BASIC CONCEPT OF CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT

Curriculum Development and Design

Curriculum development is defined as planned, a purposeful, progressive, and
systematic process to create positive improvements in the educational system. It has a broad
scope because it is not only about the school, the learners, and the teachers. It is also about
the development of society in general. While curriculum design is the specific version of
curriculum development. According to Schweitzer (2019) it is a way for teachers to plan
instruction. When teachers design curriculum, they identify what will be done, who will do it,
and what schedule to follow.
Teachers design each curriculum with a specific educational purpose in mind. The
ultimate goal is to improve student learning, but there are other reasons to employ curriculum
design as well. For example, designing a curriculum for middle school students with both
elementary and high school curricula in mind helps to make sure that learning goals are
aligned and complement each other from one stage to the next. If a middle school curriculum
is designed without taking prior knowledge from elementary school or future learning in high
school into account it can create real problems for the students.

Elements of Curriculum

According to Tyler, there are four elements of curriculum, namely; Objective,

Content/subject matter, Method and Evaluation.

1. Curriculum goals are general, broad statements that lead towards long-term outcomes.
These goals are typically designed to be met by students after a longer period of time
such as a year of schooling or a series of courses in a discipline. Specifically, goals are
always farther-reaching than objectives, and as such are usually based on the idea that
they lead students towards being better able to be productive members of their
societies.
2. Curriculum Content is the medium through which the objectives areaccomplished.
There are three basic questions related to curriculum content.

a) What knowledge, skills, attitudes, or values are most worthwhile to

betaught and learned?

b) Why are they considered worthwhile?

c) H o w a r e t h e y a c q u i r e d ?

One has the content with the so-called knowledge explosion phenomenon.
Knowledge has accum ulated so fast that it is no lon ger just
d i ff i c u l t b u t s i m p l y i m p o s s i b l e t o c r a m o u r c u r r i c u l u m w i t h
s u m m a r i e s o f a l l e x i s t i n g knowledge. With so much knowledge being added,
the inevitable question iswhich should be included in the curriculum?
Obviously we cannot include everything. There must be a careful selection to
include why it is relevant toand necessary at the level of the maturity of the learner
 3. Method is very important element in curriculum. According to Richards (2013) it is a
way of a teacher to deliver the content. He added it encompasses the types of learning
activities, procedures and techniques that are employed by teachers when they teach
and the prin-ciples that underlie the design of the activities and exercises in their
textbooks and teach-ing resources.
4. Curriculum evaluation is crucial to measuring curriculum effectiveness in any
educational setting. The purpose of curriculum evaluation is to determine whether or
not the newly adopted curriculum is producing the intended results and meeting the
objectives that it has set forth, and it is an essential component in the process of
adopting and implementing any new curriculum in any educational setting. Another
purpose of curriculum evaluation is to gather data that will help in identifying areas in
need of improvement or change.

Conection between Approach, Design and Startegy

The Approach, design and strategy are completing one another in curriculum. It cant’ be
separated from a process of implementing a curriculum in order to reach the objectives that
proposed.

Coherency and Gradation

Anderson (2002) describes coherent curriculum as having a strong link between
objectives and assessments, between objectives and instructional activities and materials,
andbetween assess-ments and instructional activities and materials. In other words, content
validity, content coverage, and opportunity to learn are all included within the more general
concept of “curriculum alignment.” The initial conception of coherence was based on this
traditional definition which views coherence as an achievable or reachable. While Newmann
et al. (2001) suggest that a sensible connections and co-ordination between the topics that
student sstudy in each subject within a grade and as they advance though the grades. In other
word Schmidt (2005) explain coherence as “students understanding”. Myatt (2019) stated
that when the curriculum lacks coherence, it is both harder to teach and harder for children to
locate and place their new knowledge.

Stages of EFL Curriculum Development

There are four stages in developing curriculum According to Richards (1985) they are :
1. Needs analysis is a vital part of this process of accountability, and it has developed as
a response to the demand for evidence of the relevance and outcomes of educational
programs. In language curriculum development, needs analysis serves the purposes
of:
a) providing a mechanism for obtaining a wider range of input into the content,
design and implementation of a language program through involving such people
as learners, teachers, administrators and employers in the planning process;
b) identifying general or specific language needs which can be addressed in
developing goals, objectives, and content, for a language program;
 c) providing data which can serve as the basis for reviewing and evaluating an
existing program.
2. Formulation the Objective. There are four main factors for formulating the objectives
of education. These are :The society, The knowledge, The learner, the learning
process.
3. Content and Methodology. It is adopted by the teachers during instruction and
learning experiences. This will certainly not fair to ask a teacher for achieving certain
objectives without giving any guidelines. In most of the countries curriculum
development is a centralized process. Teachers are not directly involved in this phase.
Most of the teachers do not know the process of achieving desired goals. After
determining the goals and objectives the next problem is the selection of strategies
and methods of teachers. What we should give to our students. Should a curriculum
be fixed or flexible, constant, common or differentiated?
4. Evaluation. Evaluation is one of the dynamic process, which needs a continuous
research and evaluation for its betterment in order to cope with the variable demands
of the society and bring about desirable changes. Curriculum evaluation is not a
student evaluation. It is a broader term being used to make judgment about the worth
and effectiveness of it. With the help of evaluation phase experts can modify the
curriculum by bringing about desirable changes.

References
Anderson, LW (2002) Curricular Alignment:A Re-Examination. THEORY INTO
PRACTICE, Volume 41, Number 4, Autumn. College of Education, The Ohio State
University
Myatt, M. (2018) Building curriculum coherence. Impact. Journal of The Chartered College
of Teaching.
Newmann, F. M., Smith, B. A., Allensworth, E., & Bryk, A. S. (2001). Instructional program
coherence: What it is and why it should guide school improvement policy. Educational
Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 23(4), 297‐321.
Richards, J.C (1985) Language Curriculum Development. University of Hawai, Honolulu,
USA
Richards, J.C (2013) Curriculum Approaches in Language Teaching: Forward, Central, and
Backward Design. RELC Journal 44 (1) 5–33 DOI: 10.1177/0033688212473293
rel.sagepub.com
Schmidt,W. H., Wang, H. C., & McKnight, C. C. (2005). Curriculum coherence: an
examination of US mathematics and science content standards from an international
perspective. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 37(5), 525–559.
Schweitzer, K (2019) Curriculum Design: Definition, Purpose and Types, from
https://www.thoughtco.com/curriculum-design-definition-4154176