PROGRESSIVE CURRICULUM VISION: JOURNAL 3

Umu Chasunah/16365038
chasunah_umu@yahoo.co.id

Experiencing working on module 1 and module 2, especially in imagining my curriculum

utopia, here I would like to explore my progressive curriculum vision based on Outcomes-Based
Education (OBE) curriculum and Postmodern Curriculum perspective. Firstly, I would like to
explore OBE curriculum perspective then the Postmodern Curriculum.

Outcomes-Based Education (OBE)

Outcome-Based education (OBE) is student-centered approach to education that focuses
on intended learning outcomes resulting from instruction. It is based on three premises. Those
are all students can learn and succeed but not on the same day in the same way , successful
learning promotes even more successful learning, and school controls the conditions that affect
directly affect successful learning (Spady, 1991, p.67).
OBE was improving from traditional OBE to transitional OBE. Then, it is improved
again to transformational OBE. Here I would like to explain the main characteristics of each. The
first is traditional OBE. This approach emerges from the traditional content-based approach to
education. Typically, the local staffs take their existing curriculum content and structure, then
they determine what is the important for students to learn to high level of performance (Spady,
1991, p.69). When the outcomes have been set, they will be used as the basis of curriculum,
instruction and assessment design. In other words, I can say that the outcomes are defined as
instructional aims based on the syllabus. These aims focus on mastering the content. This
approach has some dangers such as the culminating performance is often limited to small
sections of instruction which makes each an end in itself, the content of curriculum remains
unchanged from year to year, learner participation is lesser importance, the focus of this
approach is academically competent student. It is rarely driven by a framework of exit outcomes
that prepare student to be ready to participate in the real life in society.
The second is transitional OBE. Transitional OBE moves away from traditional
curriculum to identify outcomes reflect high-order competencies that are essential in virtually all
life and learning setting. The vision of this approach is beyond existing subject area content in
defining outcomes of significance. Content is used as the bridge to attain high order
competencies such as, critical thinking, effective communication, technological applications, and
complex problem solving. An integration-across-the curriculum approach is adhered to. This
approach is primarily concerned students’ culminating capabilities after schooling to operate
competitively in competitive society. Instead of simply translating the previous curriculum
content into aims and objectives, it begins to look at specific outcomes—the knowledge, skills,
value and attitudes that society has agreed are vital for its citizens. Transformational OBE lies
between traditional and transformational types in scope and purpose.
The third is transformational OBE which is the most sophisticated evolution of OBE. It
moves far away from traditional OBE. Spady (1991) shares his view by saying that
transformational OBE is to equip all students with the knowledge, competence, orientations, and
attitudes that citizens needed for success to life in a complex, challenging, high-tech future after
they leave the school . Transformational OBE fully embodied the four operational principles of
OBE— to ensure the clarity of focus on outcomes of significance, design down from ultimate
outcomes, emphasize high expectations for all to succeed, and provide expanded opportunity and
support for learning success. This approach becomes even more important than transitional OBE.
It will prepare students become critical citizens. Life-role responsibilities are part of this
curriculum. The outcomes encompass complex life-role performances and from these learning
experiences, process and contexts, exit outcomes are derived for the students to restructuring
themselves.
Schubert’s image of curriculum as intended learning outcome focuses to what students
should achieve after learning completion. The curriculum design would detail the materials,
plans, and arrangements that would enable students to do. The point of this curriculum image is
that all students should master the skill or achieve the learning outcomes successfully together.
In this curriculum image, students have no power to be included in decision making of their own
learning objective. The learning environment is controlled by teacher with technical rules to
achieve the learning outcomes. In this case this image is governed by technical interest.
Compared with transformational OBE, they have similarity that is both intend or focus to
the learning outcome that should be achieved by the students after learning process. In contrast to
the similarities, both of them have many differences. The first is in term of learning outcome set
out. In Schubert’s image the learning outcomes is derived from their existing curriculum content
and structure then use them as the basis of determine the learning activities, assessment to make
students able to achieve the outcomes while in transformational OBE the outcomes is derived
from the need of students in their future life to equip students with knowledge, skills, attitude
that will be needed by them for success to life in complex, challenging, high-tech future after
leaving school. It intends to use life-role responsibilities as the part of curriculum. In Schubert’s
outcome image, the more focus in the end rather than the process of learning but in
transformational OBE which embodies four principles as explained previously focus not only the
culminating points but the process of students learning. Here in emphasizing high expectations
for students to succeed, schools may use a wide range of teaching methods as long as these
develop students who display the agreed-upon outcomes through the meaningful learning
experiences that support students’ diversity. This allows teachers to relate teaching directly to
their own and learner’s frame of reference and also to change curriculum content rapidly. In
transformational OBE, time is used as flexible resource. It provides expanded opportunity for
students to maximize their abilities and skills. It supports for learning success. Regarding to
Habermas’ interest, transformational OBE addresses practical and emancipatory interests.
Through the meaningful learning experience, knowledge is not only transmitted to the students
but teacher let students really involve in the learning process, there is a reciprocal interaction
between teacher and students that can generate depth understanding for students. Both are
regarded as subject engaged in sense-making activities. It is students-centered pedagogy that
addresses practical interest. In addition, transformational OBE also includes curriculum as
currere where students are responsible to their own learning process to achieve the learning
outcomes, students becomes autonomous. Each student is engaged in re-conceptualizing his or
her own autobiography that provides strategy for students to study the relation between academic
knowledge and life history in interest of self-understanding and social reconstruction. Those all
addresses emancipatory human interest.
Furthermore, reflecting to my own experience as a student and an educator, I realized that
in my country has implemented curriculum as learning outcome or Outcome-Based Education
(OBE). The outcomes are derived from existing curriculum context and structure. Then these
outcomes are used as the basis for determining the instruction and assessment. Every teacher is
obligated to make a lesson plan, prepare the media, and assessment based on the outcomes set.
Based on this explanation I conclude that the OBE curriculum in my country is still in traditional
OBE of Spady’s three forms.

Postmodern Curriculum
It has been long time that curriculum as language game of schooling perceived as a
thing—a set of lesson plans, goals, standards, or outcomes—that reveal an underlying logic of
domination by teacher, principle, and school boards that ensure good quality, high standards and
above-average achievement for all children. It just isolated students in the boarder of
standardization (Fleener, 2002). Fleener brings the idea of curriculum dynamic based on
postmodern logic that change our ways of seeing curriculum as a “thing” to curriculum as
“dynamics process”. When perceived as dynamic process, curriculum involves “logic of
relationship, system, and meaning” (p.165). It emerges from language-game approaches and
learning organization theories. The idea is more prevailing when Fleener brings up Doll’s idea.
Cited in Fleener (2002), Doll (1993, p.163) predicts “if a post-modern pedagogy is to emerge, …
it will center around the concept of self-organization”. It entails entirely different ways of
understanding and organizing interaction. Doll describes a curriculum matrix, web-like and
complex, to characterize and reflect the complexity of organization and emergence of pattern in a
postmodern curriculum. This matrix is as a bridge to create curriculum as dynamic process. Doll
characterizes the curriculum with several aspects. Those are rich, recursive, relational, and
rigorous.
Cited in Fleener (2002), Doll (1993, p. 176) said that the richness of a postmodern
curriculum “refers to a curriculum’s depth. Fleener brings up the Mandelbrot set as metaphor to
understand Doll’s notion of richness in postmodern curriculum. According to me this metaphor
is representative because when we traverse the edges of Mandelbrot set, we will experience its
complexity and the relationship among patterns that emerge. As we move around the edges we
may notice the reappearance of the Julia rabbit on the Mandelbrot bulb popping up out of images
that seem nove. Then, when we continue to walk around along the borders of Julia rabbit we will
find a new Mandelbrot bulb again, it goes continuously and seems infinity. It shows the
complexity of Mandelbrot. The deeper we explore it then the more we feel the complexity of
Mandelbrot set. Knowing or examining each bulb without knowing how it relates to the entire set
we will loss the important characteristics of the entire whole of the set. Looking at the
curriculum, it should have richness characteristic that means it should be depth. It is not enough
by seeing it as several layers of ideas or subjects but we need to understand the relationship
among the ideas so that we will know the meaning and purpose.
The second aspect is recursion. It is more than repetition or recycling. In recursion
process needs reflection, creativity, and evaluation. It just likes when we solve the Tower of
Hanoi problem. It is like simple problem but when we solve it just by repetition then we need
long process to solve it. But when we use recursion which it embeds creativity, reflection, and
evaluation in the process but it is going to solve the problem with only handful of step.
Curriculum should not mean repetition of ideas but it should engage students with reflective,
creative, and evaluative thinking in their learning process. Therefore, recursive will deeply
influence learning as exploring the pattern not only accumulating the information.
The third aspect is relation. Relation in curriculum means the connection among the
elements (emerge patterns) of the curriculum process and the interconnection among students to
create the meaning through communication. Therefore, curriculum relations can be understood
from both pedagogical and meaning perspective. Pedagogic perspective emerges during
educative process while meaning perspective emerges through individual and social perspective.
Through both pedagogic relations and meaning relations merge as the curriculum itself takes on
its own autopoietic, socio autonomous, identity relations.
The last is rigor. Cited in Fleener (2002), Doll (1993, p. 182), he explains that “rigor”
means purposely looking for different alternatives, relations, connections or examining
assumption, challenging traditions, and encouraging creative solution”. If being applied in the
learning process, it will encourage students to be able to look different alternatives, creative, and
challenging solution through the inquiry process. Consequently, through richness, recursion,
relations, and rigor, curriculum is potential for self-organization, socioautonomy, and self-
similarity across scales.
Furthermore, Fleener explains that curriculum as dynamic process is not simply just stop
thinking of curriculum as a “thing” and start thinking of it as process but we have to change our
ideas about meaning, purpose, and value of the curriculum and its relationship to schooling. We
should change our metaphor and ways of seeing the curriculum. We also need to re-examine the
role of teachers, principals, and administration in schools (p.174). The logics of process,
meaning, and systems offer the basis for a relational curriculum with enable students self-
creative, autonomous, and self-identity potentials.
In addition, Flaneer explains curriculum as learning organization. Citeed from Fleener
(2002), Learning organization defined by Senge (1990) is in constant renewal and creativity. It
means that curriculum as a medium to support individual student’s effort to derive meaning and
come to shared understandings and finally it supports the effort of student to learn, find meaning,
adapt, grow, and transform their lives and environments. Then she shares her idea about
classroom as borderland that allows students reveal their diversity and different perspectives. She
encourages her students to think critically themselves. In conclusion, applying curriculum as
dynamic process through the curriculum matrix will encourage students to understand
themselves, to be creative, reflective, autonomous, and responsible. Through this view, I am sure
that curriculum become the most fundamental way to create agent of change for better society.
Through the curriculum matrix, the aspect of relational curriculum involves the
interconnection among students through communication in the curriculum process will extend
individual and shared meaning and mutual understanding. Here the practical interest is
addressed. Furthermore since curriculum images guided by postmodern is seeing curriculum as
dynamics process through curriculum matrix that is very powerful to engage students in
experiencing meaningful learning process which encourage students to be able to look different
alternative and challenging solution, think critically, reflectively, and creatively. It encourages
students to understand themselves, become autonomous, and self-identity potentials, then
experience and currere are suitable Schubert’s images that guided by postmodern logic. In
experience, this addresses practical interest while currere addresses emancipatory interest.
Furthermore, such curriculum become a meaning system that potential to transform individual as
responsible, creative, critic citizen that lead individual as the agent of change to build a better
society. This addresses curriculum as social reconstruction.
It has been started in few years ago that Indonesian government has focused on
improving educational system. One of the ways is by improving the curriculum applied.
Recently, it will be applied curriculum 2013 that will focus on character education and integrated
learning. By the reason that the government opens minded and always improves the educational
system, I am sure that it also be possible to include postmodern logic in educational curriculum
of my country. Starting with myself as an educator, I would like to apply this kind of curriculum
vision by engaging my students with meaningful experience of learning process that promote
diversity, embed students with creative and critical thinking with different perspective, and
encourage them to be able to reconceptualize their autobiography under the emphatic intelligence
that I proposed in my ideal curriculum in journal 2B. This curriculum vision will prepare
students as good and responsible citizen that are ready becoming social agent of change. Then by
showing the result to publics that this curriculum will be better curriculum design will bring my
voice to promote postmodern logic to be able to be applied in the future curriculum of my
country.
In conclusion of explaining my progressive curriculum vision, the idea of curriculum as
dynamic process and transformational OBE will encourage students to develop their skill highly,
equip them with knowledge, competence, and orientations needed for success after leave school.
In addition, this vision also will develop students’ critical and reflective thinking, build students
self-reflection, self-awareness, and self-development. Those all will prepare the students to be
active in their role-life performances for reconstruction the better society.