BAGUIO CENTRAL UNIVERSITY

GRADUATE SCHOOL

Subject: PHAS 507 (Advance Curriculum Development)

Professor: DR. JOSE R. BALCANAO
Reporters: 1. CLARITA E. EDDIO (Existentialism & Essentialism)
2. LOURDES CONNENG (Humanism & Pragmatism)
3. JENNELYN L. BAGUILET (Progressivism & Idealism)

Topic: PHILOSOPHICAL AND PEDAGOGICAL APPROACH OF CURRICULUM AND CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT

A. EXISTENTIALISM
- Existence comes before essence.
- It is up to us to define ourselves in some sort of relationship to our existence and take responsibility for deciding who
we are.
- We should not accept any predetermined creed or philosophical system.
- We exist as independent agents, determining who we are and what we should do.
- A doctrine that there is no difference between the external world and the internal world of the mind.
- Focuses on the individual
- Not a logical theory, but one that can be felt as an attitude or mood
- Awareness, anxiety, choice take on special meaning
- Revolt against the traditional philosophical stance
- A way of life which involves one’ s total self in complete seriousness about the self
- The quest for personal meaning and determining personal values is emphasized.
- All aspects of human potential should be developed.
- Students define life for themselves as individuals.
- Against both authority and group emphasis in education.
- Emphasis on personal, authentic thinking and involvement.
- It points out the importance of training the learners in valid reasoning and in making wise decisions.
1. CURRICULUM: AESTHETIC AND PHILOSPHY
- Students are responsible for their own education
- It does not have a specific subject subjects which are aesthetic and philosophy-based like art, literature and
drama are considered relevant
- Places primary emphasis on the individual. We teach a child, not math.
- Education is an individual’s search for personal understanding, not something to be tested on
- Learner-centered and nondirective approach
- Criticized for impossibility of total freedom in a society with rules
2. PROFESSOR: serves as catalyst
- Provides educational opportunities so that pupils can voice out their feelings and emotions
- Helps the child confront his or her freedom.
- Stresses freedom and the responsibility to make individual choices.
- Attempts to create a learning environment for students’ self -definition.
- Allows student to make their own meaning.
- Liberal education is a foundation for gaining personal freedom.
- Emphasizes humanities and the arts while de-emphasizing science.
3. Teaching Method : Activity-centered and pupil-centered
- Role plays and simulations are frequently employed in the class room
- Pupils are motivated to engage in deep thinking
4. Pupils: Active recipients of knowledge
- Encourage to involve themselves actively to maximize the educational activities opportunities offered to them

B. ESSENTIALISM
- Idealism - Learn the essential ideas and knowledge needed to live well.
- Realism - Mind learns through contact with the physical world.
- Essential skills and practical knowledge needs to be learned.
 - Value the past but not captured by it as in perennialism.
- Schools should focus on the basics or established disciplines - the 3Rs.
- An educational philosophy suggesting that there is a critical core of information that all people should
possess.
- Back to the basic skills and academic subjects. Students should be able to master these subjects
- Criticize interdisciplinary teaching
- The curriculum of this philosophy is focused on core skills like reading, writing,
and arithmetic.
- Teaching of essential facts and concepts on Science, Literature, Health and P.E.; Hard Sciences,
technical and vocational courses;
- Arts for aesthetic expression; and Values of discipline, hard work, and respect for authority.
- ESSENTIALIST believes that there exist a critical core of information and skill that an educated
person must have.
- The aim of education is to teach the young the essentials they need to live well in the modern world.
- It will develop individuals to perform justly, skillfully, and magnanimously
- It helps individuals to adjust to cultural demands and live together in peace
1. CONCEPT - Knowledge and skills that need to be taught to the pupils. Focus more on basics; what an
individual needs to know in order to become a productive person. Change from time to time
- Essentialism is said to be both practical and pragmatic.
2. GOALS OF EDUCATION: Teach knowledge and basic culture
3. Curriculum :Basic skills (reading, writing, arithmetic) Compulsory subject like Science, History, Art,
and Music whilst Literature and Humanities are optional.
4. Teacher : Skilled disseminator of knowledge
- Teaches essential knowledge and is task oriented.
- Avoids methodological frills and soft pedagogy.
- Concentrates on sound, proven instructional methods.
- Teacher is the expert and students are there to listen and learn what they need to know.
- Strong emphasis on basic skills and scholastic achievement.
- Teachers must be expert in content knowledge, teaches essential knowledge and maintains task-oriented focus
5. Pupils : Passive recipient of knowledge
- The role of the student is that of the listener and the learner.
- The individual childs ’ interest, motivations, and psychological states are not important.
- Teachers are authorities.
- Subjects should stress usefulness and work should be task oriented and disciplined.
- School is a place where children come to learn what they need to know and develop the skills needed to succeed in life.

C. PROGRESSIVISM
- John Dewey - Father of Progressivism
- Philosophy and Education are identical, both involving the practical, experimental attempt to improve the human
condition.
- Major impact on the concept of the democratic American education ideal.
- Views the mind as a problem solver.
- People are naturally exploring, inquiring entities and learn through direct experience.
- Student must master the scientific method.
- Value of knowledge resides in the ability to solve human problems.
- Subject matter provides information and methodologies for finding solutions.
- The teacher is an intellectual guide or facilitator in the problem solving process.
- School is a democratic society in itself, preparing students for community life.
- Group activities and group problem solving to prepare for solving world problems.
- It has no structured curriculum wherein it is child centered which give emphasis on life
experiences.
- This philosophy also focuses on the four (4) H’ s: health, hand, heart, head for physical, emotional,
social and manipulative skills
- It focuses more upon the child’ s learning, than upon curriculum content of the teacher’ s
pedagogy.
 - Education which aims to give children the freedom to develop naturally in a democratic
environment.
- Focuses on a curriculum highlighting social reform as the aim of education
- Schools under this philosophy are focused on the needs of pupils through tolerant discipline,
encouragement of the arts and crafts, using manual work as an aspect of physical education,
and simplicity of living.
- New teaching methods are encouraged, ‘open plan’ school architecture and more imaginative
use of space in all types of primary schools. It also promotes a child-centered classroom
approaches.
- Do not believe in the existence of permanent truth that needs to be mastered by our pupils
- Knowledge is something which is both relative and tentative and used to used to explain the present reality IS
SAID TO UNDERGO CONTINUOUS CHANGES THEREFORE an educated people is defined as one
who has the insight which enables him to adapt to changes his environment

I. TWO MAIN APPROACHES OF PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION

1. ‘CHILD-CENTERED’
2. ‘SOCIAL-RECONSTRUCTIONISM’
II. GOALS OF EDUCATION: produce individuals who are ready to face changes in their daily lives
III. Curriculum: Choice of subjects according to individual interest
IV. Teacher: Facilitator and manager Develops problem solving abilities and inductive thinking skills.
- Helps children do what they want to do.
- Stimulates students to plan and carry out activities and research projects using group processes and
democratic procedures.
- Is facilitator and resource for students?
- Students learn by doing and discovering.
- Center on students’ interests in real problems.
Teaching Method: Inductive
V. Pupils: Active seekers of knowledge.
- Students be given the freedom to choose the subjects they wish to study that will ensure they study
according to their personal interests.
- Learning becomes more effective and pupils are able to maximize their individual abilities and
potentials

D. IDEALISM
- A traditional philosophy asserting that, because the physical world is constantly changing, ideas are the
only reliable form of reality
- The subjects offered are essential for MENTAL, MORAL and SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT, to
with: philosophy, theology, history, arts, mathematics, literature, gmrc, values education,
christian living.
- EDUCATION develops the individual spiritually, mentally and morally, thus education
contributes to the development of mind and self, thereby, the school should emphasize
intellectual abilities, moral, judgments, aesthetics, self-realization, individual freedom and
responsibility and self-control.
- Students must be encouraged to build-up knowledge and critical thinking. It is a fact that
learning is a product of the learner’s own activity
- The learning process must be made more efficient by the stimulation which comes from the
teacher and the environment of the school this regard, the teacher must be highly
communicative using different teaching strategies, chief source of inspiration and knowledge,
among others, thus, the school must encourage teachers to use effective teaching styles that
would fit in to what the school envisions for the learners.
1. Socratic method: questioning
- Believe that teaching and learning should focus on ideas. Teachers provide guidance by helping students
become more precise and logical thinkers
- Criticized for being cold because it emphasizes the rational and logical over other dimensions of the
human experience.
E.PRAGMATISM
Pragmatism-is derived from the Greek word “Pragma” which means Practice. Pragmatists
firmly hold that the meaning of concepts lie in their practical consequences, and knowledge develops
from practice. According to Peirce, a great pragmatist, if we need to know the meaning of the word hard
we have to carry out an experiment. The experiment is we have to scratch something and find the effect
of scratching. If the thing is easily scratched, it is soft, if not, it is hard.
Characteristics of Pragmatism as a philosophical approach to curriculum and curriculum
development
1. Knowledge is true if it is workable.
2. Pragmatism recognizes the importance of personality.
3. Pragmatism considers the result more important than the motive.
4. Education from the pragmatic point of view, must prepare the young for membership in a modern
community and train them in scientific techniques in the solution of problems vital to community life.
5. Education is child-centered.
6. There is no fixed curriculum for all the children because each child is different from the others and
each will follow his interest and experience.
7. Education is a preparation for life.
8. The most popular method of teaching is the project method because it lends itself to the utilization of
the child’s activities and interests.
9. The teacher’s most important concern is to teach the child to do, not to know, to try out the thing he
wants to do, not to simply think about them.

F. Humanism
- *In general, any philosophy that emphasizes the dignity of interests of human beings or the
importance of man in relation to the cosmic order.
- *It is an educational movement during the Middle Ages which aimed to free the individual from the
demands of medieval institutions such as the church, guilds, lords and monasteries so that he would
have freedom of thought, self-expression and creative activity. Educationally, humanism aimed to
have liberal education and academic freedom.
- *It believes that man is both matter and spirit. The problem is there is a constant struggle between
the flesh and the spirit. If the former wins, man meets his doom but if the spirit dominates the flesh,
man uses his reason and will and perfection may be attained which is the chief aim of education.