring question has been
whether vocationalized secondary education in effect turns out to be more ‘economically relevant’
than purely ‘general’ education, and if any gains worththe extra costincurred in producing them. From
a VET point of view, these goals are indeed the overridingly important ones. But other issues and
objectives have also be evident in African countries when curricula and syllabuses have been framed
by educationists—below the ‘political’ level.
Q.5 Curriculum of the schools cannot be better than the quality of persons prepared by
teacher education institution, make comments.
Increasing graduation rates and levels of educational attainment will accomplish little if students
do not learn something of lasting value. Yet federal efforts over the last several years have focused
much more on increasing the number of Americans who go to college than on improving the
education they receive once they get there.
By concentrating so heavily on graduation rates and attainment levels, policy makers are ignoring
danger signs that the amount that students learn in college may have declined over the past few
decades and could well continue to do so in the years to come. The reasons for concern include:
 College students today seem to be spending much less time on their course work than their
predecessors did 50 years ago, and evidence of their abilities suggests that they are probably
learning less than students once did and quite possibly less than their counterparts in many other
advanced industrial countries.
 Employers complain that many graduates they hire are deficient in basic skills such as writing,
problem solving and critical thinking that college leaders and their faculties consistently rank
among the most important goals of an undergraduate education.
 Most of the millions of additional students needed to increase educational attainment levels will
come to campus poorly prepared for college work, creating a danger that higher graduation
rates will be achievable only by lowering academic standards.
 More than two-thirds of college instructors today are not on the tenure track but are lecturers
serving on year-to-year contracts. Many of them are hired without undergoing the vetting
commonly used in appointing tenure-track professors. Studies indicate that extensive use of
such instructors may contribute to higher dropout rates and to grade inflation.
 States have made substantial cuts in support per student over the past 30 years for public
colleges and community colleges. Research suggests that failing to increase appropriations to
keep pace with enrollment growth tends to reduce learning and even lower graduation rates.
While some college leaders are making serious efforts to improve the quality of teaching, many
others seem content with their existing programs. Although they recognize the existence of
problems affecting higher education as a whole, such as grade inflation or a decline in the rigor of
academic standards, few seem to believe that these difficulties exist on their own campus, or they
tend to attribute most of the difficulty to the poor preparation of students before they enroll.
Many colleges provide a formidable array of courses, majors and extracurricular opportunities, but
firsthand accounts indicate that many undergraduates do not feel that the material conveyed in
their readings and lectures has much relevance to their lives. Such sentiments suggest either that
the courses do not in fact contribute much to the ultimate goals that colleges claim to value or that
instructors are not taking sufficient care to explain the larger aims of their courses and why they
should matter.
Other studies suggest that many instructors do not teach their courses in ways best calculated to
achieve the ends that faculties themselves consider important. For example, one investigator
studied samples of the examinations given at elite liberal arts colleges and research universities.
Although 99 percent of professors consider critical thinking an “essential” or “very important”
goal of a college education, fewer than 20 percent of the exam questions actually tested for this
skill.
Now that most faculties have defined the learning objectives of their college and its various
departments and programs, it should be possible to review recent examinations to determine
whether individual professors, programs and departments are actually designing their courses to
achieve those goals. College administrators could also modify their student evaluation forms to
ask students whether they believe the stated goals were emphasized in the courses they took.
In addition, the average time students devote to studying varies widely among different colleges,
and many campuses could require more of their students. Those lacking evidence about the study
habits of their undergraduates could inform themselves through confidential surveys that faculties
could review and consider steps to encourage greater student effort and improve learning.
The vast difference between how well seniors think they can perform and their actual proficiencies
(according to tests of basic skills and employer evaluations) suggests that many colleges are failing
to give students an adequate account of their progress. Grade inflation may also contribute to
excessive confidence, suggesting a need to work to restore appropriate standards, although that
alone is unlikely to solve the problem. Better feedback on student papers and exams will be even
more important in order to give undergraduates a more accurate sense of how much progress
they’ve made and what more they need to accomplish before they graduate.
Improving graduate education. Colleges and universities need to reconfigure graduate programs
to better prepare aspiring professors for teaching. As late as two or three generations ago,
majorities of new Ph.D.s, at least in the better graduate programs, found positions where research
was primary, either in major universities, industry or government. Today, however, many Ph.D.s
find employment in colleges that are chiefly devoted to teaching or work as adjunct instructors and
are not expected to do research.
Aspiring college instructors also need to know much more now in order to teach effectively. A
large and increasing body of useful knowledge has accumulated about learning and pedagogy, as
well as the design and effectiveness of alternative methods of instruction. Meanwhile, the advent
of new technologies has given rise to methods of teaching that require special training. As evidence
accumulates about promising ways of engaging students actively, identifying difficulties they are
having in learning the material and adjusting teaching methods accordingly, the current gaps in
the preparation most graduate students receive become more and more of a handicap.
Universities have already begun to prepare graduate students to teach by giving them opportunities
to assist professors in large lecture courses and by creating centers where they can get help to
become better instructors. More departments are starting to provide or even require a limited
amount of instruction in how to teach. Nevertheless, simply allowing grad students to serve as
largely unsupervised teaching assistants, or creating centers where they can receive a brief
orientation or a few voluntary sessions on teaching, will not adequately equip them for a career in
the classroom.
A more substantial preparation is required and will become ever more necessary as the body of
relevant knowledge continues to grow. With all the talk in graduate school circles about preparing
doctoral students for jobs outside academe, one has to wonder why departments spend time
readying Ph.D. candidates for entirely different careers before they have developed adequate
programs for the academic posts that graduate schools are supposed to serve, and that most of their
students continue to occupy.
Many departments may fail to provide such instruction because they lack faculty with necessary
knowledge, but provosts and deans could enlist competent teachers for such instruction from
elsewhere in the university, although they may hesitate to do so, given than graduate education has
always been the exclusive domain of the departments. Enterprising donors might consider giving
grants to graduate schools or departments willing to make the necessary reforms. If even a few
leading universities responded to such an invitation, others would probably follow suit.
Finally, there is an urgent need for more and better research both to improve the quality of
undergraduate education and to increase the number of students who complete their studies.
Among the many questions deserving further exploration, four lines of inquiry seem especially
important.
 How can remedial education be improved? At present, low rates of completion in remedial
courses are a major impediment to raising levels of educational attainment. The use of
computer-aided instruction in remedial math provides one promising example of the type of
improvement that could yield substantial benefits, and there are doubtless other possibilities.
 Far too little is known about the kinds of courses or other undergraduate experiences that
contribute to such noneconomic benefits in later life as better health, greater civic participation
and lower incidence of substance abuse and other forms of self-destructive behavior. Better
understanding of those connections could help educators increase the lasting value of a college
education while providing a stronger empirical basis for the sweeping claims frequently made
about the lifelong benefits of a liberal education. Such understanding would also reduce the risk
of inadvertently eliminating valuable aspects of a college education in the rush to find quicker,
cheaper ways of preparing students to obtain good jobs of immediate value to economic growth.
 Existing research suggests that better advising and other forms of student support may
substantially enhance the effect of increased financial aid in boosting the numbers of students
who complete their studies. With billions of dollars already being spent on student grants and
loans, it would clearly be helpful to know more about how to maximize the effects of such
subsidies on graduation rates.
 More work is needed to develop better ways for colleges to measure student learning, not only
for critical thinking and writing but also for other purposes of undergraduate education.
The importance of this last point can scarcely be overestimated. Without reliable measures of
learning, competition for students can do little to improve the quality of instruction, since
applicants have no way of knowing which college offers them the best teaching. Provosts, deans
and departments will have difficulty identifying weaknesses in their academic programs in need
of corrective action. Academic leaders will be handicapped in trying to persuade their professors
to change the way they teach if they cannot offer convincing evidence that alternative methods
will bring improved results. Faculty members will do less to improve their teaching if they continue
to lack adequate ways to discover how much their students are learning.

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838-12.docx

  • 1. Assignment No. 1 Q.1 Discuss the concept and scope of Curriculum. An organized developmental scope and sequence outlines what the early childhood curriculum focuses on and how the plans and materials support children at different stages of development. The scope refers to the areas of development addressed by the curriculum. Scope includes both the breadth (the curriculum addresses development across all of the Head Start Early Learning Outcomes Framework (ELOF) domains) and depth (curriculum content addresses specific developmental goals within each sub-domain). A content-rich curriculum ensures that this scope is sufficiently deep that it engages and sustains children's interests across multiple learning experiences. The sequence includes plans and materials for learning experiences to support and extend children's learning at various levels of development. A sequence of learning experiences progress from less to more complex, with the goal of supporting children as they move through the developmental progressions. An organized developmental scope and sequence:  Helps education staff support children's development of skills, behavior, and knowledge described in the ELOF and a state's early learning and development standards  Includes examples of materials, teaching practices, and learning experiences that support children at different levels of development  Allows flexibility to respond to the needs of individual children, including dual or tribal language learners and children with disabilities (or those suspected of having delays) and other special needs  Provides information to education staff that helps them plan and communicate with families and other education partners To be effective, curricula must be comprehensive in scope and provide learning experiences specifically designed to support children at various levels of development. A scope and sequence can be a helpful tool that education staff use to plan learning experiences tailored to children’s ages and developmental levels. It helps staff look ahead to see where development is going, and intentionally scaffold their learning. It also helps education staff implement research-based teaching practices that support children as they move through the developmental progressions, including those described in the ELOF. Elmwood Head Start education staff review their curriculum in the area of mathematics development. The scope of the curriculum includes number sense, operations and algebra, measurement, and geometry. The materials and plans for learning experiences are organized around a sequence designed to support children at various levels of development. The curriculum offers multiple learning opportunities that support children as they learn to understand simple patterns. For example, the curriculum includes learning experiences that invite children to experience patterns through movement (e.g., tap-clap-tap-clap) and to describe patterns while playing with colored blocks. Children are encouraged to say the pattern aloud as a group (e.g., red-blue-red-
  • 2. blue) or to fill in the missing element in a pattern (e.g., red-blue-red-). The curriculum also includes learning experiences that invite children to copy simple patterns (e.g., with stringing beads). At a more advanced level, the curriculum provides learning experiences in which children, with teacher guidance, can create and extend patterns using objects, movements, or sounds. The lesson plans within each of these learning opportunities describe how education staff can scaffold children’s learning and development at various levels (e.g., asking a child earlier in the developmental progression to identify what would come next in a simple pattern, and asking a child later in the developmental progression to describe a pattern the child has created). This sequence of learning experiences supports children as they move along the developmental progression of understanding patterns. Q.2 Explain the relationship Between Culture and curriculum. His classmates, their families, and the press rallied to resist what Western educated Sierra Leoneans interpreted as an effort by their British rulers to keep them in their place. Cole knew that unless he and his classmates took school-leaving examinations set abroad, they could not attend Oxford or Cambridge and thereby gain access to occupational mobility. What colonial policymakers perceived as a fitting curriculum --of which tests surely are an integral aspect- - Sierra Leoneans deemed unfitting and staunchly resisted. Clearly, one person's good fit is another person's crunched opportunities. What curriculum suits what cultural orientation as seen by whom is the subject of this report? It is a complex topic because the culture of most contemporary nations is a tangled tapestry of subcultural variants. The variants have curricular ramifications. Different groups may agree about what language to conduct instruction in and whose history to teach, and disagree about what other languages to offer and what topics with what emphasis to include in the history course. The translation of some aspect of culture or subculture into its curricular terms is undertaken by persons who often have high stakes in what they support. Indeed, as we see with Chief Poropot and Portuguese, the Diallo be and French, and Sierra Leonean Cole and the setting of external examinations, what is at stake is no less than fundamental well-being and survival as some agent defines them. (I will use agent to designate who, in light of some cultural orientation, proposes or supports some curricular element). The concept of culture is having a heyday. The ubiquitous appearance of the term in social science and education literature testifies to its being construed as necessary; in the process, it has become fashionable, as well. Such is the case in the field of educational scholarship, whose writers adopt established definitions of culture and construct definitions of their own. Not with standing that it is over defined and that if one looks long enough one can find conception to match any purpose, there is reasonable convergence on the referents of culture so that we borrowers need not feel that our choice of definitions is arbitrary. Some writers prefer to state what culture is not. Metz, for example, writes that culture "is not a systematic set of logically interrelated propositions about values, norms and the nature of the empirical world;" but, she adds at once, it is "a broad, diffuse, and potentially contradictory body of shared understanding about both what is and what ought to be" (1986, p. 54; see also Rossman, Corbett, and Firestone, 1988, p. 5). I value Metz's reference to "what ought to be" because it captures a common aspect of the translation of culture into curriculum: the often imperative tone of the agents' curricular recommendations. This tone is implied in Goodenough's definition that "a
  • 3. society's culture consists of whatever one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its members" (quoted in Mehan, 1982, p. 64). When Good enough speaks of what "one has to know and believe," he points to categories of curricular experience for which agents will have particular recommendations. Cazden and Mehan "think of culture as the normal, expected ways of perceiving, thinking, and behaving of large social groups" (1989, p. 49), nations, or communities; they exclude the smaller social groups whose "normal, expected ways" are those of a subculture. For my purposes, both culture and subculture are important for examining the culture-curriculum relationship Erickson picks up on the subcultural factor in his view of culture as "learned and shared standards for ways of thinking, feeling, and acting," so that he can identify the problem or misfit in the case of the classroom teachers' "learned ways of thinking and acting that have not yet been learned by their students" (1986, p. 117). An issue in culture-curriculum fit arises from the discrepancies among the involved subcultures, those of teachers and students, in Erickson's example. Based on her research on magnet middle schools, Metz identifies a teacher subculture. It develops by virtue of shared "meaning systems" (see also Maehr, 1987, pp. 295- 296), and she usefully adds, "has roots in the larger culture of the society" (1986, p. 221). Given the prospect of a range of subcultural "meaning systems" operating within the shared space of a school, and within the larger society where subcultures abound, we see the occasion for conflict over what curriculum should prevail. In practice, what strictly speaking are subcultures, writers often refer to as cultures. Thus, Rossman et al. (1988) refer to "teacher culture," Metz (1983) to "home culture," Shakeshaft (1987) to "female culture," and Maehr (1987) to "organizational culture." It is well to bear in mind that subcultures are rooted in the "larger culture of the society" because this suggests the legitimacy of what is an inevitable fact of complex societies: to varying degrees, subcultures are in competition with each other as they try to enact their "meaning systems" in the curricula of their society's schools. It is, therefore, a matter of good guys doing battle with each other as they contend for the right to define what goes on in school. Agents may take large units as their charge, referring to an entire culture, society, or the world, as does Bennett in the above example. Bennett takes as the basis for her agency what she perceives as salient about American society it is multicultural, and about the world--it is interdependent. Out of the numerous possible focal points of culture, Bennett, imbedded in particular cultural and subcultural alternatives, gives voice to two expressions. The number of such expressions is unlimited. Bennett would not soon exhaust what she could say about American society and the world. Of the many possibilities she could identify, she chose two. They came not from out of the blue but, rather, from the complex of her personal cultural and subcultural orientations. They represent the cause she wants served by some aspect of curriculum; they are the warrant for the curricular means she endorses. Bennett did not focus on health, unemployment, or pollution. Had she done so, she would have tendered other bases for thinking about schools, offered warrant for endorsing other aspects of curriculum to fit other aspects of culture. As I have discussed them, agents appear as conscious activists. This image misrepresents a whole set of agents--teachers, students, and parents, for example--whose behavior "makes" curriculum out of some cultural orientation but not necessarily in a conscious way or with specified, articulated bases in mind.
  • 4. Their agency is performed in the normal course of playing their role as teacher, student, or parent, although each may join groups and organizations that have been formed to give them voice. Examples below that relate to resistance illustrate this point. When, say, students and parents resist what happens in school, their actions contribute to the null curriculum. They become agents for undoing some aspect of curriculum, such as tests they should be fewer and easier; homework-- there should be less of it; books which ones are acceptable to read; and sex education--an unsuitable subject for classroom instruction. Q.3 critically examine the significance of situational analysis in curriculum development. The Importance of Situational Analysis and needs assessment in the initial stages of curriculum development. An article for education. Situational analysis is the systematic process of analyzing the situation before the curriculum is developed effectively. However, Hilda Taba (1962) describes situational Analysis as a diagnosis of needs. In this simpler form, we can define situational Analysis as the process of examining factors that exist in the environment or society where the curriculum is going to be implemented. Situational analysis factors include knowledge about the environment in terms of mountains, rivers, flora and fauna including places where the programme or curriculum is going to be implemented, the social or power structure of that society, the traditions, norms, needs and aspirations of the community and the language of instruction. Bishop (1985) argued that the situational Analysis must incorporate members of the general public and not only ‘experts’. These members should be invited to play their past in situational Analysis. This is because Education itself is not a discipline like English and History but an area involving a wide variety of society with different backgrounds. Hence, Parents Teachers Association (P.T.A) and religious Organizations would feel to say something pertaining to the lives and future of their children. This simply means that there is a way parents and society at large would want the curriculum to shape their attitudes of their children. Simpson Yinger (1958) argued that situational Analysis involve careful observation and an acute understanding of the variables influencing a given situation. The particular role of a researcher in situational Analysis is to contribute to our knowledge by isolating one by one each of the many variables that are involved in every situation and then studying the effects of their interaction. The scientists in this regard measures the influence of each factor alone and later how these variables interact with each other. In short, every stakeholder must be analyzed in details. To ensure effective results curriculum developers need to undertake SWOT analysis of the stakeholders involved. The importance of situational analysis and needs assessments is that they provide us with up to date information which can be used to solve the problems, set providers, identify groups which require special need intervention and can create a basis or platform for discussion in as far as curriculum development is concerned. Another importance of situational analysis and needs assessments is that Policy makers (Government officials) and decision makers (curriculum specialists) can make strong arguments in as far as allocation of resources is concerned. A needs assessment can be a powerful tool used to develop strategies to address the curriculum needs. Will provide the met and unmet needs within the targeted groups e.g. (i) met needs may be availability of teachers and pupils, supplementary readers (ii) unmet may be the distance between the school and the learner’s home. The importance of situational analysis and needs assessments is that they will help in the
  • 5. formulation of curriculum intent, content, selection of learning and teaching activities. It help educationalists meet the needs and expectations of the society. Ordinarily, the content of subjects in curriculum intent is too formal and academic to meet the needs of the majority of the children who do not proceed on to higher studies especially if it was developed without situational analysis. What pupils do in schools neither satisfies the developing needs of the child nor prepares the child adequately for the world/environment he/she lives in (no wonder we have more street kids in Zambia). Practical and aesthetic subjects such as wood work and music are therefore not given enough time and attention. This is because curriculum is mainly designed to transmit factual knowledge rather than to provide learning experiences. Q.4 Define curriculum design in term of sources and element. Teachers design each curriculum with a specific educational purpose in mind. The ultimate goal is to improve student learning, but there are other reasons to employ curriculum design as well. For example, designing a curriculum for middle school students with both elementary and high school curricula in mind helps to make sure that learning goals are aligned and complement each other from one stage to the next. If a middle school curriculum is designed without taking prior knowledge from elementary school or future learning in high school into account it can create real problems for the students. Subject-Centered Curriculum Design Subject-centered curriculum design revolves around a particular subject matter or discipline. For example, a subject-centered curriculum may focus on math or biology. This type of curriculum design tends to focus on the subject rather than the individual. It is the most common type of curriculum used in K-12 public schools in states and local districts in the United States. Subject-centered curriculum design describes what needs to be studied and how it should be studied. Core curriculum is an example of a subject-centered design that can be standardized across schools, states, and the country as a whole. In standardized core curricula, teachers are provided a pre-determined list of things that they need to teach their students, along with specific examples of how these things should be taught. You can also find subject-centered designs in large college classes in which teachers focus on a particular subject or discipline. The primary drawback of subject-centered curriculum design is that it is not student-centered. In particular, this form of curriculum design is constructed without taking into account the specific learning styles of the students. This can cause problems with student engagement and motivation and may even cause students to fall behind in class. Learner-Centered Curriculum Design In contrast, learner-centered curriculum design takes each individual's needs, interests, and goals into consideration. In other words, it acknowledges that students are not uniform and adjust to those student needs. Learner-centered curriculum design is meant to empower learners and allow them to shape their education through choices. Instructional plans in a learner-centered curriculum are differentiated, giving students the opportunity to choose assignments, learning experiences or activities. This can motivate students and help them stay engaged in the material that they are learning.
  • 6. The drawback to this form of curriculum design is that it is labor-intensive. Developing differentiated instruction puts pressure on the teacher to create instruction and/or find materials that are conducive to each student's learning needs. Teachers may not have the time or may lack the experience or skills to create such a plan. Learner-centered curriculum design also requires that teachers balance student wants and interests with student needs and required outcomes, which is not an easy balance to obtain. Problem-Centered Curriculum Design Like learner-centered curriculum design, problem-centered curriculum design is also a form of student-centered design. Problem-centered curricula focus on teaching students how to look at a problem and come up with a solution to the problem. Students are thus exposed to real-life issues, which helps them develop skills that are transferable to the real world. Problem-centered curriculum design increases the relevance of the curriculum and allows students to be creative and innovate as they are learning. The drawback to this form of curriculum design is that it does not always take learning styles into consideration. The following curriculum design tips can help educators manage each stage of the curriculum design process.  Identify the needs of stakeholders (i.e., students) early on in the curriculum design process. This can be done through needs analysis, which involves the collection and analysis of data related to the learner. This data might include what learners already know and what they need to know to be proficient in a particular area or skill. It may also include information about learner perceptions, strengths, and weaknesses.  Create a clear list of learning goals and outcomes. This will help you to focus on the intended purpose of the curriculum and allow you to plan instruction that can achieve the desired results. Learning goals are the things teachers want students to achieve in the course. Learning outcomes are the measurable knowledge, skills, and attitudes that students should have achieved in the course.  Identify constraints that will impact your curriculum design. For example, time is a common constraint that must be considered. There are only so many hours, days, weeks or months in the term. If there isn't enough time to deliver all of the instruction that has been planned, it will impact learning outcomes.  Consider creating a curriculum map (also known as a curriculum matrix) so that you can properly evaluate the sequence and coherence of instruction. Curriculum mapping provides visual diagrams or indexes of a curriculum. Analyzing a visual representation of the curriculum is a good way to quickly and easily identify potential gaps, redundancies or alignment issues in the sequencing of instruction. Curriculum maps can be created on paper or with software programs or online services designed specifically for this purpose.  Identify the instructional methods that will be used throughout the course and consider how they will work with student learning styles. If the instructional methods are not
  • 7. conducive to the curriculum, the instructional design or the curriculum design will need to be altered accordingly.  Establish evaluation methods that will be used at the end and during the school year to assess learners, instructors, and the curriculum. Evaluation will help you determine if the curriculum design is working or if it is failing. Examples of things that should be evaluated include the strengths and weaknesses of the curriculum and achievement rates related to learning outcomes. The most effective evaluation is ongoing and summative.  Remember that curriculum design is not a one-step process; continuous improvement is a necessity. The design of the curriculum should be assessed periodically and refined based on assessment data. This may involve making alterations to the design partway through the course to ensure that learning outcomes or a certain level of proficiency will be achieved at the end of the course. Q.5 Different individuals need different types of learning experience for self-development. Support this. Personal development is a lifelong process. It is a way for people to assess their skills and qualities, consider their aims in life and set goals in order to realize and maximize their potential. This page helps you to identify the skills you need to set life goals which can enhance your employability prospects, raise your confidence, and lead to a more fulfilling, higher quality life. Plan to make relevant, positive and effective life choices and decisions for your future to enable personal empowerment. The extent to which people are able to develop depends on certain needs being met and these needs form a hierarchy. Only when one level of need is satisfied can a higher one be developed. As change occurs throughout life, however, the level of need motivating someone’s behavior at any one time will also change.
  • 8.  At the bottom of the hierarchy are the basic physiological needs for food, drink, sex and sleep, i.e., the basics for survival.  Second are the needs for safety and security in both the physical and economic sense.  Thirdly, progression can be made to satisfying the need for love and belonging.  The fourth level refers to meeting the need for self-esteem and self-worth. This is the level most closely related to ‘self-empowerment’.  The fifth level relates to the need to understand. This level includes more abstract ideas such as curiosity and the search for meaning or purpose and a deeper understanding.  The sixth relates to aesthetic needs of beauty, symmetry and order.  Finally, at the top of Maslow’s hierarchy is the need for self-actualization. Maslow (1970, p.383) says that all individuals have the need to see themselves as competent and autonomous, also that every person has limitless room for growth. Self-actualization refers to the desire that everybody has ‘to become everything that they are capable of becoming’. In other words, it refers to self-fulfillment and the need to reach full potential as a unique human being.
  • 9. Assignment No. 2 Q.1 Explain the process of curriculum development. The curriculum development process systematically organizes what will be taught, who will be taught, and how it will be taught. Each component affects and interacts with other components. For example, what will be taught is affected by who is being taught (e.g., their stage of development in age, maturity, and education). Methods of how content is taught are affected by who is being taught, their characteristics, and the setting. In considering the above three essential components, the following are widely held to be essential considerations in experiential education in non-formal settings: Essential Considerations for Curriculum Development: 1. issue/problem/need is identified (issue ® what), 2. characteristics and needs of learners (target audience ® who), 3. changes intended for learners (intended outcomes/objectives ® what the learners will be able to do), 4. the important and relevant content ®(what), 5. methods to accomplish intended outcomes ®(how), 6. Evaluation strategies for methods, content, and intended outcomes ® (What works?). The CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT MODEL on the next page shows how these components relate to each other and to the curriculum development process. It begins when an issue, concern, or problem needs to be addressed. If education or training a segment of the population will help solve the problem, then curriculum to support an educational effort becomes a priority with human and financial resources allocated. The next step is to form a curriculum develop-ment team. The team makes systematic decisions about the target audience (learner characteristics), intended out-comes (objectives), content, methods, and evaluation strategies. With input from the curriculum development team, draft curriculum products are developed, tested, evaluated, and redesigned -if necessary. When the final product is produced, volunteer training is conducted. The model shows a circular process where volunteer training provides feedback for new materials or revisions to the existing curriculum.
  • 10. PHASES AND STEPS IN CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT (See Figure 2 on the previous page) further illustrates how the 12 essential steps progress from one to the next. It also shows the interaction and relationships of the four essential phases of the curriculum development process: (I) Planning, (II) Content and Methods, (III) Implementation, and (IV) Evaluation and Reporting. It is important to acknowledge that things do not always work exactly as depicted in a model! Each phase has several steps or tasks to complete in logical sequence. These steps are not always separate and distinct, but may overlap and occur concurrently. For example, the curriculum development team is involved in all of the steps. Evaluations should occur in most of the steps to assess progress. The team learns what works and what does not and determines the impact of the curriculum on learners after it is implemented. Each step logically follows the previous. It would make no sense to design learning activities before learner outcomes and content are described and
  • 11. identified. Similarly, content cannot be determined before learner outcomes are described. In the experience of the author, and confirmed by other curriculum specialists, the following curriculum development steps are frequently omitted or slighted. These steps are essential to successful curriculum development and need to be emphasized. Essential Curriculum Development Steps Needing Emphasis 1. Needs assessment: if not conducted, wonderful curriculum could be developed, but the appropriate needs of the target audience may not be met. 2. Involving youth: the target audience and volunteers (or staff) who will be the implementers of the curriculum must be involved (i.e., they participate as full members of the curriculum development team). 3. Recruiting and training volunteer facilitators: competent and skilled curriculum implementers are critical (the printed word cannot teach experiential group process, it doesn't provide feedback). 4. Evaluating and reporting on the impact of the curriculum: is critical for securing human and financial support from key policy decision makers and for assessing whether the curriculum has achieved the intended outcome. Two types of evaluation are included in the Phases and Steps illustration: (1) Formative provides feedback during the process of developing the curriculum, and (2) Summative answers questions about changes (impact) that have occurred in learners because of their learning experiences. Summative evaluation provides evidence for what works, what does not work, and what needs to be improved. In every step of the curriculum development process, the most important task is to keep the learner (in this case, youth) in mind and involve them in process. For example, the curriculum team members, who have direct knowledge of the target audience, should be involved in conducting the needs assessment. From the needs assessment process, the problem areas are identified, gaps between what youth know and what they need to know are identified, and the scope of the problem is clarified and defined. The results may prompt decision makers to allocate resources for a curriculum development team to prepare curriculum materials. Q.2 Explain why change as function of curriculum improvement is important. Meaning and concept of curriculum development Curriculum development in its word meaning stands for the development of curriculum. 1. Rogers and Taylor:- Curriculum development describes all the ways in which teaching or training organization plans and guides learning. This learning can take place in groups or with individual learners. It can take place inside or outside the classroom. It can take place in an institutional setting like school, college, training center, or in a village or a field. It is central to the teaching-learning process. 2. Curriculum development is a process involving the activities like  conceptualizing the curriculum,  selecting and organizing the content, material and learning experiences
  • 12.  suggesting the method and ways of providing these experiences  Evaluating the learning outcomes in terms of attainment of desired educational objectives. What is curriculum In simple words A curriculum refers to a defined and prescribed course of studies, which students must fulfill in order to pass a certain level of education. Some influential definitions combining various elements to describe curriculum are as follows  John Kerr:- According to John Kerr a curriculum is a planned and guided by the school, whether it is carried on in groups, individually inside or outside the school.  The curriculum is a total learning experience provided by the school. It includes the content of courses (the syllabus), the method employed (strategies) and other aspects like norms and values, which relate to the way school are organized.  Thus a curriculum is neither a development nor a sequence of experiences. It is a plan for facilitating learning for students.  This plan starts with where the child is. It enumerates all the aspects and dimensions of learning that are considered necessary. It gives a reason why such learning is considered necessary and what educational aims it would serve. In a nutshell,  the curriculum is a means followed by the teachers and students for achieving the set goals and the aims or objectives of education being provided in the school.  Curriculum, in every sense, is supposed to be used for all experiences. These may be curricular or co-curricular, imparted by the school for the realization of the stipulated aims and objectives of the school education. Need and importance of curriculum development (or construction)  Curriculum development is a purposeful activity.  It is undertaken to design or redesign for the realization of certain specific educational objectives.  The curriculum is the heart of the student’s college/school experience.  The curriculum should be reviewed and revised on a regular basis so that it is able to serve the changing needs of both students and society.  Following points iterates the needs and importance of curriculum development. 1. Clear purpose and goals:- Curriculum construction provide written curricular goals which are nothing but intended student development outcomes. These goals and objectives are specified in considerable detail and in behavioral language. 2. Continuous assessment and improvement of quality:- Valid and reliable assessment of curriculum is necessary. The curriculum followed by an institution should be reviewed regularly in order to maintain its effectiveness in regards to changing needs of the society as a whole. 3. A rational sequence:- In a curriculum educational activities are carefully ordered in developmental sequence. This developmental sequence helps to form a well-planned (or coherent) curriculum based on intended goals and outcomes of the curriculum and its constituent courses.
  • 13. 4. Making strategy in teaching and learning:- Curriculum development helps in suggesting suitable teaching-learning strategies, teaching methods, instructional materials etc. It helps in providing for the proper implementation of the curriculum on the part of teachers and learners. 5. Helps in the selection of learning experiences:- Curriculum development is needed for appropriate selection and organization of learning experiences. It helps in the selection of study matter and other activities so that learners are able to acquire goals and objectives of teaching. 6. The process of curriculum development is needed for conceptualizing a curriculum in terms of the determination of educational objectives for teaching-learning at a particular grade of school education. 7. Helps in continuous and comprehensive education:- Curriculum development considers the need of providing a scheme of education for CCE of the teaching-learning outcomes. With proper feedback, it helps to bring necessary improvement in the teaching-learning process and environment. Q.3 critically examine curriculum development at primary and secondary level. Curriculum Development at Primary and Secondary Level Why Curriculum??? Education plays a vital role in nation building. Ministry of (provisional) Education, is responsible for the cohesion, integration and preservation of the ideological foundation of the states. Curriculum Bodies at Primary and Secondary Levels • IN PUNJAB: PUNJAB CURRICULUM AUTHORTY (PCA) is responsible to develop curriculum for Punjab Province. • IN SINDH: BUREAU OF CURRICULUM AND EXTENSION WING (BCEW) is responsible for develop curriculum for Sindh Province • IN KPK: DIRECTORATE OF CURRICULUM AND TEACHER EDUCATION(CTE) is responsible for develop curriculum for Khyber Paktunkhwa Province. • IN BALOCHISTAN: No Curriculum body its in process • IN ICT, FATA, FANA and AJK: CURRICULUM WING is responsible for the develop curriculum for these Areas. 1. Main Functions of these bodies • prepare or cause to be prepared schemes of studies, curricula, manuscripts of textbooks, standards of education and schedules or strategy for their introduction in various classes of an institution in connection with the implementation of the education policy of the Government. 2. Main Responsibilities Ministry of Education (Curriculum Development Body) is responsible in making of: 1. Curriculum 2. Syllabus 3. Planning 4. Policy and 5. Development of Educational Standards. 3. Curriculum Design and Development Process in Pakistan 1. Evolution of Curriculum Objectives. 2. Development of Scheme of Studies. 3. Development of Syllabus of each subject. 4. Development of Textbook, Instructional material. 5. Approval of Textual Material. 6. Teacher Training. 4. Evolution of Curriculum Objectives. • Prepares the draft of objectives. (Send to inter- provincial Ministry for discussion curriculum development). • Objectives are finalized. • Translated to the specific teaching objectives. Factors considered in finalizing the
  • 14. objectives • be precise • Assist in the selection of teaching strategy • Produce a designated behavior pattern • Enables teachers to evaluate the quality and effectiveness of learning. 5. Developing Objectives are derived from • Recommendation of the Education Policy • Provisional Level Seminars • Forums of research studies • Inter Board Committee of Chairmen 6. The studies Scheme (Scheme of Studies) It is based on three key factors: • The Education policy • Market Demand • Global Issues Task work in this area is undertaken with the participation of: • Provincial government • Research organizations and experts • Feedback of the IBCC 7. Development of Syllabi It is based on objectives and scheme of study. 1. Subject specific syllabi is prepared in consultation with: 2. Subject expert 3. Psychologist 4. Serving teacher Syllabi must satisfy the following conditions: 1. based on the needs of learner. 2. Take into account the existing knowledge and the environmental experience of the learner. 3. The development level of the learner is considered in the cognitive, effectiveness and psycho- motor domain. 4. Content should be focused on attaining the objectives. 8. Textbook Development • Provisional Text Book Boards are responsible for the development of the text-books according to the approved syllabi. How textbook is developed? 1. Establish a list of text book writers. 2. Invitation are sent to the writers to submit the material within the syllabus parameter. 3. Selection is made on the basis of relevance of material. 4. The selected material is transformed into a textbook. 9. Review the Approval Review committee comprises on five or six members: • At least one expert form the syllabus Formulation Committee. Two subject experts. Two school teachers • Textbooks Review Parameter • the books truly reflects the curriculum. • It meets the objectives stated in the curriculum. • Book does not contain any material repugnant to Islamic and Pakistani ideology. • In case of approval, textbook is sent for publishing and distribution. • In case of objection, complaints are relayed with revision recommendations. 10. Teacher Training • Teacher training for curriculum implementation is the responsibility of the provincial government. • It is now stressed that each textbook must have a teacher's guide or included in textbook. • In some cases assistance in the training of the master’s trainers is arranged by the provincial government. Q.4 Vocationalization has political approach rather than educational. How? Although this perspective on the science curriculum has a long history, in recent decades it has received little attention. This article examines recent research into the vocational and work‐related aspects of secondary school science, and the historical and policy background. Its empirical focus is a late secondary course with the title “Applied Science”, which was introduced into schools in England and Wales in 2002. It draws on the preliminary findings of a research study focusing on the origins and implementation of this course. Overall, the article provides an overview of the major issues and research agenda associated with the notion of a vocational or applied school science curriculum, focusing ultimately on the key issues of educational purpose, pedagogy, and status. The vocationalization of education is different in economically less developed countries (LDCs) than in the economically more developed ones (MDCs). Although there may appear to be
  • 15. similarities, there are also important differences between them that largely arise from three contexts: (1) their social and economic structures and the resulting differences in demand for skilled labor; (2) the role of the LDCs as "price-takers" rather than "price-makers" on the world market; and (3) the development strategies they use, often without full recognition of their own realities and resource limitations. As a result, the problems arising from the efforts by these countries to vocationalize the curriculum of their schools are in many ways qualitatively different, and this whole educational strategy is usually much more problematic for them than for the MDCs. There are also major differences between the developing countries themselves, which make any kind of overall generalization on this issue even more difficult, but there are enough commonalities among them that would make these observations somewhat applicable to most of the LDCs. With a more appropriate development strategy, changes in the curriculum, including the introduction of vocational subjects, might play a more effective role in increasing the contribution that education can make toward raising the productivity of an LDC. However, political leaders in the LDCs have not followed this course. Therefore, to say that vocational education is or is not a useful educational approach is by itself meaningless, despite the research results that now exist. The special priority given to primary education since the early 1990s has also until recently deflected donor interest from secondary education—whether vocationalized or not. But some countries have continued to pursue vocationalization policies. Botswana, Ghana and Kenya—the case studies chosen for the present report- - are main examples. Even if its cost-effectiveness is in dispute for some decades, many countries will continue to have an active interest in an updated discussion of the topic, since vocationalization purports to address the urgent concern about how to improve the relevance of what is learned in school for the world of work. Thus the purpose of the present study to provide an update on a topic of recurring policy importance. The study reviews literature on vocationalization and presents three especially commissioned case studies on Botswana, Ghana and Kenya (Part Two of the report). These case studies are substantial studies in their own right and their contribution is in no way exhausted by the use made of them in Part One. The Case Studies made use of available documentation but could not collect extensive primary data beyond information gathered during brief visits to schools and consultations with government officials. It is recognized that in high-income countries in which secondary education will include the great majority of youth (in particular the OECD countries), models of secondary education that blend general education and vocational training, may be achievable, affordable and appropriate. There are also middle income countries which are pursuing such policies. However, the present question is whether vocationalized secondary education in the medium term is appropriate for developing countries in Sub- Saharan Africa—given the concerns which are important for Vocational Education and Training (VET). In particular, is vocationalization superior to purely general education in preparing for labor market entry and for subsequent vocational and technical training? Eventually, the issue is whether it is superior in improving the productivity of labor, and at what cost? Thus, the study looks at one aspect of secondary education—through lenses which we think are appropriate for VET. Personal development goals
  • 16. Dominant theories of general education point to the ideal of educating ‘the whole person’. A well rounded education would develop a wide range of talents including moral, aesthetic, and physical capacities- - not only a grasp of academically disciplined knowledge. Practical subjects are valued because they add variety to the school week by allowing students to learn from more active ‘doing’ than what is typical in academic subjects. Under this perspective, the teaching of practical skills and familiarization with the ‘world of work’ donot need to bejustified only as skills preparation for specific occupations. They arelegitimate partsof general education. Oneexample is the teaching of handicrafts skills (sløyd) within lower secondary education in the Nordic countries, or contemporary Design and Technology courses in a number of other countries- - including Botswana (Weeks, BCS). To be sure, preparation for the world of work is in a general way part of what such subjects usually for, but under this perspective these subjects can be valued as general skills in practical design and problem solution—not only in work situations but also for their private use and. Further, teaching about the ‘world of work’ is legitimately valued as a means of enabling young people to make better informed choices about their future as well as teaching knowledge about an important part of human life. A ‘diversified curriculum’ structure in secondary schools has sometimes beenseen as an organizational means to achieve greater equality of opportunity because it would cater to a wider range of talents and purports to prepare for a wider range of future activity, than purely academic curricula This view has been associated with the development of comprehensive secondary schools in many countries. The influence of the United States helped propagate this idea of comprehensive secondary education internationally. Socialist and social democratic policies on education have seen the inclusion of practical and vocational subjects as a means to break down social class barriers and teach respect for manual labor. Some African countries have also historically been influenced by respectively North American or Soviet models of comprehensive secondary school. However, in Africa practical subjects have a more complex history. Under colonial regimes, Africans struggled against racial discrimination in order to gain access to academic education and to the opportunity which such education led to. Practical and vocational subjects were then part of resented racially segregated provisions ‘adapted’ for African subjects (see e.g., Anderson 1970,on Kenya). After Independence, depending on the political orientation of governments, in some countries practical subjects became part of wider measures (e.g., national youth service) intended to assure the identification of the future educated elite with ordinary working people and build national solidarity. With passage of time since Independence, arguments of this type now have become less important for policy making. By teaching vocational skills the hope has beenthat students would more easily find work when they leave school, and become more productive and trainable. Sometimes, a declared goal is even preparation for self-employment. By easing the transition to work for school leavers, the hope has also been that the prevalence of antisocial behavior among youth would be reduced. Carol Coombe (1988) confirmed that economic goals were by far the most important driving motives behind vocationalization policies in Commonwealth countries. The goals noted by her included: provision of skilled and semi-skilled manpower, reduction of wasted resources caused by weak articulation between education and the labor market, technological literacy, and generally facilitating economic growth and national development. As noted in BCS, there was in the past also some influence of rural-
  • 17. centered populist ideas of development which would see a high rate ofmigration to townas a problem to be countered by educational means. In African countries, the issue at the heart of policy debate on vocationalization has been undoubtedly been ‘economic relevance’. The recurring question has been whether vocationalized secondary education in effect turns out to be more ‘economically relevant’ than purely ‘general’ education, and if any gains worththe extra costincurred in producing them. From a VET point of view, these goals are indeed the overridingly important ones. But other issues and objectives have also be evident in African countries when curricula and syllabuses have been framed by educationists—below the ‘political’ level. Q.5 Curriculum of the schools cannot be better than the quality of persons prepared by teacher education institution, make comments. Increasing graduation rates and levels of educational attainment will accomplish little if students do not learn something of lasting value. Yet federal efforts over the last several years have focused much more on increasing the number of Americans who go to college than on improving the education they receive once they get there. By concentrating so heavily on graduation rates and attainment levels, policy makers are ignoring danger signs that the amount that students learn in college may have declined over the past few decades and could well continue to do so in the years to come. The reasons for concern include:  College students today seem to be spending much less time on their course work than their predecessors did 50 years ago, and evidence of their abilities suggests that they are probably learning less than students once did and quite possibly less than their counterparts in many other advanced industrial countries.  Employers complain that many graduates they hire are deficient in basic skills such as writing, problem solving and critical thinking that college leaders and their faculties consistently rank among the most important goals of an undergraduate education.  Most of the millions of additional students needed to increase educational attainment levels will come to campus poorly prepared for college work, creating a danger that higher graduation rates will be achievable only by lowering academic standards.  More than two-thirds of college instructors today are not on the tenure track but are lecturers serving on year-to-year contracts. Many of them are hired without undergoing the vetting commonly used in appointing tenure-track professors. Studies indicate that extensive use of such instructors may contribute to higher dropout rates and to grade inflation.  States have made substantial cuts in support per student over the past 30 years for public colleges and community colleges. Research suggests that failing to increase appropriations to keep pace with enrollment growth tends to reduce learning and even lower graduation rates. While some college leaders are making serious efforts to improve the quality of teaching, many others seem content with their existing programs. Although they recognize the existence of problems affecting higher education as a whole, such as grade inflation or a decline in the rigor of academic standards, few seem to believe that these difficulties exist on their own campus, or they tend to attribute most of the difficulty to the poor preparation of students before they enroll. Many colleges provide a formidable array of courses, majors and extracurricular opportunities, but firsthand accounts indicate that many undergraduates do not feel that the material conveyed in their readings and lectures has much relevance to their lives. Such sentiments suggest either that the courses do not in fact contribute much to the ultimate goals that colleges claim to value or that instructors are not taking sufficient care to explain the larger aims of their courses and why they should matter.
  • 18. Other studies suggest that many instructors do not teach their courses in ways best calculated to achieve the ends that faculties themselves consider important. For example, one investigator studied samples of the examinations given at elite liberal arts colleges and research universities. Although 99 percent of professors consider critical thinking an “essential” or “very important” goal of a college education, fewer than 20 percent of the exam questions actually tested for this skill. Now that most faculties have defined the learning objectives of their college and its various departments and programs, it should be possible to review recent examinations to determine whether individual professors, programs and departments are actually designing their courses to achieve those goals. College administrators could also modify their student evaluation forms to ask students whether they believe the stated goals were emphasized in the courses they took. In addition, the average time students devote to studying varies widely among different colleges, and many campuses could require more of their students. Those lacking evidence about the study habits of their undergraduates could inform themselves through confidential surveys that faculties could review and consider steps to encourage greater student effort and improve learning. The vast difference between how well seniors think they can perform and their actual proficiencies (according to tests of basic skills and employer evaluations) suggests that many colleges are failing to give students an adequate account of their progress. Grade inflation may also contribute to excessive confidence, suggesting a need to work to restore appropriate standards, although that alone is unlikely to solve the problem. Better feedback on student papers and exams will be even more important in order to give undergraduates a more accurate sense of how much progress they’ve made and what more they need to accomplish before they graduate. Improving graduate education. Colleges and universities need to reconfigure graduate programs to better prepare aspiring professors for teaching. As late as two or three generations ago, majorities of new Ph.D.s, at least in the better graduate programs, found positions where research was primary, either in major universities, industry or government. Today, however, many Ph.D.s find employment in colleges that are chiefly devoted to teaching or work as adjunct instructors and are not expected to do research. Aspiring college instructors also need to know much more now in order to teach effectively. A large and increasing body of useful knowledge has accumulated about learning and pedagogy, as well as the design and effectiveness of alternative methods of instruction. Meanwhile, the advent of new technologies has given rise to methods of teaching that require special training. As evidence accumulates about promising ways of engaging students actively, identifying difficulties they are having in learning the material and adjusting teaching methods accordingly, the current gaps in the preparation most graduate students receive become more and more of a handicap. Universities have already begun to prepare graduate students to teach by giving them opportunities to assist professors in large lecture courses and by creating centers where they can get help to become better instructors. More departments are starting to provide or even require a limited amount of instruction in how to teach. Nevertheless, simply allowing grad students to serve as largely unsupervised teaching assistants, or creating centers where they can receive a brief orientation or a few voluntary sessions on teaching, will not adequately equip them for a career in the classroom. A more substantial preparation is required and will become ever more necessary as the body of relevant knowledge continues to grow. With all the talk in graduate school circles about preparing doctoral students for jobs outside academe, one has to wonder why departments spend time readying Ph.D. candidates for entirely different careers before they have developed adequate
  • 19. programs for the academic posts that graduate schools are supposed to serve, and that most of their students continue to occupy. Many departments may fail to provide such instruction because they lack faculty with necessary knowledge, but provosts and deans could enlist competent teachers for such instruction from elsewhere in the university, although they may hesitate to do so, given than graduate education has always been the exclusive domain of the departments. Enterprising donors might consider giving grants to graduate schools or departments willing to make the necessary reforms. If even a few leading universities responded to such an invitation, others would probably follow suit. Finally, there is an urgent need for more and better research both to improve the quality of undergraduate education and to increase the number of students who complete their studies. Among the many questions deserving further exploration, four lines of inquiry seem especially important.  How can remedial education be improved? At present, low rates of completion in remedial courses are a major impediment to raising levels of educational attainment. The use of computer-aided instruction in remedial math provides one promising example of the type of improvement that could yield substantial benefits, and there are doubtless other possibilities.  Far too little is known about the kinds of courses or other undergraduate experiences that contribute to such noneconomic benefits in later life as better health, greater civic participation and lower incidence of substance abuse and other forms of self-destructive behavior. Better understanding of those connections could help educators increase the lasting value of a college education while providing a stronger empirical basis for the sweeping claims frequently made about the lifelong benefits of a liberal education. Such understanding would also reduce the risk of inadvertently eliminating valuable aspects of a college education in the rush to find quicker, cheaper ways of preparing students to obtain good jobs of immediate value to economic growth.  Existing research suggests that better advising and other forms of student support may substantially enhance the effect of increased financial aid in boosting the numbers of students who complete their studies. With billions of dollars already being spent on student grants and loans, it would clearly be helpful to know more about how to maximize the effects of such subsidies on graduation rates.  More work is needed to develop better ways for colleges to measure student learning, not only for critical thinking and writing but also for other purposes of undergraduate education. The importance of this last point can scarcely be overestimated. Without reliable measures of learning, competition for students can do little to improve the quality of instruction, since applicants have no way of knowing which college offers them the best teaching. Provosts, deans and departments will have difficulty identifying weaknesses in their academic programs in need of corrective action. Academic leaders will be handicapped in trying to persuade their professors to change the way they teach if they cannot offer convincing evidence that alternative methods will bring improved results. Faculty members will do less to improve their teaching if they continue to lack adequate ways to discover how much their students are learning.