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Types of Curriculum Design-3
Types of Curriculum Design-3
- It is the most common type of curriculum used in K-12 public schools in states and
local districts in the United States.
- Often revolves around what needs to be studied and how it should be studied. Core
curriculum is an example of a subject-centered design. This type of curriculum is
standardized.
Core curriculum are set of courses that are considered basic and essential for future class
work and graduation. These are Math, Science, English, History and Geography in middle
school or high school.
Teachers are given a set list of things that need to be studied along with specific examples of
how these things should be studied. You can also find subject-centered design in large
college classes where teachers have a tendency to focus on a particular subject or discipline
with little regard for individual learning styles.
1. Subject design – the oldest and best known school design to both teachers and lay
people in which most of them are using it.
According to Henry Morrison who was the superindent of public instruction in New
Hampshire and later joined the University of Chicago claimed that the subject matter
curriculum aimed most to literacy, and therefore should be the focus of the elementary
curriculum.
And that such design permitted secondary students to create interest and competencies in
specific subject areas and he assumed that different courses should be offered to meet
students’ needs.
- Robert Hutchins – an American educational philosopher, dean of Yale Law School
( 1927–1929), and president (1929–1945) and chancellor (1945–1951) of the University
of Chicago. In mid 1930’s indicated which subject such as curriculum design would
comprise a school:
1. Language and its uses (reading, writing, grammar, literature)
2. Mathematics
3. Sciences
4. History
5. Foreign Languages
John Dewey - a writer, lecturer and philosopher whose theories had a profound influence on
public education was interested in divorcing the knowledge from the learners’ experiences
and essentially transmitting second
hand knowledge and others’ ideas. For him curriculum should emphasize both subject
matter and the learner.
2. Discipline Design – this new design acquired popularity during the 1950s and reached
its peak during the mid 1960.
Proponents who supports this design like:
Arthur King and John Brownell – point out that a discipline is specific knowledge
that has the following important characteristics:
- a community of persons
- an expression of human imagination
- a domain
- a tradition
- a mode of inquiry
- conceptual structure
- specialized language
- heritage literature
- a network of communications
- a valuative and effective stance
- an instructive community
Jerome Seymour Bruner (who was an American psychologist who made significant
contributions to human cognitive psychology and cognitive learning theory in educational
psychology)– states “Getting to know something is an adventure in how to account for a great
many things that you encounter in as simple and elegant way as possible.” Wherein “getting
to know” relies on students’ engaging with a discipline’s content and methods.
The discipline design also encourages students to see each discipline’s basic logic or
structure – which is the main relationship in concepts and principles, which according to
Joseph Schwab (University of Chicago professor of education and natural sciences)“the
substantive structure” and Philip Phenix (emeritus philosophy educator) “realms of
meaning.” Structure means to allow a “deep” understanding of the content and knowledge of
how it can be applied.
- Harry Broudy (was a Polish-born educator. Broudy attended Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, Boston University where he received his Bachelor's degree in German
literature and philosophy in 1929) named such knowledge as “applicative knowledge”
or “problem-solving procedures”.
4. Correlational Design
Most frequent correlated subjects:
- English Literature
- History at the secondary level
- Language arts and Social Studies at the elementary level
At present few teachers use correlation design maybe because it compels them to plan
their lessons cooperatively.
Say in elementary level – teachers will find it difficult to acomplish becasue they have
self contained classes and often donot have time for collaboration.
In Secondary level – are organized into separate departments that tend to encourage
isolation. Theyalso have to meet time schedules imposed by specific classes and so
teachers have little time to work with other teachers on team teaching.
5. Process Design- this design stresses those procedures to allow students to analyze reality
and construct frameworks different from the way the world appears to the casual
viewer.
A lot of discussion has followed as regards to involving the students in learning and
empowering them to be the vital players in the classroom but still this has been
studied.
- This design reveals a modern orientation, the process of knowledge acquisition which
needs to be learned by students, for them to reach a certain degree of consensus.
As what Jean Francois Lyotard (a French philosopher, sociologist, and literary
theorist) and others claimed that we must be involved in a process not to reach
unanimity but to search for variability.
- This design will most likely be active in the future because they will likely increase in
merging with the learner-centered.
Learner-centered curriculum design revolves around the learner. It takes each individual's
needs, interests and goals into consideration. In other words, it acknowledges students that
are not uniform and should not be subjected to a standardized curriculum. This type of
curriculum design is meant to empower learners and allow them to shape their education
through choices.
Instructional plans in a learner-centered curriculum are not as rigid as they are in a subject-
centered curriculum design.
The drawback to this form of curriculum design is that it puts a lot of pressure on the
teacher to create instruction and find materials that are conducive to each student's learning
needs. This can be very difficult for teachers due to time constraints, or even lack of
experience or skills. It can also be difficult for teachers to balance student wants and
interests with student needs and required outcomes.
1. Child-Centered design
- Using the social approach to education Pestalossi and Froebel argued that effective
education did not call for strict discipline, instead attaining the child’s innate tendency
to become involved in exciting things is in the institutional approach that is somewhat
free.
- John Dewey commented that children’s impulsive power, their demand for self-
expression cannot be suppressed.
- For Dewey interest is purposeful.
- In the book Experience and Education, he wrote that education should commence
with the experience learners already possessed when they entered school and that
experience is the starting point for all further learning.
- Dewey also stated that children exist in a personal world of experiences and their
interests are personal concerns, rather than bodies of knowledge and their attendant
facts, concepts, generalization and theories.
- He pointed out, “The easy thing is to seize upon something in the nature of the child,
or upon something in the developed consiousness of the adult, and insist upon the
key to the whole problem.”
- For Dewey, educators must analyze children’s experiences and see how those
experiences formed children’s knowledge.
- Before, crusaders who support radical school modification have highlighted learner-
centered design in which they follow Rosusseau’s position on the value of attending to
the nature of individuals and Pestalozzi’s philosophy that individuals can find their
true selves by looking to their own nature.
- Normally, the radicals reflect current society as corrupt, suppressive, and powerless to
remedy itself. For them, schools are using their curricula to indoctrinate and then
control students rather than to educate and liberate them.
- Freire’s teaching influenced the thinking of the present day radicals. He believes that
education should inform the masses about their oppression, provoke them to feel
dissatisfied with their condition, and give them the skills necessary for connecting the
identified injustices.
- Curricular leaders who supports radical views consider that individuals must learn
ways of involvement in an analysis of knowledge.
- Curricula with a radical design address social economic inequality and injustice
and foster for diversity which are very political.
4. Humanistic Design
- This design gained prominence in the 1960s and ‘70s. But as early as the 1920s and
‘30s this design appeared as part of progressive philosophy and the whole-child
movement in philosophy.
- This new psychological orientation stressed that human action was more than a
reaction to a stimulus, that meaning was more important than methods, that the
emphasis of consideration should be on the subjective rather than the objective nature
of human existence, and that there is as association between learning and feeling.
- Abraham Maslow one of the most influential psychologist in the 20 th century and was
considered the father of humanist movement in psychology, described a hierarchy of
needs that he argued provides a model for understanding the need for human
relations in the classroom. Needs lower on the pyramid, such as physical and safety
needs, must be met before an individual will consider higher-level needs.
- Carl Rogers – in his effort he stated that self-directed learning wherein students draw
on their own resources to develop self-understanding and guide their own behavior.
- In this design, educators should plan an environment that inspire genuineness,
empathy, and respect for self and others.
- He affirmed that with this type of environment, students will naturally improve as fully
functioning individual.
It focuses on teaching students how to look at a problem and come up with a solution to the
problem. This is considered an authentic form of learning because students are 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 get creative and innovate while learning. The drawback to this form of
curriculum design is that it does not always take learning styles into consideration.
- Harold Rugg believed that schools should engage children analysis of society in order
to improve it.
He criticized child-centered schools, opposing that their laissez-faire approach to
curriculum development produced a confusion of disjoined curriculum and rarely
involved a careful review of a child’s educational program.
- Theodore Brameld – who advocated recontructionism well into the 1950s, claimed
that recontructionist were committed to facilitating the emergence of a new culture.
He also believed that times required a new social order, existing society displayed
decay, poverty, crime, racial conflict, unemployment, political oppression, and the
destruction of the environment.
- He stated that schools should help students develop into social beings dedicated to the
common good.
References:
The Work of Abraham Maslow, D.E. Campbell – Pearson Allyn Bacon, Prentice Hall updated
on April 30, 2014
Norman V. Lucena, BSED IV-E Biological Science Educ 10 Curriculum Development. Prof.
Josefina De Jesus
Curriculum Development, Emerita Reyes, Ed.D., Erlinda Dizon, Ed.D, Danilo K. Villena,
Ph.D. Author/ Consultant