ELEMENTS OF

CURRICULUM
C
FOUR IMPORTANT ELEMENTS

CURRICULUM INTENT

CONTENT

LEARNING EXPERIENCES

EVALUATION
Curriculum Intent
•The term used by Print (1993) to mean the
direction that curriculum developers wish to go
to as a result of participating in the curriculum.
It includes the aims, goals and objectives found
in any curriculum development.
Aims
• Broad statements of social or educational expectations.
Aims include what is hoped to be achieved by the total
curriculum.
• Every curriculum is aimed at developing in the learners
certain competencies or abilities. The curriculum process
must therefore clearly identify the aims that the curriculum
is intended to achieve.
Goals
•More specific than the aims. Goals are
general statements of what concepts,
skills, and values should be learned in
the curriculum.
Objectives
• Specific learning outcomes. It includes specific concepts, skills, and values that
should be learned by the students. Usually, objectives are used in making decisions or
planning about instruction.
• There are four main factors for formulating the objectives of education. These are 
1. The society
2. The knowledge
3. The learner
4. The learning process
• All of these factors are to be considered while selecting and formulating the
educational objectives.
• Curriculum aims range from the very broad to the
more specific. In fact, that is why we use the terms
aims, goals and objectives to refer to them. Aims are
broad statements which cover all of the experiences
provided in the curriculum; goals are tied to specific
subjects or group of contents within the curriculum;
while objectives describe the more specific outcomes
that can be attained as a result of lessons or instruction
delivered at the classroom.
Content
•Includes the different topics to be learned or
covered in a curriculum. These topics are based
on the curriculum intents. Contents may
include values, concepts, or skills that are
important for the learners to learn.
Selection of Content
One of the important elements is the selection of content for a subject. At the time of subject matter
selection, the following factors are to be kept in mind:
• Available sources and resource
• Demand of the society
• International needs
• Level and age of the learner or student
• Methods of content organization
• Number of courses offered
• Quantity and qualification of teaching staff
• Scope of subject matter
• System of examination
• Type of society and culture
Factors in Selecting Content
• Validity: means two things, is the content related to the objectives, and is the content true or
authentic;
• Significance: is the content significant or will lead it to the more mastery or more
understanding of the course or subject;
• Utility: here the question is whether the content selected is useful i.e. will lead to the
acquisition of skills and knowledge that are considered useful by society?
• Interest: is the content interesting to the learner? Or can the content be made interesting to
learners?
• Learnability: is the content selected such that learners can learn and understand given their
present level/
Learning Experiences
• Include all instructional strategies that are useful for
the implementation of the curriculum. These may
appear in the form of activities, strategies, methods,
or approaches that are useful in implementing the
curriculum or in teaching the content.
Factors in Selecting Learning
Experiences
• Validity: this refers to the relevance of the stated learning experience to the stated goals of the
curriculum;
• Relevance to life: learning experience must be related to the learner’s real life situations in and out of
school;
• Variety: learning experiences must cater to the needs of different types of learners by providing different
types of experiences;
• Suitability: learning experiences must be suitable to the learners present state of learning and
characteristics:
Selection of Content & Learning Experiences

• Content is what we teach; learning experience is an activity which the learner

engages in which results in changes in his behaviour;
• We should select those contents and learning experiences that will in attaining
the goals of the curriculum;
• There are some factors to consider in selecting both learning experiences and
content.
• We shall first examine those criteria for selecting learning experiences
Evaluation
• Includes the different ways and tools used for evaluating whether or not
the curriculum intent was realized. Evaluation tools are also used to
evaluate the performance of the learners after they have undergone the
curriculum.
• It is the means of determining whether the program is meeting its goals,
that is whether the measures / outcomes for a given set of instructional
inputs match the intended or pre-specified outcomes. (Tuckman, 1979)
Objectives of Evaluation
1. Scope – (teaching –program-cost effectiveness)
2. Timing – (formative, summative, impact)
3. Method – ( quantitative, qualitative)
4. Level – (classroom, school, national)
5. Personnel involved – (individual teachers, committees,
consultants)