CONSIDERATIONS IN

DESIGNING A
CURRICULUM
BY:

EGWG

TSL3143
LEARNING OUTCOMES

 Discuss the factors involved in curriculum design

 Discuss the importance of knowledge of the curriculum in organising teaching

and learning
FRAMEWORK OF TOPIC
I. NEED ANALYSIS

• Needs analysis (also known as needs assessment) has a vital role in the process of
designing and carrying a curriculum.
• According to Iwai et al. (1999), the term needs analysis generally refers to the activities
that are involved in collecting information that will serve as the basis for developing a
curriculum that will meet the needs of a particular group of students.
• The curriculum designers must be aware of the learners’ strengths and weaknesses.
• Needs analysis is a process of collecting and analyzing information about learners in order to
set goals and contents of a language curriculum based on their needs (Kayi, 2008).
• It examines what learners already know and what they need to know (Nation & Macalister,
2010). Many scholars indicate that knowing about learners’ needs such as “their learning
objectives, language attitudes, expectations from the course” are necessary in order to design
an efficient curriculum (Brindley, 1984; Nunan, 1988, Xenodohids, 2002, et Kayi, 2008).
• By gathering such information, therefore, the needs analysis can guarantee that the course will
contain the relevant and useful things for students to learn
II. TARGET GROUP

Who is the target audience? For whom we design our curriculum?

• Consider the pupils’
• Individual needs
• Abilities
• Interests
• Potentials
• Multiple intelligence (visual, auditory or kinesthetic learner)
• Various learning styles or learning modes (hands on, discovery learning, experiential; learning, distance
learning )
• Who is the target audience; What is the minimum/maximum current knowledge of the
participant audience? What are their characteristics? What are their special needs? What
knowledge and skill deficiencies currently exist? What are the tasks currently performed
by the target audience and what new skill level is required following the training?
• What are the available delivery options and methods for transferring the new skills to
the workplace? What is the instructional setting; e.g. lectures, tutorials, on-the-job, self
study, etc? How do these skills connect to the intended audience?
• What is the timeline for programme completion?
• Curriculum should be appropriate for:
• personal development (attitudes, behaviours)
• social development (communication)
• aesthetic development
• interpersonal/intrapersonal development
• physical development
• Intellectual development
• Multiple intelligence (linguistic, spatial, musical, logical-mathematical)
III. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

• Lesson, programme, life…everything starts with an aim, objective or purpose!!

• The aims of curriculum are the reasons for undertaking the learning ‘journey’
• E.g. Aim:
- to prepare students for employment in a particular profession
- to develop problem-solving skills and adapt to changes in society
• The stated aims of a curriculum tell students what are the results of studying it is likely to be.
(what would they gain by learning from it). Aims are not the same as desired learning outcomes.
• a) aims should relate to the combined impact of the curriculum, the pedagogy and the
assessment of the various elements.
b) desired learning outcomes need to be student oriented, and should point to the knowledge,
skills, competencies and attitudes of those students who successfully complete the course.
*Aims and Learning Objectives - Aim statements are broad and all encompassing,
while, desired objective/learning outcomes are specific, behavioural, student- focussed
statements.
IV. CONTENT SELECTION

All curricula have content. Choices have to be made on what to be included in curriculum.
The ‘content’ includes :
• the topics
• issues or subjects that will be covered as it proceeds
When selecting content for curriculum, you should bear in mind the following principles:
1) it should be relevant to the outcome of the curriculum (what do we seek to achieve,
in line with aims/ objectives)
• an effective curriculum is PURPOSIVE
• Clearly focused on the planned outcomes
• The inclusion of irrelevant topics, however interesting in themselves, acts as a distraction and may
confuse students.
2) the content should be appropriate to the level of the target group
• an effective curriculum is progressive (simple complex, basics  advanced), leading
students onward and building their knowledge
• Materials which is too basic or too advanced for their current stage makes students
either bored or baffled, and erodes their motivation to learn
3) it should be up-to-date.
• The students should be aware of what’s happening around them and the world.
• The content should be constantly updated.
4) the content should be valid (Ornstein and Hunkins,1998)
• Validity refers to whether the information passed on to the students is authentic and obtained
from credible sources (reliable).
• Internet?? Doubt the reliability..
• Contents need to be checked to determine its accuracy.
5) feasibility (capable of being done/workable / executable) Ornstein and
Hunkins (1998)
• educators who select content have to take into consideration the constraints of time,
expertise of staff, funding, and other educational resources that schools might face when
implementing the curriculum.
• E.g. the time allocated for teaching may be insufficient to cover all the topics, because
school have to allocate time for extra-curricular activities and other school events.
•
V. LEARNING THEORIES, METHODS AND
APPROACHES

• The teaching and learning methods or learning experiences should be derived from the
content and learning objectives in a meaningful way and the methods or the organisation
of experiences should facilitate the attainment of respective objectives in the cognitive,
affective and psychomotor domain.
• Most curriculum designs can be grouped into the following three basic designs; namely,
subject-centred designs, learner-centred designs and problem-centred designs.
1) Subject-centred design
• Subject-Centred Designs are by far the most popular and widely used curriculum design.
This is because knowledge and content are well accepted as integral parts of the
curriculum. Since acquiring a body of content is integral in any school system, much
thought has focused on how best to present the knowledge, skills and values of the
subjects to learners and the following five approaches have been proposed:
(a) Academic Subject Design
• The academic subject design is both the oldest and best known design to most people because it was the way many of them
were educated. This design is based on the belief that humans are unique because of their intellect and the quest for and
acquisition of knowledge is to feed this intellect. In the 1930s, Robert Hutchins indicated that the academic subject design
model for American schools should comprise language and its uses (reading, writing, grammar, literature), Mathematics, Science,
History and foreign languages. Has it changed today?

• Why is this model of curriculum design widely adopted? One reason given is that it is much easily interpreted in textbooks
and commercially available support materials. Since teaching is essentially a verbal activity (whether it be lecture, recitation,
group discussion) teachers find it easier to communicate the ideas and knowledge of a subject presented in verbal form in
textbooks. Also, people are familiar with this format, having gone through it themselves when in school.
(b) Discipline Design
• A discipline is a specific body of knowledge that has its own methods of inquiry, has its
specialised words and terminology, has a tradition and a collection of literature, and the
persons involved in the field are theoreticians and practitioners. Proponents of the
discipline design model emphasise the teaching of the disciplines in its pure form. In other
words, a student who studies biology would approach the subject as a biologist while
those who study history will study it as historians. What is the rationale for teaching the
disciplines? According to its proponents, the school is a mini version of the world of
intellect and that the disciplines reflect that world
(c) Broad Fields Design
• The broad fields design is also known as the interdisciplinary design. The main reason for this design arose from
the concern that subjects taught were too compartmentalised and fragmented; for example, geography,
geometry, literature, algebra and so forth. The suggestion was to bring together content from different subjects
to form one logical subject. For example, Economics, Sociology, Political Science, Geography and History were
combined to form Social Studies. Another example is Language Arts (composed of literature, grammar,
linguistics and spelling) and General Science (composed of Biology, Chemistry and Physics). At one time there
was a subject called Man and the Environment (Alam dan Manusia) implemented in Malaysian primary schools.
• What are some of the issues in this model? One would be breadth versus depth. For example, in studying
social studies over one year, students are exposed to a variety of social science concepts compared to only
studying economics concepts for one year.
(d) Correlation Design
• The correlation design model lies in between the academic design model and the broad
fields design. If you do not want your curriculum to consist of five separate subjects nor
five different subject areas to be fused into one, then the correlation design model might
be an alternative. For example, you may want to just fuse or correlate history with
literature at the secondary school level. For example, in a history lesson the class learns
about the Japanese occupation of Malaysia. During the literature class, students read
novels about life during that time period. However, each subject retains its own distinct
identity.
(e) Process Design
• In the discipline based design discussed earlier, students learn the methods of inquiry used by experts in
the respective disciplines. For example, in studying anthropology, students will learn various ethnographic
procedures. Advocates of the process design model stress the learning of general procedures and
processes that are not applicable to any particular discipline. The most popular example of the process
design model is the teaching of thinking skills.Various educators have suggested that students should be
taught to think. Curriculum has focused on the teaching of decision making, problem solving, critical
thinking and creative thinking. Ennis (1963) identified a list of critical thinking skills that should be taught,
such as identification of fallacies, checking the credibility of sources and so forth.
• In the process design curriculum students are also taught to be aware of their thinking and to take action
when necessary.
2) LEARNER-CENTRED DESIGN

While subject-centred designs are popular, there is also an emphasis on learner- centred
designs. The early supporters of the child-centred curriculum were largely the progressives
Emphasis was on the development of the whole child and this was most evident in primary
schools.
(a) Child-Centred Design

• Proponents of the child-centred design believe that learners should actively participate in the teaching-learning process.
Learning should be related closely to the daily lives of students, unlike the subject-centred design which tends to separate
content from the daily lives of learners. In the child-centred design, focus is on the needs and interests of the learners.
• An early advocate of the child-centred curriculum was French philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), who in his
book Emile made the child the focus of the educational process. He emphasised that “Living is the business that I wish to
teach him. When he leaves my care he, I grant, be neither magistrate, nor soldier, nor priest: he will be, primarily, a man”
(cited in Soetard, M., 1994, p.423). This did not mean children were allowed to run free. Children need to be guided by the
teacher according to their level of development.

• Perhaps, the most well-known advocate of the child-centred design is John Dewey. He argued that children are not blank
slates and they bring with them four basic impulses – the impulse to communicate, to compare and contrast, to inquire
and to express themselves through language. In the child-centred model, the interests and experiences of the learner
become the subject-matter of the curriculum. Children are given the freedom to discover and do things for themselves
rather than told how to do something.
(b) Radical Design
• In this design, the focus is the learner which is quite similar to the child- centred design; the difference
being that greater emphasis is placed on the need for the curriculum to reform society. Proponents of
the radical design operate on the assumption that society is corrupt and repressive. Children should be
educated towards the goal of social reform. A well-known proponent of the radical design was Paulo
Freire who opposed treating students as empty vessels to be filled with knowledge by the teacher. He
objected to the teacher-student dichotomy (contrast) and proposed the relationship between teacher
and student be reciprocal (mutual), which is, “the teacher who learns and the learner who teaches”.
• According to proponents of this curriculum design, learning is reflective and not externally imposed by
those in power. Knowledge is not the finished product to be acquired by learners because this is
indoctrination. Learning is something that results from the interaction between and among people.
Learners should challenge content and be allowed to give their opinions about the information given to
them. Learners will value what they learn if they are allowed to construct their own knowledge. When
learners create meaning, they have ownership over what they have learned resulting in genuine thought.
(c) Humanistic Design

• The humanistic design became popular in the 60s and 70s in response to excessive overemphasis
on the disciplines during the 50s and early 60s in the United States. Proponents of the humanistic
design based their arguments on the principles of humanistic psychology. A basic question asked is
whether the curriculum has allowed a person to truly achieve his or her full potential. The
curriculum should be designed to empower learners to be involved in the process of realising
their potential. Greater emphasis was placed on the affective domain to permit students to feel
and to value. One of the proponents of the humanistic curriculum design was Carl Rogers (1902-
1987) who argued that the aim of education is the facilitation of learning. To facilitate learning, the
teacher accepts learners as persons, placing importance on their feelings and their opinions; while
caring for them.
3) PROBLEM-CENTRED DESIGN

• Problem-Centred Designs models focus on the problems faced by society. The Problem-
centred designs are pre-determined before the arrival of students. In other words,
genuine life problems are selected and teaching-learning activities are organised around
these issues. The learner is placed in the social setting to address problems. Unlike the
learner-centred designs, the problems or issues discussed originate from issues that are
of concern to society. It aims to prepare students with relevant knowledge and skills to
fit into society when they leave school
(a) Life-centred situations
• In any society, there are persistent life situations that are crucial to a society’s successful
functioning. Examples of such life situations are healthy living, use of leisure time, ethics, racial
tolerance, citizenship skills and so forth. It was argued by its advocates that it makes educational
sense to organise a curriculum around such life situations. Students will direct relevance in
studying such social issues when they are related to their world. Also, having students study social
or life situations will encourage them to seek ways to improve society. The life situations that need
to be emphasised in schools will depend on what students need before they enter the working
world and assume adult responsibilities. However, some needs and interests have already been
met by the family, religious institutions and other community organisations. So, the schools should
address those needs not met by these institutions.
(b) Core-design
• A variation of the life-centred situations design is the core-design model. Focus is still on
the pressing problems of society; the difference being that certain problem are selected
to form the core. It is carefully planned before students enter school and adjusted when
necessary. The core problems are taught to all students in a block-time format whereby
two or more periods of class time is used. A problem solving approach is adopted in
analysing social problems. Students select a problem through consensus and work either
individually or in groups. Data is collected, analysed, interpreted and presented in class.
Findings are evaluated and discussed.
• To be continued!
TUTORIAL TASK

• Conduct a background research on the current Malaysian

curriculum and English Language syllabus.

• Based on your research, discuss the influencing factors that

shaped the curriculum