5.

Planning goals and learning outcomes

Chapter 1 that the initial planner of the English course sees the purpose of language teaching
Needs analysis seeks to provide answers to these questions and simasi analysis seeks to identify the role
of contextual factors in implementing curticulum changes.

The goal characterizes the cumticulum approach to educational planning. This can be
summarized as follows:

People are generally motivated to pursue a specific goal.

The use of objectives in teaching improves the effectiveness of teaching and learning
A program will be effective as far as its goals are healthy and clearly explained.

To appreciate how the value system shapes decisions about what schools should teach and the
results they want to achieve, we will begin a goal discussion taking into account the five curriculum
ideologies (borrowing the term Eisner) that shape the nature of janguage language curriculum and
teaching practices in different ways: academic rationalism, social and economic efficiency, student-
centered, social reconstruction, and culwral pluralism.

The ideology of the curriculum

In developing goals for educational programs, curriculum planners draw their understanding both
of the current and long-term needs of leamers and communities as well as planners’ beliefs and ideologies
about schools, students, and teachers. Each of the five curriculum perspectives examined here emphasizes
different approaches to the role of language in the curriculum.

Academic rationalism

This justification for curriculum purposes emphasizes the intrinsic value of the subject matter and
its role in developing learner intelligence, humanistic values, and rationality. The role of the school is to
provide access to the major achievements of a particular cultural tradition and to know the insights gained
from studying the eternal field of knowledge. Greek and Latin have traditionally appeared in many high
school curricula in the West as they are believed to develop “mental discipline” in students. Also known
as classical humanism,” this view is “marked above all else by a desire to promote a broad intellectual
capacity. Academic rationalism is sometimes used to justify the inclusion of certain foreign languages in
the school curriculum, where they are taught not as a tool for communication but as an aspect of social
studies.

This ideology is also sometimes used as a justification for incorporating courses on literature, or
American or English culture, in language programs. Parts of the world (e.g., Hong Kong, Singapore,
Malaysia), under colonial rule the English curriculum was traditionally based on literature. “The basic
purpose of education is the assimilation of English culture through the medium of English literature.
There is no provision for language work specifically designed to help non-native leaners” (Ho 1994, 223).
The curriculum aims to maintain the elitist status of english secondary education. Such kurncula were
gradually replaced with a more functional and praccally oriented one as english-secondary education
became more widely available (Ho 1994).

Clark (1987, 6) points out that in academic rationalism the United Kingdom was conceived
before:
 Maintenance and transmission through the education of wisdom and culture of previous
generations.
Development for elite general intellectual capacity and critical faculties.
Maintenance of the stand through the inspectorate and external inspection boards controlled by
the university.

Social and economic officiency

All these educational philosophies emphasize the practical needs of leamers and the community
as well as the role of educational programs in producing economically productive learners.

Bobbitt concludes that the appropriate metaphor for the devel opment curriculum is. Factory and
production, In language teaching, philosophy leads to an emphasis on practical and functional skills in a
foreign language or second.

Socioeconomic ideology emphasizes people’s economic needs as justification for english

teaching. “Learning English, now a global language, is very important for Japan to have a bright future...
Japanese linguistic defects can hold them back in an increasingly internet-oriented world, where most of
the information is written in English” (Kin 1999).

In foreign language teaching, the debate about skill-based teaching versus academically in
language teaching has a long history, as seen in discussions about the relative benefits of classical
language versus toodern language, literature versus language, and even versus conversation in language
programs. In many countries where English is a foreign language, Over the last two decades there has
been a step away from apadernie rettonel towards one based more on the model.

Learner centeredness

This team groups together educational philosophies that stress the individual needs of learners,
the roal of individual experience, and the need to developed awareness, self-reflection, critical thinking,
learner strategies, and other qualities and skills that are believed to be important for learners to develop.

All learning is seen to involve re learning and reorganization of one’s previous understanding and
representation of knowledge (Robert 1998), 23). Clark (1987,49) (who uses the term progressivism to
refer to this philosophy) suggest that it involves seeing education “as a means of providing children with
learning experiences from which they can learn by their own efforts.

Marsh (1986,201) point out that te issue of child centered or learner centered curricula reappears
every decade or so and can refer to any of the following :

Individualized teaching
Learning through practical operation or doing
Lasses faire-no organized curricula at all but based on the momentary interests of children
Creative self-expression by students
Practically oriented activities directed toward the needs of society
A collective term that refers to the rejection of teaching-directed learning
 In language teaching, clark sees this educational philosophy as leading to an emphasis on process
rather than product, a focus on learned differences, learned strategies, and learner self-direction and
autonomy.

Cultural pluralism

This means that one cultural group is not seen as superior to others and that multiple perspectives
representing the viewpoints of different cultural groups should be developed within the curriculum.

Collingharn (1988) emphasizes the importance of valuing learners’ language knowledge : “to
treat adult learners as if they know nothing of language is to accept the imbalance of power and so
ultimately to collude with institutional racism; to adopt a bilingual approach and to value the knowledge
that learnes already have is to begin to challenge that unequal power relationship” (collingham 1988, 85).

The extent to which one or other of the curriculum ideologies discussed in this section serves as
the ideological underpinning of the curriculum and the relative emphasis. The philosophy of the
curriculum is the result of political judgment in that if reflects a particular set of choices about curriculum
options. If reflects what the participants in the planning process believe to be worthwhile goals to attain
and the changes they feel the curriculum should bring about. Because these judgment and values are
often not stated explicitly, indentifying then, making them explicit, and reflecting on the unstated values
and assumptions driving the curriculum are an essential part of the process of curriculum planning.