Role of teacher in curriculum development

While curriculum specialists, administrators and outside educational companies spend countless hours
developing curriculum, it is the teachers who know best what the curriculum should look like. After all,
they work directly with the students meant to benefit from the curriculum. In order to create a strong
curriculum, teachers must play an integral role in every step of the process.

Planning

Teachers know their students' needs better than others involved in the curriculum process. While state or
federal standards often dictate the skills covered by the curriculum, a teacher can provide insight into the
types of materials, activities and specific skills that need to be included. Teachers from multiple grade-
levels may collaborate to identify skills students need at each level and ensure that the curriculum
adequately prepares students to advance to the next grade-level and to meet the standards.

Creation

Because teachers must use the curriculum, they should have input in its creation. A teacher can gauge
whether an activity will fit into a specified time frame and whether it will engage students. If multiple
teachers will use the curriculum, allow as many of them as possible to provide input during the creation
stage. As teachers provide input, they will gain ownership in the final product and feel more confident
that the curriculum was created with their concerns and the needs of their particular students in mind.

Implementation

Teachers must implement the curriculum in their own classrooms, sticking to the plan that has taken so
much time, careful planning and effort to create. When a teacher fails to properly implement a strong
curriculum, she risks not covering standards or failing to implement effective practices in the classroom.
That does not mean a teacher cannot make minor changes. In fact, a strong curriculum is designed to
allow a teacher to be flexible and to insert a few personalized components or choose from among a
selection of activities.

Reflection

Reflecting on a curriculum allows teachers and others involved in the process to find any weaknesses in
the curriculum and attempt to make it better. Teachers reflect on curriculum in multiple ways, such as
keeping a journal as they implement the curriculum, giving students surveys and reviewing the results or
analyzing assessment data and individual student performance. Not only can reflection serve to improve
a specific curriculum, it may guide the creation of new curriculum.

Course Implementation

Respondents teaching the standards reported a range of motivations, both intrinsic and extrinsic, for
adopting them during 2011. Of the 51 who reported their motivation, 90% wanted to provide better
opportunities for students. Most had a personal interest in the topics. Some believed that adopting the
 new standards was good for the country or simply the right thing to do. Some felt it would give
credibility to computing as a subject, and 8% were motivated by school management’s requirements.

Teacher confidence

The confidence of teachers and their sense of identity relative to the subject area is an important
consideration. The responses show relatively low confidence among teachers in their ability to teach the
new topics.

Adapter

As an adapter the role of teacher is just same as implementer that is what some conceptual term which
indicates that the teacher become ready to accept the curriculum in order to implement it.

Developer

As a developer the teacher role is to take part in curriculum process. In Pakistan some respective
teachers are being invited to attend various meetings held by higher authorities in order to make
contributions in curriculum development process.

Researchers

Curriculum is dynamic process, keeping in view the characteristics; there is a need to conduct the
research in order to bring desirable changes in curriculum. Teachers in most of countries are taking part
in various types of researchers in curriculum development process. These are:

1: To Review the Curriculum

2: To Evaluate the Curriculum

1. Function

The teacher is qualified to judge if a curriculum provides appropriate instruction at three levels of
differentiation: remedial, instructional and advanced. A curriculum should include techniques and
strategies for teachers to help students at their current academic level. For example, a kindergarten
teacher may need to employ a variety of methods when demonstrating concepts of print. The Mississippi
Department of Education's Language Arts curriculum framework includes suggested instructional
methods and activities geared toward this objective. One suggestion is to read poems to the class and
have students track the words to learn left-to-right progression. The teacher should be able to provide an
informed opinion about the usefulness of such activities by mid-academic year.

Significance

Teachers should be consulted about curriculum evaluation because they are ultimately responsible for
translating its objectives into specific lessons. According to the Alberta Teachers' Association, teachers
are ethically and legally bound to routinely assess students and report their progress. A curriculum
should help teachers do this by providing a realistic set of goals and suggested techniques to assist
students at all ability levels. When decisions are made about changes in content, teachers can provide
feedback based on their direct interaction with students.

Features

Teachers routinely use assessment data to design and adapt instruction. They can also use this data to
evaluate the effectiveness of a curriculum. Informal assessments, as well as standardized tests given at
the end of the academic year, yield valuable information about students' understanding of the concepts
they have been taught. It is important to look at each student's progress in comparison to the entire class.
If a majority of pupils achieves a proficient score, this usually indicates an appropriate alignment of
curriculum standards and assessment.

Effects

A teacher's role in curriculum evaluation affects the school's choice of textbooks, as well as the adoption
of special programs to augment educational standards. Classroom instructors examine the curriculum's
objectives to determine the relevance of the materials. If a great disparity exists, school officials must
reassess their programs or consider editing or remapping the curriculum to best meet the students' needs.
Utah State University's education department advises teachers to assess their curriculum if students do
not achieve 80- to 90-percent mastery on specific skills. In such a case, the curriculum may lack
instructional guidance necessary for teaching prerequisite skills. Conversely, if students continually meet
or exceed these percentages, teachers can propose advanced instruction.

Expert Insight

Over time, teachers gain insight to the effectiveness of a curriculum on their students' long-term
academic development. Thus, they should recognize an effective curriculum as one composed of
student-centered methods that emphasizes the teacher as a facilitator. This type of instruction begins as
early as kindergarten. Certainly, there will be a greater degree of hands-on teaching at this level, but
even students ages 4 and 5 are capable of applying strategies like questioning and monitoring as the
teacher reads a story to them. After they learn to read, these techniques continue to guide their
instruction.

The Alberta Teachers' Association advocates teachers as curriculum evaluators, citing that experienced
instructors—no matter what grade level they teach—know that mastery can be measured through
informal observation as well as tests. An effective curriculum will take this into consideration when
presenting assessment strategies. Teachers are uniquely qualified to determine if student outcomes and
curriculum objectives are properly aligned and implemented.

An Effective Plan of Evaluation

Evaluation

Evaluation describes how to assess the nature, impact and value of an activity through the systematic collection,
analysis and interpretation of information with a view to making an informed decision.

Evaluation involves three activities:

1: Outlining Clear Purpose

2: Gathering Evidence

3: Judgment

Evaluation is part of judgment rather than apart from it

An evaluation plan is an integral part of a grant proposal that provides information to improve a project during
development and implementation.

For small projects, the Office of the Vice President for Research can help you develop a simple evaluation plan. If
you are writing a proposal for larger center grant, using a professional external evaluator is recommended.

Do all grant proposals require an evaluation plan?

Not all grant proposals require an evaluation plan. If one is required, it will generally be listed in the program
announcement. Most often, larger, more involved grant proposal will require an evaluation plan, while a smaller,
single-investigator proposals will not. If you are unsure whether your proposal requires an evaluation plan, please
contact us.

What elements should be included in an evaluation plan?

There are two types of evaluation plans. The components of your evaluation plan may depend on the type you use.
We can help you prepare and review both types of evaluation plans outlined below.

A formative evaluation does the following:

 Assesses initial and ongoing project activities
 Begins during project development and continues through implementation
 Provides new and sometimes unanticipated insights into improving the outcomes of the project
 Involves review by the principal investigator, the steering or governance committee, and either an internal or
external evaluator (depending on grant requirements)
A summative evaluation does the following:
 Assesses the quality and success of a project in reaching stated goals
 Presents the information collected for project activities and outcomes
 Takes place after the completion of the project
 Involves review by the principal investigator, the steering or governance committee, either an internal or
external evaluator, and the program director of the funding agency

All evaluation plans should identify both participants (those directly involved in the project) and stakeholders (those
otherwise invested by credibility, control or other capital), and should include the relevant items developed in the
evaluation process.

What does the evaluation process entail?

The evaluation process can be broken down into a series of steps, from preparation to implementation and
interpretation.

1. Develop a conceptual model of the project and identify key evaluation points. This ensures that all participants
and stakeholders understand the project's structure and expected outcomes, and helps focus on the project’s
most important elements.
2. Create evaluation questions and define measurable outcomes. Outcomes may be divided into short-term and
long-term, or defined by the more immediate number of people affected by the project versus the overall
changes that might not occur until after the project’s completion.
3. Develop an appropriate evaluation design. A successful evaluation both highlights the most useful information
about the project’s objectives and addresses its shortcomings. In developing an evaluation design, you should
first determine who will be studied and when, and then select a methodological approach and data collection
instruments. The NSF-sponsored Online Evaluation Resource Library provides step-by-step instructions for
developing an evaluation plan.
4. Collect data.
5. Analyze data and present to interested audiences.