Republic of the Philippines

COMMISSION ON HIGHER EDUCATION

Region V
POLANGUI COMMUNITY COLLEGE

MODULE EIGHT IN PROF.ED 9

CURRICULUM DESIGN AND ORGANIZATION

I.LEARNING OUTCOMES:

At the end of the learning module, the student must have:

1. Discussed the major components and sources of curriculum design

2. Identified the difference between horizontal and vertical organizations of curriculum design

3. Explained the different qualities of curriculum designs

4. Differentiated the following types of curriculum design, subject-centered, learner centered and
problem-centered designs.

II. TOPIC: CURRICULUM DESIGN AND ORGANIZATION

III. DISCUSSION/ABSTRACTION:

Upon reading the previous chapters of this book, we then wonder, how one contemplates
education, curriculum, and curriculum designs and its organization when it is influenced by
countless fields of knowing and feeling. It is a fact that people draw from their experiences, their
lived histories, their values, their belief systems, their interactions and their imaginations.

SOURCES OF CURRICULUM DESIGN:

Curriculum designers must clear up their philosophical, social and political viewpoints for society
and the individual learner these viewpoints are commonly called curriculum sources. American
educator David Ferrero stated, educational action begins with recognizing one’s beliefs and values,
which influence what one considers worth knowing and teaching. If we neglect philosophical, social
and political questions, we design curriculum with limited or confused rationales.

Four foundations of curriculum design was stated by Ronald Doll, these are: science, society,
eternal truths and divine will. These curriculum sources identified by Dewey and Bode and
popularized by Tyler are: knowledge, society, and the learner partially overlap with one another.

SCIENCE AS A SOURCE

Some curriculum leaders depend on the scientific method when designing curriculum. They value
the observable, quantifiable elements and prioritized problem solving. Their designs highlight
learning how to learn.

SOCIETY AS A SOURCE

Curriculum designers believe that school is a vehicle for development of society and stress its
curriculum ideas should come from the exploration of the social situation. They also consider the
present and future characteristic of society. Here in our country, fighting poverty is an ongoing goal.

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The need for collaboration among diverse individuals and groups must be realized by curriculum
designers to have an effective outcome. As noted by Arthur Ellis, no curriculum or curriculum
design can be considered or created apart from the people who make up our evolving society.

MORAL DOCTRINE AS A SOURCE

Some curriculum designers look into the past for guidance in their present work on the
appropriate content of curriculum. These designers stress what they regard as lasting truths
advanced by the great thinkers of the past. Their emphasis is on the content and labels some
subjects as more influential than others. The bible or other religious documents are references of
some people who believe that curriculum design should be based on it. This view, was common in
our schools during the Spanish period. Spiritual individuals develop empathy and compassion.

KNOELDEGE AS A SOURCE

According to some, knowledge is the primary source of curriculum and Herbert Spencer
positioned knowledge within the framework of curriculum, when he asked, what knowledge is of
most worth?

Knowledge is exploding exponentially, therefore this is the challenge for those who agree that
knowledge as the primary source of curricular design. While the said knowledge explosion is
ongoing, the time for engaging students with curriculum is not increasing. A requirement of 180
school days session is still requirement in most schools.

THE LEARNER AS A SOURCE

Others consider that curriculum should stem from our knowledge of students: we must know how
they learn, form attitudes, create interests and develop values. The learner-focused curriculum
design highlight students knowledge. Individuals build rather than simply obtain, knowledge and
they do so in specific ways with special specific assumptions. The learner as a source of curriculum
design, overlaps with methods that focus on knowledge or science, in that the science-based
method highlights how individuals process information. Learner-based curriculum design seeks to
inspire students and promotes their individual uniqueness.

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK: HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL ORGANIZATION

HORIZONTAL ORGANIZATION which blends curriculum elements for example combining world
history, geography and political science content to create a contemporary world issues.

VERTICAL ORGANIZATION which is the sequencing of curriculum elements.

POINTS TO CONSIDER WHEN CONTEMPLATING CURRICULUM DESIGN:

Curriculum design reflects the curriculum architecture. Here are some useful points to consider in
thinking an effective curriculum design:

-reflect on your philosophical educational, and curriculum assumptions with regard to

the goals of the school

-consider your student needs and aspirations

-consider the various design components and their organization.

-sketch out the various design components to be implemented

-cross check your selected design components against the school mission

-share your curriculum design with a colleague

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CURRICULUM DESIGN QUALITIES:

No curriculum design is really unique. Instead, all designs have some qualities in common with
other designs. It is the combination of features that makes each design unique.

SCOPE

Curriculum scope refers to the breadth and depth of curriculum content at any level or at any
given time. All the types of educational experiences constructed to involve students in learning are
part of the scope. A curriculum whose scope covers only months or weeks usually is structured in
units. Units are divided into lessons plans, which usually structure the information and activities
into a period of hours or minutes. To view curriculum scope, we must consider the learning in
cognitive, affective and psychomotor domain must be given an emphasis.

SEQUENCE

Curriculum sequence is concerned with the order of topics overtime. For example in biology
subject, students might study the cell and then the tissue, organs and systems. With this concern
over a period of time, curriculum sequence is called a vertical dimension.

Curriculum workers are faced with sequencing the content which are taken from some fairly well
accepted learning principles. Othanel Smith, William Stanby and Haraln Shores in 1973 introduced
four principles they are:

1.Simple complex learning indicates that content to optimally organize in a sequence preceding
from simple subordinate components to complex highlighting interrelationships among
components. Optimal learning results when individuals are presented with easy content and when
then with more difficult content.

2.Pre-requisite learning is similar to part to whole learning. It works on the assumption that bits of
information must be grasped before other bits can be comprehended.

3.Whole to part learning receives support from cognitive psychologists. They have urged that the
curriculum be arranged so that the content or experience is first presented in an overview that
provides students with a general idea of the information or situation.

4.Chronological learning refers to content whose sequence reflects the times of real world
occurrences. History, political science and world events frequently are organized chronologically.

CONTINUITY

Continuity refers to smoothness or absence of disruption in the curriculum over time. A

curriculum might have good sequence but might also have disruptions. Curriculum would lack
continuity. Then, sequence without continuity is possible, but continuity without sequence is not.

Continuity is mostly manifested in Jerome Brunner’s notion of the spiral curriculum. Bruner cited
that curriculum should be organized according to the interrelationships among the basic ideas and
structures of each major discipline.

INTEGRATION

Linking all types of knowledge and experiences contained within the curriculum plan is known as
integration. The horizontal relationships among topics and themes from all knowledge domains is
the emphasis of integration. Most curriculum leaders and educators manage to excessively
emphasize integration, encouraging an interdisciplinary curriculum, particularly a curriculum that
would not be considered as a standard curriculum content.

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ARTICULATION

Articulation refers to the smooth flow of the curriculum on both vertical and horizontal
dimensions, it is the ways in which curriculum components occurring later in a programs sequence
relate to those occurring earlier. Horizontal articulation usually is the association among
simultaneous elements, as when curriculum designers create relationships between eight-grade
mathematics and eight-grade social studies. Moreover, articulation within school is sometimes
difficult to achieve and even fro one school to another. It is because sometimes, students who are
new to a school are retaught material they learned in their previous school at a lower grade level, or
they fail a particular concept or topic because it was lectured in a lower grade in a new school.

BALANCE

In designing a curriculum, educators attempt to provide necessary weight to each part of the
design. Therefore, in a balance curriculum, students must obtain and use knowledge in ways that
progress their personal, social and intellectual goals.

TYPES OF CURRICULUM DESIGNS:

The curriculum can be arranged in various ways. But, in spite all the discussion about postmodern
beliefs of knowledge and making curricula for social awareness and freedom, most curriculum
designs are interpretations or versions of three basic designs. They are subject-centered designs,
learner-centered designs, problem-centered designs. Each category comprises several examples as
cited in the chart below.

Subject-centered designs Learner-centered designs Problem-centered designs

Subject design Child-centered design Life situation design

Discipline design Experience-centered design Social

problem/reconstructionist
design

Broad field design Romantic/radical design

Correlation design Humanistic design

Process design

SUBJECT-CENTERED DESIGNS

Among curriculum designs, the most popular and widely used is the subject centered designs. Its
knowledge and content are well accepted as integral parts of the curriculum and it has the most
classifications. Concepts dominant to a culture are mostly emphasized than weak ones. Content is
central to schooling in our culture, thus we have many concepts to interpret for our society.

1.SUBJECT DESIGN

The oldest and best known school design to both teachers and laypeople is the subject design.
Mostly our teachers and layperson are educated and trained in using it.

It is also highlighted because of the constant pressure on school standards and accountability.

While in the mid 1930’s, Robert Hutchins indicated which subjects such a curriculum design
would comprise a school 1. Language and its uses ( reading, writing, grammar, literature) 2.
Mathematics,3. Sciences,4. History, and 5. Foreign language.

The curriculum is organized according to how essential knowledge has developed in various
subject areas in the subject matter design. With the knowledge explosion and the resulting
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specializations in various fields of study, subject divisions are made as to culture, political science,
economics and history. Then English can be divided into literature, writing, speech, reading,
linguistics and grammar.

For Dewey, he was interested in divorcing knowledge from the learners experiences and
essentially transmitting secondhand knowledge and other ideas. For Dewey, the 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 1960s.
the basis of this discipline design is with contents inherent organization. On the other hand, the
subject design does not make clear initial basis on which it is organized or established, the
discipline designs orientation does specify its focus on the academic disciplines.

The disciplined knowledge emphasizes science, mathematics, English, history and some other
disciplines. There is the idea that the school is a microcosm of the world of intellect, reflected by
such disciplines. Followers of the discipline emphasize understanding the conceptual structure and
processes of the disciplines. Probably it is the most important difference between the discipline
design and subject-matter design. In the subject-matter design, students are considered to have
learned if they simply acquire information, while in the discipline design, students experience the
discipline so that they can understand and theorize. Sometimes it is difficult to determine whether
a classroom has a subject-matter or discipline design. The major distinguishing characteristic
seems to be whether students actually use some of the discipline’s methods to process information.

For this design, Bruner 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 a way as possible. This design have
been criticized for it assumes that students must adjust to the curriculum rather than the way
around. Others who claimed the viewpoint that curriculum knowledge should reflect disciplined
knowledge maintains the biases and assumptions of those who wish to remain in their current
status. It is noted that maybe the greatest weakness of this design makes schools disregard the huge
volume of information that cannot be categorized as disciplined knowledge. Such knowledge in
connection with aesthetics, humanism, personal-social living and vocational education is
challenging to classify as a discipline.

3. BROAD-FIELDS DESIGN

This design is also known to others as the interdisciplinary design. This is another type of the
subject-centered design. Many educators decided to correct the division and classifications caused
by the subject design which is limiting.

The unique feature of broad fields design was stimulated in the Sputnik era, and Broudy and his
collegues suggested that the entire curriculum be organized into these categories: 1. Symbolic of
information, 2. Basic sciences, 3. Developmental studies, 4. Exemplars and 5. Moral problems that
would address typical social problems. The last classification requires an annual variety of courses
depending on current social problems.

More curricular leaders still prefer that broad-fields consist of related conceptual clusters rather
than subjects or disciplines combined in interdisciplinary organization. This design can be
explained as stating that the separate subject is dead. This type of design focuses on the curriculum
webs, connections among related themes or concepts. The issue of depth is even more vital when
one magnifies the broad-fields design to an integrated curriculum design. A question is, how much
depth will students get following or structuring webs of related concepts? And then, how much
depth can one achieve in history by following the theme from ancient to modern age? It can be
stated that the philosophies of school and educators will guide their responses.

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4. CORRELATIONAL DESIGN

Some innovative curriculum leaders began searching their way not to create a broad-fields
design and recognize there are time when separate subjects require connection to avoid
fragmentation or division of its curricular content. Halfway between separate subjects and total
content integration, was born the correlation design which attempts to identify ways in which
subjects can be linked yet maintain their own identities.

At present, few teachers use correlation design, maybe because it compels them to plan their
lessons cooperatively. At the elementary level, teachers will somehow find this difficult to
accomplish because they have self-contained classes and often do not have time for such
collaboration. While teachers in the secondary level are organized into separate departments that
tend to encourage isolation. They also meet time schedules imposed by specific classes and so
teachers have little time to work with other teachers on team teaching.

5. PROCESS DESIGNS

In previous topics, consideration is often given to the procedures and processes by which
individuals achieve knowledge. As mentioned, students studying biology learn methods for dealing
with biological knowledge, students in history classes learn the ways of historiography.

However, proponents of the disciplines design advise students to learn process, while other
educators are proposing curricular designs that emphasize the learning of general procedures
applicable to all disciplines. Curricula for teaching critical thinking demonstrate this procedural
design.

This design reveal a modern orientation, the process of knowledge acquisition which needs to be
learned by the students, for them to reach a certain degree of consensus. While Jean Francois
Lyotard and other people claimed that we must be involved in a process not to reach unanimity but
to search for variability. Postmodern process design highlights statements and beliefs that are open
to argument, designs are organized so that students can repeatedly review their understandings.

In this postmodern process-design, it motivates students to unravel the processes by which they
examine and reach conclusions. They need to study their information-processing methods in order
to gain visions into how knowledge is produced.

LEARNER-CENTERED DESIGNS

All curricular leaders desire to develop a curricula significant to students. With this, those
educators in the early 1990s stated that students are the programs emphasis. Progressive
proponents have come to be called learner-centered designs. These designs are realized more often
at the elementary than in secondary level, the stress is more on subject-centered designs, mainly
because of the influence of textbooks and the colleges and universities at which the discipline is a
foremost planner for the curriculum.

I.CHILD-CENTERED DESIGN

Proponents of this design believe that students must be enthusiastic in their learning
environments and that learning should not be detached from students lives which is mostly in the
paradigm of the subject-centered designs. As an alternative, the design should be centered on
students lives, needs and interests. From Arthur Ellis, he said that attending to students and
interest requires careful observation of students and faith that they can articulate those needs and
interests. Also young students interest must have educational value.

Advocates of child-centered design draw on the thinking of some other pedagogical giants like
Henrich Pestalozzi and Freidrich Froebel, who claimed that children would achieve self-realization
through social participation, which they expressed as the principle of learning by doing.

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II.EXPERIENCE-CENTERED DESIGN

This design closely look like child-centered design for which children concern are the source for
shaping children’s school world. But, its difference from child-centered design, is that children
needs and interests cannot be planned for all children.

Dewey connected that children impulsive power, their demand for self-expression, cannot be
suppressed. For him interest was purposeful. In experience and Education, he wrote that education
should commence with the experience learners already possessed when they entered school.
Experience was essentially the starting point for all further learning.

III.ROMANTIC DESIGN

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. They further express that curricula are organized to foster in
students a belief in and desire for a common culture that does not actually exist but merely
promote prejudice.

IV.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 psychology. After
world war II, humanistic design linked to existentialism in educational philosophy.

For humanists, education should address pleasure and desire such as aesthetic pleasure.
Emphasizing natural and human-created beauty, humanistic curriculum designs allow students to
experience learning with emotion, imagination and wonder. Curricular content should elicit
emotions as well as thought. It should address not only the conceptual structures of knowledge but
also its implications. The curriculum design should allow students to formulate a perceived
individual and social good, and encourage them to participate in a community.

THE CURRICULUM MATRIX

In designing a curriculum, keep in mind the various levels at which we can consider the
curriculums content components. The following list of curriculum dimensions should assist in
considering content in-depth.

1. consider the content’s intellectual dimension

2. consider the content’s emotional dimension

3. consider the content’s social dimension

4. consider the content’s physical dimension

5. consider the content’s aesthetic dimension

6. consider the content’s transcendent or spiritual dimension

PROBLEM-CENTERED DESIGNS

This third major type of curriculum design concentrates on real-life problems of individuals and
society which is based on social issues. Problem-centered curriculum designs are planned to
strengthen cultural traditions and address unmet needs of the community and society.

This design places the individual within a social setting, but its main difference from learner-
centered design is that they plan before the students arrival.

Various types of problem-centered design differ in the levels to which they emphasize social needs
as opposed to individual needs.

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 I.LIFE-SITUATION DESIGN

This curriculum design can be traced back to the nineteenth century and Herbert Spencers
writings on a curriculum for complete living. Spencer’s curriculum stressed activities that

1. sustain life

2. enhance life

3. aid in rearing children

4. maintain the individual’s social and political relations

5. enhance leisure, tasks, and feelings

The strength of this design is its focus on problem-solving procedures. Process and content are
successfully integrated into curricular experience. Some opponents resist that the students do not
learn much subject matter. Nevertheless, proponents affirm that life-situations design draws
heavily from traditional content. The uniqueness of the design is that the content is organized in
ways that allow students to clearly view problem areas.

II. RECONSTRUCTIONIST DESIGN

Educators who support this design feel that the curriculum should promote social action aimed at
reconstructing society, it should promote society’s social, political and economic development.
Educators want to emphasize social justice to its curricula. The major purpose of the social
reconstructionist curriculum is to involve students in critical examination of the local, national and
international community in order to address humanity’s problems. Careful consideration is given
to the political practices of business and government groups and their impact on the workplace.
Therefore, it encourages curriculum changes in industrial and political system.

The major purpose of the social reconstructionist curriculum is to involve students in critical
examination of the local, national and international community in order to address humanity’s
problems. Careful consideration is given to the political practices of business and government
groups and their impact on the workforce. Therefore, it encourages curriculum changes in
industrial and political system.

IV. STUDENTS LEARNING EXPERIENCE AND ACTIVITIES:

ACTIVITY 1: Discuss the five sources of curriculum design. Explain one source of curriculum design
that needs to be given an emphasis in our time and why?

ACTIVITY 2:

1.Define horizontal and vertical organization.

2.Complete the example of conceptual framework in horizontal and vertical organization.

* Horizontal Organization

Subject: Math and_________

English and_______

Social Studies and______

*vertical Organization

Subject: Math and _______

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 English and _______

Social Studies and_____

ACTIVITY 3: Enumerate the distinctive features of the following curriculum design qualities:

QUALITIES DISTINCTIVE FEATURES

SCOPE

SEQUENCE

CONTINUITY

INTEGRATION

ARTICULATION

BALANCE

ACTIVITY 4: From the table below, give examples of the types of curriculum designs and their
curricular emphasis, strengths and weaknesses.

Types of Curriculum Curricular Emphasis Strengths Weaknesses

Design

Subject-centered
designs

Learner-centered
designs

Problem-centered
designs

END OF THE LEARNING MODULES……

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