Curriculum Design and DevelopmentPart IIIThis Weeks TopicApproaches toCurriculum Development(Technical and Nontechnical Models)

Approaches to Curriculum DevelopmentTechnical-Scientific

Nontechnical-Nonscientific

Technical-Scientific

Curriculum development is a plan or blueprint for structuring the learning environments and coordinating the elements of personnel, materials, and equipment.This approach implies a rational approach to creating curricula. More specifically, the aims of education can be made known, can be stated precisely, and can be addressed in a linear fashion.The models in this approach employ a means-end paradigm that suggests that the more rigorous the means, the more likely the desired ends will be attained.

Most Recognized Technical-Scientific ModelsThe Ralph Tyler Model: Four Basic Principles

2.The Hilda Taba Model: Grass-roots Rationale

The Francis Hunkins Decision-Making Model

The Ralph Tyler Model:Four Basic Principles This is the best known technical-scientific model. In 1949, Tyler published Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction, in which he outlined four key points: 1) purposes of the school, 2) educational experiences related to the purposes, 3) organization of these experiences, and 4) evaluation of the purposes.From this rationale came Tylers model (see handout).

The Hilda Taba Model:Grass-roots RationaleIn Tabas book, Curriculum development: Theory and Practice (1962), she argued that there was a definite order to creating the curriculum. Where Taba differed from Tyler was that she believed that those who teach the curriculum, the teachers, should participate in developing it. She advocated what has been called the grass-roots approach, a model whose steps or stages are similar to Tylers. Although Tyler did not advocate that his model only be employed by persons in the central office, educators during the early days of curriculum making thought that the central authorities really had the knowledge thereby creating top down curricula. Taba believed that teachers should begin the process by creating specific teaching-learning units for their students. More specifically, she advocated that teachers take an inductive approach to curriculum developmentstarting with specifics and building to a general designas opposed to the more traditional deductive approachstarting with the general design and working toward the specifics (see handout).

The Francis HunkinsDecision-Making Model The model has seven major stages: curriculum conceptualization and legitimization, diagnosis, content selection, experience selection, implementation, evaluation; and maintenance.What sets this model apart is its recommended first stage of curricular decision making. The first stage requires that participants engage in deliberation regarding the nature of curriculum and also its educational and social-political value. This approach addresses the concerns of reconceptualists, of putting stress on understanding the nature and power of curriculum (see handout).

Nontechnical-Nonscientific

This approach considers that the curriculum evolves rather than being planned precisely.The nontechnical camp focuses on the subjective, personal, and aesthetic. They stress not the outputs of production but rather the learner, especially through activity-oriented approaches to teaching and learning. Advocates of this approach might well identify themselves as postmodern (i.e., the world is viewed not as a machine but as a living organism). Therefore, individuals who consider themselves postmodern realize that one cannot separate curriculum development from the people involved in the process or from those who will experience the curriculum.

Most Recognized Nontechnical-Nonscientific ModelsAllan Glatthorn: Naturalistic Model

2.The Deliberation Model

3.Postpositivist-Postmodern Models

Allan Glatthorn: Naturalistic Model1.This model takes a middle-ground approach. It is neither modern, although it does advocate following a sequence of specific stages, nor postmodern, although it can be argued that is promises a great deal of uncertainty and surprises.2.The model contains eight steps (see handout).

The Deliberation ModelThis model represents a means of reasoning about the practical problems of what to include in the curriculum.The process is non-technical primarily because it does not accept a linearity of action. That is, it is not necessary to blindly follow steps 1, 2, and 3.Through deliberation, people are cognizant of the players in the process and aware of their views, ideas, and agendas. What type of knowledge and what view of knowledge does the person involved in deliberation bring to the process?Effective deliberation involves stages, although there is no agreement as to the exact number of stages. What is proposed is a six-stage process (see handout).

Postpositivist-Postmodern Models This model causes curriculum makers to assume an openness to process, an eye for the unexpected, and a willingness to let individuals interact with curricular matters as they evolve. Proponents of this approach to curriculum believe that the actual planning process assumes its own ethos. Ends are transformed into new beginnings; people in the process are altered; students, teachers, and even course materials are changed as the dynamics and chaos unfold. The aim of curricula designed from this viewpoint is not to have students arrive at understandings, but essentially to realize that they have more work to do, to continually make their understandings new.

Postpositivist-Postmodern Models (Continued)4.Curriculum becomes a process of development to be experienced in unique and at first unimagined ways, rather than a static body of knowledge to be presented within a strict time table.5.Curriculum participants are engaged in a critical dialogue with themselves and others in the planning process and interact with an evolving content of the curriculum. This approach to curriculum creation can never be articulated with a universal precision.6.If you gather together to create a curriculum, it will emerge.

References

Marsh, C., & Willis, G. (1999). Curriculum: Alternative approaches, ongoing issues (2nd ed.). Columbus: Merrill Prentice Hall.

Oliva, P. (2001). Developing the curriculum (5th ed.). New York: Longman.

Ornstein, A., & Hunkins, F. (1998). Curriculum foundations, principles, and issues (3rd ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Sowell, E. (2000). Curriculum: An integrative introduction (2nd ed.). Columbus: Merrill Prentice Hall.

Taba, H. (1962). Curriculum development: Theory and practice. New York: Harcourt Brace.Tyler, R. (1949). Basic principles of curriculum and instruction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Wiles, J., & Bondi, J. (2002). Curriculum development: A guide to practice (6th ed.). Columbus: Merrill Prentice Hall