KIRINYAGA UNIVERSITY

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

LECTURE NOTES

COURSE CODE: EDU 2202

COURSE TITLE: CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT

LECTURER: DR. BERNARD CHEMWEI

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TOPIC 2: CURRICULUM AS A FIELD OF STUDY

i) Curriculum

Education and curriculum are related concepts. Whereas education deals with the process of
imparting knowledge, skills, attitudes and values, curriculum defines clearly the knowledge,
skills, attitudes and values to be imparted, how to impart them and how to determine the level of
acquisition.

Cole (2003) looked at the concept of curriculum as more than a list of topics to be
covered. He views a curriculum as a policy statement about education and the ways of realizing
the policy through a programme of action. On further reading of Cole’s work, it becomes evident
that a curriculum is the sum of all activities, experiences and learning opportunities for
which an institution or a teacher takes responsibility.

Oluoch (2006) explains curriculum ‘as all that is planned to enable the student acquire
and develop desired knowledge, skills and attitudes.’

Saylor and Alexander (1974) define the term curriculum as a set of learning activities and
experiences for children planned by the school to attain the aims of education.

The term curriculum is derived from the Greek word “currere” meaning a race course.
From the above definitions of curriculum, it can be said that curriculum acts as a guide to the
process of education. It gives lanes and boundaries to the process of education.

Some notions that are important in the understanding of curriculum include:

a) Planned learning programme with activities, experiences, materials and resources

b) Useful in the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values and attitudes
c) Aims at attaining the goals and objectives of education
d) It contains content to be covered, learning experiences, methodology and ways and means of
ascertaining whether educational goals are achieved.

In conclusion, the term curriculum can be said to be a programme, a course of action with
learning objectives, content activities, experiences, materials, resources, methodology and means
of evaluation used to attain the goals of education. A curriculum guides the process of imparting

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in learners necessary knowledge, skills, attitudes and values to make them useful and productive
members of the society.

ii) Types of curricula

Cole (2003) identified three kinds of curricula, namely:

a) Curriculum on paper (written curriculum) which refers to what the syllabus says and what
should be taught.
b) Curriculum in action (Taught curriculum) which is the curriculum implemented in schools or
educational institutions.
c) Curriculum that is actually learned (Learned curriculum) is the knowledge, skills, attitudes
and values which the children acquire in the teaching and learning in a classroom setting.

Andrew (2005) identified four types of curricula, namely;

a) Official curriculum which refers to a planned course of study that has been adopted by
the government e.g. the Kenya Institute of curriculum development (KICD) Curriculum
for Early Childhood Development and Education, Primary education, secondary
education, Teacher education, and Technical education. It is sometimes known as the
national curriculum that guides production of educational materials in a country.
b) Hidden curriculum which consists of all that is learned during school activities out of the
designated official curriculum. These include:

- How learners should sit

- How to greet the teacher
- Role of the teacher and prefect
- How to relate with the teachers, fellow children and other people at school.
- Values such as hard work, respect, obedience, co-operation, value for others, empathy
etc.

c) Observed curriculum which refers to the curriculum that can be used in the teaching-
learning process in class. The observed curriculum may differ in terms of teaching
methods and strategies employed by the teacher in class.
d) Curriculum as experienced which refers to children’s experience in the teaching-learning
process.

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 In Kenya, there is an official curriculum that is developed by the KICD to be used in schools.
Education field officers visit schools to evaluate the implementation of the developed official
curriculum.

iii) Syllabus (check the terms used in CBC)

Teachers use a document called the syllabus to help them plan their lessons. Although many
educators have defined the term syllabus from different angles, the New Cambridge Advanced
Learners Dictionary (2003) defines a syllabus as “a plan with subjects to be studied in a
course.”

Although this definition spells out the key component of a syllabus which is a list of
subjects, it does not include other elements like target, group, duration of time to be taken by
learners to cover the content, specific methodology and resources to deliver the curriculum.
Therefore, a syllabus can be said to be a plan with subjects to be studied in a course by a
particular group of people (learners) within a given period of time. This places the syllabus at a
very important position of breaking down the curriculum for its effective and efficient
implementation.

iv) Subject

A subject can be defined as a specific area of knowledge that is studied in a school, college or
any learning institution. The curriculum designs that put more emphasis on the subjects are
called subject-centred curricular.

Examples of subjects include:

- Kiswahili
- Christian Religious Education
- Hindu Religious Education
- Islamic Religious Education
- Science
- English
- Mathematics

v) Curriculum Development

Curriculum development is the process of creating curriculum materials for use by educators
and children that are a product of curriculum planning.

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In other words, curriculum development involves the sum total of all processes which determine
how curriculum construction proceeds, from the conceptualization stage to the evaluation stage.

Curriculum development may entail re-writing or reviewing the existing curriculum or a total
overhaul or writing a completely new curriculum and development of new materials. A good
example is when there was a change of the education system in Kenya from 7-4-2-3 to 8-4-4 and
now to 2-6-3-3. There was a complete overhaul of the existing curriculum. When the post-
election violence erupted in Kenya after the 2007 General Election, Social Skills and Religious
Education had to be emphasized. This required the reviewing of the existing curriculum.

Both the overhaul and a review of the existing curriculum involve making decisions concerning:

a) the objectives of the curriculum

b) the nature of the curriculum
c) the subject and activity areas
d) the organisation of the content
e) the development of curriculum support materials
f) The curriculum evaluation.

TOPIC 3: CURRICULUM AS A PROGRAMME OF INSTRUCTION

a) Components of the Curriculum as a programme of Study

 School curriculum

School curriculum is all that is planned to be taught and learnt in a set of learning environment,
including the time taken. The equipment could be set indoors or outdoors. Curriculum includes
all the learning experiences planned or unplanned for the learners to acquire and develop the
desired knowledge, attitudes, values and skills.

A school curriculum is made up of the following elements:

 Aims, goals and Objectives

 Learning experiences/activities
 Content of subject matter
 Evaluation /assessment procedure

Objectives

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Objectives are intended learning outcomes; they can be general like the national goals of
education and general objectives of different levels like primary, secondary, teacher education
and subject objectives like English, mathematics and chemistry for a certain level.

There are also specific objectives for a particular subject in a particular class indicating the
topics or units to be taught. They are unit objectives indicating what the learners should be
able to do by the end of the unit. There are also specific lesson objectives indicating what the
learner should be able to do by the end of the lesson. Ralph Tyler identified three sources of
objectives namely:

i. The learners and their needs

ii. The needs of contemporary society
iii. The contributions of subject specialist
 The learners

In formulating goals and objectives, curriculum planners are concerned with the needs of the
learners as members of society. The social, physical and psychological needs of the learners
should be considered.

Curriculum developers should ask themselves what the needs of students are as members of the
human community. Examples of human needs are food, clothing, shelter, good health, sex
etc. The curriculum planner must be able to derive curriculum objectives by examining the
human needs above.

All students possess sociological needs which schools must strive to satisfy. Students need
affection from home, school and peers. Others are acceptance, belonging, success, security,
status and respect. Social needs of students must form one of the bases for formulating
educational objectives.

On psychological needs, curriculum developers should pay attention to various handicaps found
among the learners i.e. the needs of mentally, emotionally disturbed and the retarded
children. Such needs must be incorporated within the curriculum.

 The society as a source of educational objectives

The society should be considered because our society is in the process of rapid national
development. There are a lot of changes in life style. Education should play a role in preparing
for those changes. (Global warming, environment, pollution, population explosion,
corruption etc).

Secondly we are living in a global society where what happens in one country affects the other.

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Thirdly, our traditions and cultures are experiencing information explosion (AI), knowledge in
increasing at a faster rate than before.

 Subject specialist as source of educational objectives

Subject matter specialists are people who have wide knowledge in particular subjects. They are
experts of those subjects of specializations e.g. geography, history chemistry, biology,
mathematics are subject specialists. They are able to provide information on how their subjects
can contribute to curriculum objectives. They are the ones who write text books used in schools,
design curricular used in colleges; they are course and subject panelists at KICD and write
syllabuses.

Curriculum developers should find out the place of the knowledge acquired and its relation to
education for national, societal and individual needs. This kind of information will establish a
base for selecting necessary objectives that will combine the levels of the students and those of
the society.

The Process of Screening Educational Objectives

A screen is a system of examining all the objectives selected and methodically separating those
that are necessary for curriculum planning and those that are not. Philosophy and psychology of
education will help us to determine the appropriateness of curriculum objectives that we may
select.

In order to select important and consistent educational objectives, it is necessary to screen the
available information to eliminate those that are not important and those are contradictory to the
expected values. Through this screen, the curriculum developers can then order or rank the
objectives according to those which must be achieved and those which will not be achieved.

Philosophy of education

This involves a set of values, when we analyze the good or bad values. The philosophical screen
uses a set of values in regard to what is taught in schools. In the use of this screen the
developer brings these values to compare the general objectives.

Psychological screen

To apply the screen of psychology in the selection of objectives calls for a thorough knowledge
of learners as human beings. Certain behavior changes are expected to occur in the learners after
going through the process of learning. Adequate training in the field of educational psychology

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and human development is necessary for those who are involved in the process of curriculum
development.

Knowledge of the psychology of learning enables us distinguish between goals that are feasible
and those that are likely to take long time or those that are almost impossible to attain at certain
age level.

Psychology of learning enables us to distinguish changes in human beings that can be expected
to result from a learning process from those that cannot.

Psychology of learning gives some idea of the length of time required to attain an objective and
the age levels at which the effort i.e most efficiently employed.

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2. Content/Subject matter

Content is knowledge or subject matter that has been selected for the purpose of learning for a
particular level and class. The selected content facilitates the objectives. Content is organized
into subjects in different levels. The subjects include: CRE, Biology, English, Agriculture, and
Mathematics among others. Each subject has unique content.

3. Learning experiences

Learning experiences is the interaction between the learner and the environment for the purpose
of learning. It is what the learners does that brings about learning. The teacher should provide
opportunities for the learner to interact with the environment to bring about the learning.

4. Evaluation/assessment

Evaluation is the process of assessing the extent to which the intended objectives have been
achieved. This could be done through class tests, continues assessment and national
examinations. This involves:

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 Assessment of the curriculum package
 Assessment of the appropriateness and effectiveness of content and other materials
 Assessment and appropriateness and efficiency of the teaching and learning methods
 Performance of students in exams
 Equipment and personnel used in implementing the curriculum and eliminate that which is
inconsistent with those values.

b) DIMENSIONS OF A SCHOOL CURRICULUM

Curriculum is expressed in the following dimensions

Formal
Informal
Non-formal
Emerging

Formal

This is the curriculum organized, scheduled and taught to a particular class, for example subjects
taught in school following school time-tables.

Informal

Informal dimension is unconscious assimilation of desired knowledge, skills, attitude, habits and
values which are acquired through interaction with school and home environment. For example
teachers dressing, etiquette school culture, home values.

Non-formal

Non- formal curriculum is the school planned activities such as games and clubs which are
carried out according to learner interest and age rather than normal class grouping.

Emerging dimension

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This includes incidental or accidental occurrence in school which bring about learning. For
example parents day, harambee, accident in school etc.

c) THE PURPOSE OF SCHOOL CURRICULUM

School curriculum is a means of achieving educational goals. The school curriculum specifies

What should be taught

When it should be taught
Who should be taught
How it should be taught
How it should be evaluated
How much time should taken to teach, learn and evaluate

School curriculum is a vehicle through which desired values, knowledge, skills and attitudes are
acquired and developed for the benefit of the individual and the society.

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