The Impact of ELT Curriculum Evaluation, Curriculum Change and Innovation

Curriculum evaluation is the process of measuring and judging the extent to which the planned
courses, programmes, learning activities and opportunities as expressed in the formal curriculum actually
produce the expected results. Ornstein and Hunkins (1998) define curriculum evaluation as “a process or
cluster of processes that people perform in order to gather data that will enable them to decide whether to
accept, change, or eliminate something- the curriculum in general or an educational textbook in particular”.
The collected result from the evaluation will provide evidence-based information that is reliable and useful for
to revise or change the curriculum by the stakeholders. There are three types of evaluation which are
formative evaluation, which occurs during the course of curriculum development; summative evaluation,
which takes place after the curriculum has been fully developed and put into operations and diagnostic
evaluation, which is directed for placement of students properly at the outset of an instructional level or to
discover the underlying cause of deviancies in student learning in any field of study.

Malaysia is determined to become a knowledge-economy nation. Malaysia invests in the education and
training for workforce quality, economic productivity, and global competition. Education in Malaysia is an
ongoing effort towards developing its human capital to respond to changes in the 21st century workplace. To
deem too exam oriented and textbook focused syllabus, Primary School Integrated Curriculum (KBSR) and
Secondary School Integrated Curriculum (KBSR) was introduced in 1983. However, these reforms had
excessive focus only on knowledge acquisition to enable the children to get an A grade in examination and
not to impart knowledge, values and skills. Leadership qualities and skills such as entrepreneurship are
lacking in these reforms to prepare the children to face this fast paced progressive world.

Then, the Ministry of Education revised the primary curriculum and introduced the Primary School
Standard Curriculum (KSSR) replacing KBSR in 2011.