11-12-2022 Modern curriculum

and lesson planning

Autonomous work

Verónica Chicaiza
UTEG
 AUTONOMOUS WORK 1

Education is the most effective mechanism for social mobility: it prevents the
perpetuation of the vicious circle of poverty, promotes equal opportunities, and reduces social
inequality. However, for education to be able to facilitate these achievements in the long term,
it must be "equitable, inclusive and of good quality", as stated in SDG 4 (UNESCO, 2015)
Furthermore, education is the most powerful tool for transformation that exists, as it allows the
promotion of human rights and sustainable development, and thus build a more just and
equitable future for all people, which is why education is one of the factors that most influences
the advancement and progress of individuals and societies. In addition to providing knowledge,
knowledge, and learning, enriching the culture, spirit, values, and everything that characterizes
us as human beings. Thus, in education, we have to take into account one principal thing which
is the curriculum. The curriculum represents the expression of the educational ideas in practice,
that is to say, how the course will function, it is there where we establish the objectives, and
activities, as well as where we focus on the needs of the students depending on their level and
the way in which the students are evaluated in the academic environment, moreover the
curriculum sometimes includes beliefs and values that both students and teachers must follow.
In other words, it includes all the planned learning experiences of a school or educational
institution. For that reason, the Taba model and Saylor, Alexander, and Lewis model will be
analyzed since I consider both more appropriate for EFL education.
Hilda Taba's curriculum model bases its concept on society, on the role of the public
school, and distinguishes each kind of curriculum that each institution should have. According
to the author Fraenkel (1992) quotes Hilda Taba as describing her significant contributions to
the development of the social studies curriculum in which she urges teachers to work with
concepts and ideas that emphasize a higher level of thinking on the part of students.
Likewise, she mentions that a curriculum must be designed to meet the needs and
demands of where it will be developed, and this curriculum also responds to a vision of the
present and the future. Based on EFL education, we should know that it has many advantages
since it educates in competencies, it educates in project-based learning which develops critical
thinking such as inferring, synthesizing, and summarizing providing a high level of challenge
for students, however in my opinion I believe that this curriculum could be applied to students
who already have an intermediate level in English because as we know in the classroom not
everyone is at the same level and this model is inductive, Neither can they complete all the
proposed activities based on this curriculum because they can get frustrated if they do not
have the required level. To elaborate on this EFL curriculum you must understand the type of
learning, the decision-making, the way it is going to be evaluated, the way they are going to
learn, the effectiveness of the curriculum, and finally how the students achieve all these
characteristics. A clear example is that if we perform an activity of inferring or analyzing
(Annex 1), if the student does not have these bases, it will be impossible for him/her to
achieve the desired objective.
On the other hand, Saylor, Alexander, and Lewis’s model not only focuses on
learning in society and culture but also emphasizes three points; society, learners, and
knowledge in which the goals and objectives are involved and also creates a curriculum
designed in specifics and this model is deductive. Therefore, in my opinion, based on EFL
learning, I believe this is the best, despite its few disadvantages, since design decisions are
made by the groups responsible for curriculum planning in a particular school. Various prior
decisions by political and social bodies can limit the final designs, and the curriculum plan
includes alternative modalities with suggestions as to resources, means, and organization, thus
favoring flexibility and greater freedom for teachers and students Prideaux, D., 2003) In
other words, these authors consider that the curriculum is a set of learning experiences, this
gives us to understand that they provide all the opportunities for optimal learning and also
allows the teacher to be aware that each student is different since we can create a syllabus
according to our perspective obviously complying with the curricular model, likewise
students do not feel so overwhelmed since even the teacher is how to decide how to evaluate
each student depending on their needs because it does not impose detailed procedures as in
other curricular models.
To sum up, the curriculum is quite important since it is a plan that provides sets of
learning opportunities to achieve broad educational goals and related learning objectives, thus
I believe that the second model which belongs to the authors Saylor, Alexander, and Lewis is
the best for EFL education, because it guides the development of the whole student, and in
general terms, it gives importance to the totality of students' experiences both in and out of
school.
ANEXO 1

Bibliography:

Fraenkel, J. R. (1992). Hilda Taba's contributions to social studies education. Social

Education, 56(3), 172-178.
Prideaux, D. (2003). Curriculum design. Bmj, 326(7383), 268-270.
UNESCO (2015): La Conceptualización de la Calidad: un marco para el
entendimiento, el monitoreo, y la mejora de la Calidad Educativa. EFA
Global Monitoring Report., Paris.