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Course: Curriculum Development

Code: 8603 Level: B.Ed SPRING 2018
Assignment No: 01
Q No: 1 Discuss various definitions of curriculum given by the experts and analyze the main
principles of curriculum development in the light of definitions.
A. Bestor (1956): The curriculum must consist essentially of disciplined study in five great areas: 1)
command of mother tongue and the systematic study of grammar, literature, and writing. 2) mathematics, 3)
sciences, 4) history, 5) foreign language. Albert Oliver (1977): curriculum is “the educational program of the
school” and divided into four basic elements: 1) program of studies, 2) program of experiences, 3) program
of service, 4) hidden curriculum.
B. Othanel Smith (1957): A sequence of potential experiences is set up in the school for the purpose of
disciplining children and youth in group ways of thinking and acting. This set of experiences is referred to as
the curriculum.
Bell (1971): the offering of socially valued knowledge, skills, and attitudes made available to students
through a variety of arrangements during the time they are at school, college, or university.
Bobbit (1918): Curriculum is that series of things which children and youth must do and experience by way
of developing abilities to do the things well that make up the affairs of adult life; and to be in all respects
what adults should be.
Caswell and Campbell (1935): curriculum is composed of all of the experiences children have under the
guidance of the teacher."
Daniel Tanner and Laurel N. Tanner (1988) "that reconstruction of knowledge and experience
systematically developed under the auspices of the school (or university), to enable the learner to increase
his or her control of knowledge and experience."
Curriculum refers to the means and materials with which students will interact for the purpose of achieving
identified educational outcomes. Arising in medieval Europe was the trivium, an educational curriculum
based upon the study of grammar, rhetoric, and logic. The later quadrivium (referring to four subjects rather
than three as represented by the trivium) emphasized the study of arithmetic, geometry, music, and
astronomy. These seven liberal arts should sound a lot like what you experienced during your formal
education.
The emphasis on single subjects persists even today. Very likely you moved from classroom to classroom,
particularly throughout your secondary education, studying a different subject with each teacher. Yet there
was more to your education. Perhaps you participated in athletics, or the band, or clubs, or student
government, or made the choice not to participate in any extracurricular activities. All of these (including the
option not to participate) are part of what we might call the contemporary curriculum. But there is more.
Some educators would say that the curriculum consists of all the planned experiences that the school offers
as part of its educational responsibility. Then there are those who contend that the curriculum includes not
only the planned, but also the unplanned experiences as well. For example, incidents of violence that have
occurred at a number of schools across the nation are hardly a planned component of the curriculum.
However, the manner in which violence is addressed before, during, and after the actual event sends a very
definite message about how people in our culture interact and how the laws of our nation are applied.
Another perspective suggests that curriculum involves organized rather than planned experiences because
any event must flow of its own accord, the outcome not being certain beforehand. For instance,
competitions, whether academic or athletic, can be organized, but the outcomes will depend on a myriad of
factors that cannot be planned. Which brings us to the notion of emphasizing outcomes versus experiences.
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This shift to the notion of outcomes is very much in keeping with the current movement toward
accountability in the public schools, that is, the perspective that there are indeed specific things that the
schools are supposed to accomplish with children. District personnel, school administrators, and you as one
of many teachers are to be held accountable by the public/taxpayers for ensuring that those objectives are
met. Curriculum, it turns out, is indeed much more than the idea of specific subjects as represented by the
trivium or the quadrivium. And, as we will see in the next section, it can be characterized not only by what it
does include but also by what it intentionally excludes.
A key concept to keep in mind is that the curriculum is only that part of the plan that directly
affects students. Anything in the plan that does not reach the students constitutes an educational wish, but
not a curriculum. Half a century ago Bruner (1960) wrote, "Many curricula are originally planned with a
guiding idea . . . But as curricula are actually executed, as they grow and change, they often lose their
original form and suffer a relapse into a certain shapelessness" (p. 54). Curriculum—however grand the
plans may be—can only be that portion of the plan that actually reaches the student. Planning that keeps that
point in focus can be expected to result in a more focused curriculum.
The Purpose of Curriculum
We have suggested that curriculum refers to the means and materials with which the student interacts. To
determine what will constitute those means and materials, we must decide what we want the curriculum to
yield. What will constitute the "educated" individual in our society? In other words, what purpose does the
curriculum serve?
The things that teachers teach represent what the larger society wants children to learn. However, beyond
teaching reading and writing, what are the necessary things that they should be taught? Is it really necessary
to teach science? Does teaching mathematics really lead to logical thinking, or does it just provide students
with some basic computational skills that may or may not come in handy at some future time? You may feel
that answering such questions is not something a teacher has to be able to do, but rest assured that at some
point a parent will ask you questions like these. As a teacher, you will be the representative of "the
curriculum" to whom parents and students turn for answers. The purpose of the curriculum is to prepare the
student to thrive within the society as it is—and that includes the capacity for positive change and growth.
You Actually Have Four Curriculums
There are essentially four curriculums at work in most educational settings: the explicit, implicit, null, and
extra-, or cocurriculum. You are probably familiar with the notions of explicit curriculum and
extracurricular activities. The real intrigue of curriculum debate and design comes into play with the implicit
and null curriculums.
There are four curriculums:
Explicit curriculum: subjects that will be taught, the identified "mission" of the school, and the knowledge
and skills that the school expects successful students to acquire
Implicit curriculum: lessons that arise from the culture of the school and the behaviors, attitudes, and
expectations that characterize that culture
Null curriculum: topics or perspectives that are specifically excluded from the curriculum
Extra curriculum: school-sponsored programs that are intended to supplement the academic aspect of the
school experience
The Explicit Curriculum
Explicit means "obvious" or "apparent," and that's just what the explicit curriculum is all about: the subjects
that will be taught, the identified "mission" of the school, and the knowledge and skills that the school
expects successful students to acquire. If you speak with an administrator at your school or where you do
your observations or practicum work, ask about the curriculum; it is this publicly announced (and publicly
sanctioned) explanation of the message of school that will be explained to you. The explicit curriculum can
be discussed in terms of time on task, contact hours, or Carnegie units (high school credit courses). It can be
qualified in terms of specific observable, measurable learning objectives.
The Implicit Curriculum
Sometimes referred to as the hidden curriculum, the implicit curriculum refers to the lessons that arise from
the culture of the school and the behaviors, attitudes, and expectations that characterize that culture. While
good citizenship may be part of the explicit curriculum, a particular ethos that promotes, for example,
multiethnic acceptance and cooperation may also characterize a particular school. This is not to say that
parents, teachers, and administrators sat around a table and said, "Hey, let's promote acceptance of diverse
ethnic values in the context of the American experience." That would be nice, of course, but then it tends to
fall into the category of the explicit curriculum. By virtue of a high multiethnic enrollment, a particular
school may have a culture of multiethnic cooperation. Another school, isolated in that its enrollment is
primarily that of one ethnic group, would develop a different sort of culture. Individual schools within a
district, or even classrooms within a school that share a common explicit curriculum, can differ greatly with
regard to the implicit curriculum. This is not an altogether bad situation, but to a great degree the implicit
curriculum is subjected to less scrutiny than is the explicit curriculum.
Q No: 2 Discuss the curriculum offering during the period of Omayyads and the Abbassides with
special reference to Ghazali and Ibn-e-Khuldum.
The first Muslim dynasty, the Umayyads ruling from Damascus, commission palaces near and religious
buildings on the erstwhile Temple Mount, which is now called the "Noble Sanctuary" (al haram ash-sharif).
The most notable building, still standing today, is the Dome of the Rock (completed in 691), commissioned
by Caliph Abd al Malik. Inscriptions indicate the purpose of this first monumental structure in a
distinguished history of Muslim architecture. Abd al Malik had understood that, to compete with Byzantine
Christendom, one had to speak its language:: the language of the triumphant (though "rightly guided")
eschatological ruler who, by the will of God, presided over the last empire that was to end all empires. To be
sure, Islam's attitude toward the People of the Book (ahl al-kitab) remained one of rebuke rather than
displacement.
After the assassination of Mohammed’s son-in-law and cousin, Ali, a group called the Umayyads came to
power and chose Mu’awiya as the fifth caliph. Mu’awiya ruled in a time when Muslim factions fought about
the nature of their government, and how religious or secular it should be. Mu’awiya emphasized the latter,
moved his capital to Damascus in 661 and began to reform the new empire’s administration. Mu’awiya
modeled his government’s organization on that of the Byzantine Empire, which had recently ruled the
region, even going so far as to hire Christian administrators. Mu’awiya further changed traditional Muslim
governance by identifying his son, Yazid, as his successor, instead of leaving that decision up to the
respected elders of the community. The Umayyads were therefore the first dynasty to rule an Islamic empire.
Yazid only ruled for a short time, but is infamous for challenging Ali’s son, Hussein. Hussein, as the prophet
Mohammed’s grandson, represented a symbolic link to the prophet and the fourth caliph, whom Mu’awiya
had overthrown. As Hussein traveled with his family and entourage toward the Iraqi city of Kufa, Yazid’s
troops stopped the travelers and demanded that Hussein take an oath of loyalty to Yazid and the Umayyad
Dynasty. When Hussein refused to submit, Yazid’s general ordered his soldiers to attack, slaughtering
women and children as well as Hussein. The massacre at Karbala in 680 is still mourned annually by Shi’a
Muslims, descended from those who felt the caliphate should have passed through the Prophet’s bloodline to
Hussein and his descendents. Yazid’s son, and the greatest of the eastern Umayyad rulers, was Abd al-
Malik, who reigned for 20 years and transformed Muslim lands into a unified empire. Abd al-Malik spread
his grandfather’s administrative reforms across North Africa and Persia, made Arabic the common language,
constructed mosques in all new lands, and perhaps most importantly, unified the coinage of the empire in
696. By standardizing financial weights and measures, Abd al-Malik ensured that trade would flow
smoothly across his vast lands. Abd al-Malik made another significant change when he ended the practice of
featuring the ruler’s image on coins, and instead used only text, notably verses from the Qu’ran. Also during
his reign, the Dome of the Rock, with its distinctive golden dome and beautiful calligraphy, was constructed
in Jerusalem by 691. Abd al-Malik’s heirs completed the expansion of the Umayyad dynasty, extending its
borders from the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Indus River in the east a distance of nearly 6,000 miles.
The Umayyad expansion into Europe was stopped in the west by Charles Martel and his Frankish forces at
the Battle of Tours in 732. Umayyad dominance in the east was challenged by a rising faction, the Abbasids,
who joined others opposing the empire’s secular emphasis. The Abbasids brought down the Umayyads in
750 and sought to kill as many Umayyad family members as possible to avoid its later resurgence. One
famous Umayyad who escaped was Abd al Rahman. He fled westward, finally making it to his family’s
distant territory in Spain, where he established a western Umayyad dynasty that lasted another three hundred
years.
Al-Ghazali's period of apprenticeship ended with the death of al-Juwaini 1085 CE (478 H); he was now
about 28 years old, becoming involved in politics and mingling with the ruling circles. He travelled to meet
Nizam ul-Mulk, the Seljuq minister, and remained with him in his ‘camp' for six years, during which time he
lived the life of a ‘court jurist'. He took part in political and learned disputes and wrote books until he was
appointed as a professor to the Nizamiya madrasa at Baghdad, the most celebrated and important centre of
science and teaching in the Mashriq (Islamic East) at that time. He worked there for four years, and
composed a number of works on fiqh, which he also taught, together with logic and kalam; the most
important of those works were the Al-Mustazhiri [The Exotericist] and Al-Iqtisad fi-l-I‘tiqad [The Golden
Mean in Belief], both works of a political nature on fiqh.
Al-Ghazali was a protagonist in three vehement political and intellectual controversies which were raging in
the Islamic world at that time: the struggle between philosophy and religion (between Islamic and Greek
culture), in which he took the side of religion against philosophy; the struggle between the Sunnites and the
Shi‘ites, in which he defended the ‘Abbasid Caliphate against the Batinites; and the struggle between
revelation and reason... and between fiqh and Sufi mysticism.
In the 740s, a Persian-Arab coalition from Khorasan, in eastern Iran, challenged the Umayyad dynasty and
by 750, seized power over Muslim lands. The Umayyads had been based in Syria and were influenced by its
Byzantine architecture and administration. In contrast, the Abbasids moved the capital to Baghdad in 762
and, although the leaders were Arab, administrators and cultural influence were primarily Persian. This
eastward shift allowed some independent dynasties to form in the west, such as the Spanish Umayyad and
later the Egyptian Fatimids. Abbasid expansion to the east also brought them in conflict with the Chinese at
the Battle of Talas in 751. The Muslim army was victorious, and through Chinese captives, learned about
paper, which would replace papyrus and parchment, making Abbasid intellectual achievements easier to
spread. The 9th and 10th centuries under Abbasid rule were a golden age of Muslim achievement. In the
recently built capital of Baghdad, the caliphs founded centers of study, including the Beyt alHikma, or
House of Wisdom. Most historians attribute this to Al-Ma’mun, who reigned from 813- 33, but some give
credit to earlier caliphs. By the mid-800s, brilliant Muslim scholars—many Persian, but also Arab, Indian
and Egyptian—shared their knowledge and writings in Baghdad. Al Khwarizmi (d. 850) adapted Hindu
numerals and developed the numbering system we use today. He is considered the father of algebra. His
works were translated into Latin in the 12th century and formed the basis of western mathematics. Scholars
translated ancient Persian, Hindu and Greek texts into Arabic and then spread that knowledge across the vast
Muslim lands, as far west as Spain, where they were translated into Latin. These texts helped Europeans
become acquainted with the Greek thinkers, such as Aristotle. The Abbasid dynasty depended on regional
governors for military control and the collection of taxes. By the 11th century, this decentralized system
proved too weak to defend against nomadic tribesmen from the east. In 1055, Seljuq Turkmen who had
gradually moved into Abbasid territory, took control of Baghdad. Their leader, Tugrul Bey, forced the
Abbasid caliph to name him sultan. From that point, the empire was ruled in name by the Abbasids, but in
practice by the Seljuq. The Seljuq expanded westward, defeating the Byzantines in Turkey and even taking
control of Jerusalem. These challenges to Christian rule led the pope to call the first crusade in 1096.
Christian knights seized and held Jerusalem until 1187, when the city was retaken by the great Muslim
general, Saladin. Europeans maintained a presence in the region until the Crusades ended in 1204 and in
spite of the conflict, trade flourished between east and west. It was partly through these exchanges that the
learning of Muslim scholars in the Middle East was shared with Europe. Even as the Abbasid political
system weakened in later years, it gave rise to great scientific and literary achievement. Ibn Sina, known as
Avicenna in the west, wrote the Canon of Medicine in 1025, an encyclopedia describing diseases and
treatments that were far ahead of any medical work done in Europe. Much of the great literature of the
period was written in Persian. The Shahnameh (“Book of Kings”) was published around the year 1000 and
describes the mythologized history of ancient Persian kings. In the 12th century, the stories known as A
Thousand and One Nights were first compiled and printed in Arabic. The creativity that had flowed from
Baghdad for four centuries came to a crashing halt in 1258, when the Mongol invasion reached
Mesopotamia. The conquerors destroyed the city of Baghdad, burning its palaces and its houses of learning.
Although the Mongols would eventually convert to Islam and foster their own cultural achievements, the
golden age of the Abbasid dynasty had come to a close. IbnKhaldoun was born to an upper class family that
had migrated from Seville in Muslim Spain. He traced his ancestry to Yemenite Arabs from the Hadramuth
who settled in Spain at the very beginning of Muslim rule in the eighth century, and migrated to Tunisia
after Muslim Seville fell.
IbnKhaldoun's parents were able to give him a good classical Muslim education. He began what seemed to
be a promising political career at the Chancellery of the Tunisian ruler IbnTafrakin with the position of
Kātib al-'Alāmah, a scribe who wrote introductions to official documents. The Marinid invasion (748-
50/1347-9) resulted in the arrival in Tunis,of a large number of theological and literary scholars, and he
gained instruction in Muslim philosophy and the main problems of Muslim thought. However, the Marinid
occupation ended in chaos and bloodshed. Additionally, the Black Plague which ravaged the world in the
middle of the century, claimed many victims in the area, including Ibnkhaldun's parents. These events are
reflected in his writings.
Tunis became a backwater owing to the disturbances, and IbnKhaldoun eventually left for Fez. IbnKhaldun
followed his teacher Abili to Fez. There, the Marinid sultan Abu Inan Fares I appointed him to write royal
proclamations. Nonetheless, IbnKhaldoun schemed against the sultan and was imprisoned for 22 months.
He was freed on the death of the sultan and reinstated him in his rank and offices, and promptly began
scheming against sultan Abu Salem Ibrahim III to bring to power the sultan Abu Salem. When Abu Salem
came to power, he rewarded IbnKhaldun with a ministerial position. But Abu Salem was soon out of power.
IbnKhaldun therefore decided to move to Granada, where he had an ally in the Sultan of Granada,
Muhammad V, whom he had helped regain power. In Granada, IbnKhaldoun earned the envy and ire of
Muhammad's vizier, Ibn al-Khatib. IbnKhaldun tried to influence young Muhammad to act according to his
concept of a wise ruler, which Ibn al-Khatib thought foolish and naive. IbnKhaldun was eventually sent back
to North Africa. The the sultan of Bougie, an old friend from prison, welcomed him and made him his prime
minister. After the death of Abu Abdallāh in 1366, IbnKhaldun allied himself with the ruler of Tlemcen,
Abul-Abbas. Abbas was defeated by Abdul Aziz however, and IbnKhaldoun was taken prisoner and entered
a monastic order. In 1370 he was freed and thereafter resided in Fez. In 1375 IbnKhaldun was either
imprisoned or sought refuge with the AwladArif tribe in the town of QalatIbnSalama. There he lived for
nearly four years, and there he wrote the Muqaddimah "Prolegomena", the introduction to his planned
history of the world. According to some accounts he was imprisoned and wrote the entire Kitab al-Ibar
there.
Q No: 3 Compare and contrast different foundation of curriculum development. How does culture
and society influence curriculum? Discuss.
Educators, curriculum makers and teachers must have espoused a philosophy or philosophies that are
deemed necessary for planning, implementing, and evaluating a school curriculum. The philosophy that they
have embraced will help them define the purpose of the school, the important subjects to be taught, the kind
of learning students must have and how they can acquire them, the instructional materials, methods and
strategies to be used, and how students will be evaluated.
Likewise, philosophy offers solutions to problems by helping the administrators, curriculum planners, and
teachers make sound decisions. A person’s philosophy reflects his/her life experiences, social and economic
background, common beliefs, and education.
When John Dewey proposed that “education is a way of life”, his philosophy is realized when put into
practice. Now, particularly in the Philippines, Dewey’s philosophy served as anchor to the country’s
educational system.
History and Its Influence to Curriculum
The history of one’s country can affect its educational system and the kind of curriculum it has. If we are
going to trace the formal beginning of curriculum, we get back in time to Franklin Bobbit’s book entitled,
“The Curriculum” which was published in 1918. From the time of Bobbit to Tyler, many developments in
the purposes, principles and contents of the curriculum took place. Please read the Six Famous Curriculum
Theorists and their Contributions to Education for more information.
The Influence of Psychology to Curriculum
Curriculum is influenced by psychology. Psychology provides information about the teaching and learning
process. It also seeks answers as to how a curriculum be organized in order to achieve students’ learning at
the optimum level, and as to what amount of information they can absorb in learning the various contents of
the curriculum.
The following are some psychological theories in learning that influenced curriculum development:
1. Behaviorism
Education in the 20th century was dominated by behaviorism. The mastery of the subject matter is given
more emphasis. So, learning is organized in a step-by-step process. The use of drills and repetition are
common. For this reason, many educational psychologists viewed it mechanical and routine. Though many
are skeptical about this theory, we can’t deny the fact the influences it had in our educational system.
2. Cognitivism
Cognitive theorists focus on how individuals process information, monitor and manage their thinking. The
basic questions that cognitive psychologists zero in on are:
  How do learners process and store information?
  How do they retrieve data and generate conclusions?
  How much information can they absorb?
With their beliefs, they promote the development of problem-solving and thinking skills and popularize the
use of reflective thinking, creative thinking, intuitive thinking, discovery learning, among others.
3. Humanism
Humanism is taken from the theory of Gestalt, Abraham Maslow’s theory and Carl Rogers’ theory. This
group of psychologists is concerned with the development of human potential.
In this theory, curriculum is after the process, not the product; focuses on personal needs, not on the
subject matter; and clarifying psychological meanings and environmental situations. In short, curriculum
views founded on humanism posits that learners are human beings who are affected by their biology,
culture, and environment. They are neither machines nor animals. A more advanced, more comprehensive
curriculum that promotes human potential must be crafted along this line. Teachers don’t only educate the
minds, but the hearts as well.
4. Sociology and Curriculum
There is a mutual and encompassing relationship between society and curriculum because the school exists
within the societal context. Though schools are formal institutions that educate the people, there are other
units of society that educate or influence the way people think, such as families and friends as well as
communities.
Since the society is dynamic, there are many developments which are difficult to cope with and to adjust to.
But the schools are made to address and understand the changes not only in one’s country but in the world as
well. Therefore, schools must be relevant by making its curriculum more innovative and interdisciplinary. A
curriculum that can address the diversities of global learners, the explosion of knowledge through the
internet, and the educational reforms and policies recommended or mandated by the United Nations.
However, it is also imperative that a country must have maintained a curriculum that reflects and preserves
its culture and aspirations for national identity. No matter how far people go, it is the country’s
responsibility to ensure that the school serves its purpose of educating the citizenry.
Now, it is your time to reflect. Can you think of your experiences in which the major foundation of
curriculum can explain it?
Try to ask yourself the following questions:
1. Why should I take history, philosophy, psychology or even PE subjects in college?
2. Why is it that there is K to 12 and the mother tongue-based curriculum being implemented by the
Department of Education?
3. Why is there institutional amalgamation?
4. Why is there “One UP” (One University of the Philippines) now in the Philippines?
5. Why is there a need for a globalized higher education?
These questions imply that change will take place in the near future. So, brace yourself for the many
changes that will take place in education!
Q No: 4 Discuss the criteria of content selection. Write necessity of evaluation for the improvement of
curriculum.
The term curriculum is viewed in two different ways: the micro and the macro. The micro curriculum refers
to subjects, while the macro curriculum refers to curricular programs. For example, the subject biology is a
micro curriculum while BS in Civil Engineering is a macro curriculum. What do the micro and the macro
curriculum contain? The following criteria discusses the content of these two levels of the curriculum.
Seven Criteria for the Selection of Subject-matter or Content of the Curriculum
The 7 criteria below can be utilized in the selection of subject matter for micro curriculum, and for the
content, subjects needed for the curricular program or course, of the macro curriculum.
1. Self-sufficiency
To help learners attain maximum self-sufficiency at the most economical manner is the main guiding
principle for subject matter or content selection (Scheffler, 1970) as cited by Bilbao et al., (2008). Economy
of learning refers to less teaching effort and less use of educational resources; but students gain more results.
They are able to cope up with the learning outcomes effectively.
This means that students should be given chance to experiment, observe, and do field study. This allows
them to learn independently.
With this principle in mind, I suggest that for a high school curriculum or preparatory year, there should be a
one day independent learning activity each week. However, this should be carefully planned by the teacher.
When the students return, they should present outputs from the activity.
2. Significance
The subject matter or content is significant if it is selected and organized for the development of learning
activities, skills, processes, and attitude. It also develops the three domains of learning namely the cognitive,
affective and psychomotor skills, and considers the cultural aspects of the learners. Particularly, if your
students come from different cultural backgrounds and races, the subject matter must be culture-sensitive. In
short, select a content or subject matter that can achieve the overall aim of the curriculum.
3. Validity
Validity refers to the authenticity of the subject matter or content you selected. Make sure that the topics are
not obsolete. For example, do not include typewriting as a skill to be learned by college students. It should
be about the computer or Information Technology (IT).
Thus, there is a need to check regularly the subject matter or contents of the curriculum, and replace it if
necessary. Do not wait for another 5 years in order to change it.
Modern curriculum experts are after current trends, relevance and authenticity of the curriculum; otherwise,
your school or country will be left behind.
4. Interest
This criterion is true to learner-centered curriculum. Students learn best if the subject matter is meaningful to
them. It becomes meaningful if they are interested in it. But if the curriculum is subject-centered, teachers
have no choice but to finish the pacing schedule religiously and teach only what is in the book. This may
somehow explain why many fail in the subject.
5. Utility
Another criterion is the usefulness of the content or subject matter. Students think that a subject matter or
some subjects are not important to them. They view it useless. As a result, they don’t study. Here are the
questions that students often ask: Will I need the subject in my job? Will it give meaning to my life? Will it
develop my potentials? Will it solve my problem? Will it be part of the test? Will I have a passing mark if I
learn it?
Students only value the subject matter or content if it is useful to them.
6. Learnability
The subject matter or content must be within the schema of the learners. It should be within their
experiences. Teachers should apply theories on psychology of learning in order to know how subjects are
presented, sequenced, and organized to maximize the learning capacity of the students.
7. Feasibility
It means that the subject matter can be fully implemented. It should consider the real situation of the
school, the government, and the society, in general. Students must learn within the allowable time and the
use of resources available. Do not give them a topic that is impossible to finish.For example, you have only
one week to finish the unit but then, the activities may take a month for the students to complete it. This is
not feasible. Do not offer a computer subject if there is no even electricity in the area or there are no
computers at all.
Further, feasibility means that there should be teachers who are experts in that area. For example, do not
offer English for Business Communication if there is no teacher to handle it.
Also, there is a need to consider the nature of the learners. The organization and design of the subject matter
or content must be appropriate to the nature of students.
So, it would be better if students in a subject-centered curriculum (with pacing schedule that must be
religiously implemented every week) be grouped homogenously; otherwise, many will flunk in that subject.
In conclusion, teachers in elementary and high school are not directly involved in the selection of subject
matter because there are already lesson plans made by the Department of Education. All they have to do is to
follow it. However, they can also customize the lessons if their department heads or principals will allow
them.
As regards macro curriculum, the Commission on Higher Education sets guidelines and policies on what
subjects should be offered as minimum requirements for the course. Then, the Curriculum Development
Committee will take charge of the selection, organization and implementation of the curriculum with the
approval of the Academic Council.
The Curriculum Development Committee headed by the Director of Curriculum Development sees to it that
the selection of the subject-matter and the subjects for a curricular program be examined and scrutinized
using the 7 criteria mentioned above. But, this is not the end of the process yet! Selection of the subject
matter or content of the micro and macro curriculum is only one of the considerations in designing the
curriculum.
Q No: 5 What are the various approaches to content organization which one is best suited for content
organization in Pakistan and why?
As readers and content both go increasingly online, findability becomes an ever greater concern. The
organization of content therefore becomes more and more important. Content can’t be effective if it is not
found. There are three components to content organization: classification, relationships, and stickiness.
Traditionally, we have focused most of our effort on classification as a means of organization, but this needs
to change.
Stickiness
Stickiness is simply the propensity of an idea to stick. Chip and Dan Heath wrote an excellent book about
stickiness called Made to Stick. Still, it may not be obvious that stickiness is a form of organization. So let
me suggest a definition of organization that will make the role of stickiness easier to see:
Content organization is a response to the activity of the information seeker, designed to make that
activity more successful.
In other words, we organize content (or anything else) so that the reader’s attempts to find it will be
successful. By this definition, anything we do that makes it more likely that any reader information-seeking
behavior will succeed is content organization.
Admittedly, this does turn the usual approach to content organization on its head. Traditionally the
approach was: “I have organized this content for you. Now let me teach you how to find stuff according to
my organizational scheme.” This approach says: “I have been watching how you look for stuff, and I have
tried to organize my stuff so that your efforts are more likely to succeed.”
If we take this approach — if we start by looking at how readers seek information — we will notice that
a lot of our reader’s information seeking behavior is based on stickiness.
Stickiness is simple. Stick your hand in a jar and the stickiest item in the jar is the one that will most likely
come back in your hand. Any way you look for content on the Web, there are usually thousands if not
millions of pages that relate to what your are looking for. The ones you will actually see are the ones that
are the stickiest.
Google essentially works by measuring and recording the stickiness of content. Content gets sticky when
people like it and refer to it and read it. Content gets sticky when it is chosen from search results, when it
gets liked and tweeted and plused, when it gets referenced or voted up on social networks and Q and A sites.
Readers make content sticky, not writers. Writers can only make content that is likely to get sticky, and
put it where it can begin to pick up stickiness.
Stickiness, then, is a form of organization that you court, rather than create. But stickiness is also, in many
ways, the most sophisticated form of organization, because it incorporates so many factors, and because it
filters out individual judgement in favor of the judgement of the crowd.
SEO may be able to make your content a little bit stickier, though if you are too slick about it, it won’t stick.
(See what I did there?) But what really makes content sticky is being good, and being useful. Sticky is hard
to fake.
Relationships
Relationships are all the navigable connections between one piece of content and another. Classification
provides one kind of relationship. Even stickiness can provide a kind of relationship, because one piece of
sticky content will tend to stick to other pieces of similarly sticky content. But there are relationships
between pieces of content that are not a product of either classification or stickiness. Content, in itself,
describes the relationship between things in the world. Content on one subject mentions content on countless
other subjects. Every one of those relationships between subjects is a potential relationship between pieces
of content. Readers can discover these content relationships for themselves using search, or the author can
provide them by creating hypertext links. It may seem hard to think of hypertext links as a form of
organization. For one thing, they tend to be irregular, capable of pointing off almost anywhere from
almost anywhere in the content. The web of relationships they create often has no obvious order about it.
Indeed, a visualization of a web of links often looks completely chaotic.
But again this is to confuse organization with classification. Classification creates orderly rows and columns.
But the world does not organize itself in rows and columns. Indeed, the parts of the world that do
organize themselves in rows and columns can be described very well by spreadsheets and databases.
Content’s domain is precisely those relationships that are not regular: the bumpy, the lumpy, the
unexpected, the counterintuitive, and the downright odd. To confine content to orderly classifications is to
rob it of the ability to rule its own domain.
The purpose of organization is to help readers find information, and for the irregular relationships that
content describes, and that readers may wish to follow, links fulfill that purpose.
Relationships shine as a means of organization on the Web. Footnotes and cross references provide
relationships on paper, but they are so expensive to navigate that their value is minimized. On the Web, on
the other hand, relationships are cheap to establish and cheap to navigate. Relationships therefore play a
far greater role on the Web than they did in the paper world.
Classification
That leaves classification. It’s what we know best, and often what works best for us to manage the content
we create. No wonder we tend to rely on it at the expense of stickiness and relationships. But genuinely
useful classification can be hard to achieve.
The problem with classification is that its usefulness depends on how well the user understands the
classification schema. One of the things our new definition of organization tells us is that if we are going to
classify content, we had better observe how the reader classifies things and base our classification on theirs.
Asking them to learn our classification scheme is not going to work unless their motivation is unusually
strong.
One of the problems with trying to classify things the way the reader classifies them is that readers don’t
usually classify things at all; they usually just name them. Classification is something you do when you
have to manage all the members of a set. If you only deal with a few items from that set, you generally just
give them names and ignore the rest.
Another problem with classification is that it gets more and more difficult, both to do and to navigate,
as the number and diversity of items increases. The more different things you have to classify, the more
arbitrary the classes become. As quantities increase, classes become too large and have to be subdivided,
creating classification schemas that are more and more deeply nested and often more and more arbitrary.
In the paper world, classification was by far the most important form of organization, despite its drawbacks,
because stickiness was so hard to measure and relationships were so hard to navigate. In many fields, it
was accepted that you had to be educated in the field in order to successfully find information in that field,
and a large part of your education in the field consisted of learning its classification schemes. But on the
Web, stickiness and relationships are far more powerful and far easier to use than classification.
People are navigating much larger volumes of content, so the problems of classification are magnified. And
people no longer accept that they have to study the classification schema of a field before they are allowed
to look stuff up in that field.
The result is that classification drops to third place for most Web content, behind relationships and
stickiness. The problem this poses for writers is that they are more familiar with classification, and their
tools are built more for classification, than they are for stickiness and relationships. This needs to change.

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