Trends, Issues, and Practices in Curriculum Development

June 23, 2020

Given:

Please make a reflection log from your readings relative to the topics
assigned to read.

Answer:

The title of the assigned reading is Curriculum Essentials. On the first part, it
discussed about the Curriculum in Schools. In this topic, the Saber-Tooth
Curriculum which was published by Harold Benjamin in 1939 was tackled. He
described that curriculum was seen as a tradition of organized taught in schools of
the 19th century. Then he further described that there will be no formal, non-formal
or informal education without a curriculum. Hence, curriculum dubbed as the heart
of the teaching profession. In higher education context, it details the policies and
standards of the program, objectives of the program, the course/subject information,
the learning outcomes, learning plan, grading system and course/subject
requirement/policies. In here, I learned that each educational level has its specific
recommended curriculum. For the basic education, the Elementary is from
Kindergarten to Grade 6, junior high school is from Grade 7 to 10 then the senior
high school is from grade 11 to 12. Another educational level is Technical Vocational
Education which offers post-secondary technical vocational educational and training
under the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA). Finally,
the last educational level is the higher education which includes the bachelor’s
degree, to master’s degree then to doctorate degree regulated under the Commission
on Higher Education (CHED). Another discussion was about the types of curricula in
schools namely: Recommended Curriculum; Written Curriculum; Taught
curriculum; Supported Curriculum; Assessed Curriculum; Learned Curriculum; and
the Hidden/Implicit Curriculum.

The second topic under the curriculum essentials is the Teacher as a

curricularist. It described curricularist in the past which referred only to those who
developed curriculum theories while at present a curricularist is a teacher who
writes, plan, initiate, innovate, implement and evaluate. In short, a teacher should be
knowledgeable in all aspects of the curriculum which is of big help and guide in
developing the knowledge, skills and attitude of every learner to become an active
and productive citizen of the country.