CURRICCULUM DEVELOPMENT (EDU402) VU

Lesson No.1
INTRODUCTION TO CURRICULUM
Topic 6: Images of Curriculum- 2

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CURRICCULUM DEVELOPMENT (EDU402) VU

Curriculum as Intended Learning Outcomes

Curriculum should focus on the intended learning outcomes – which shifts emphasis
form means to ends. Intended learning outcomes are a convenient way to specify
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CURRICCULUM DEVELOPMENT (EDU402) VU

purposes. Purposes no longer remain stated in such global rhetoric as, “an
appreciation for our cultural heritage.” Instead a structural series of outcomes is set
forth; all activities, teaching, and environmental design serve the acquisition of
specified end.
Curriculum as Cultural Reproduction

Curriculum in any society or culture is/ should be a reflection of that culture.

Schooling is meant to reproduce salient knowledge and values for succeeding
generation. The community, state, or nation takes the lead in identifying the skills,
knowledge and appreciations to be taught. It is job of professional educators to see that
they are transformed into curriculum that can be delivered to children and youth. In
advanced industrial societies it is impossible for parents who have specialized jobs
themselves to teach adequately all the complicated capabilities that their children need.
In making their living, they scarcely have time to do so, even if they do have
knowledge, inclination and ability.
Curriculum as Experience

Means - end continuum – educational means and ends are parts of a single process,

‘experience’. To attend to one’s experience reflectively and to strive continuously to

anticipate and monitor the consequences of one’s thoughts and action relative to the
good that they bring is a continuously evolving curriculum. Here teacher is a
facilitator of growth, and curriculum is the process of experiencing the sense of
meaning and direction that result from teacher and student dialogue. Curriculum as
actual learning experiences is an attempt to grasp what is ‘learnt’ rather than to take for
granted that the planned intents are in fact learnt. Experiences are created as learners
reflect on the processes in which they engage. Curriculum is meaning experienced by
the students, not facts to be memorized or behaviours to be demonstrate. Here ideals are
required for giving direction to action, they are fashioned as teachers and learners
interact in a given setting and with subject matter that gives substance to learning. Four
common places of curricular experience are teacher, learner, subject matter and setting.
Whenever a change occurs in one to a combination of these commonplaces, and such
alterations are always occurring, the curricular consequences change that meet the
learner and his (er) learning experience. Therefore, ends and means are united in
constant interaction.

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