Chapter 4

Curriculum Design and

Organization
Sources of Curriculum Design
 Sources of Curriculum Design
American Educator DAVID FERRERO – educational action
begins with recognizing one’s beliefs and values, which influence
what one considers worth knowing and teaching.

RONALD DOLL – four foundations of curriculum design, these

are Science, Society, Eternal Truths, and Divine will. These
curriculum sources identified by DEWEY and BODE and
popularized by TYLER are Knowledge, Society, and the learner
partially with one another.
 Science As a Source
- Based on the scientific method; the design
contains observable and quantifiable elements.
- Problem solving is most important.
- Learning how to learn
- Curriculum designers must notice the role that
society will play in their curricular ideas and analyze the
social situation.
- Political issues such as: No Child Left Behind and
Race to the Top are still being used and revised in
curriculum.
 Schools and their curricula are still being
critiqued by radicals and liberals that don't feel that
the curriculum serves underrepresented groups
such as indigenous people, people of color, women
and homosexuals.
Effective curriculum designers realize the
need for collaboration among diverse individuals
and groups.
Most of educators believe that curriculum
should prioritize the teaching of thinking strategies.
 AS A SOURCE
SOCIETY AS A SOURCE
Curriculum designers believe that school is a
vehicle for development of society and stress its
curriculum ideas should come from the exploration
of the social situation.
People from different backgrounds and
cultures are demanding a voice regarding how
education is organized and experienced.
ARTHUR ELLIS – no curriculum or curriculum design
can be considered or created apart from the people
who make up our evolving society.
Moral Doctrine as a Source

- Subjects follow a hierarchy system

- Knowledge and spirituality
- Develop empathy, insight, empathy,
compassion.
- William Pinar felt that viewing curriculum
as religious text may allow for a blending of
truth, faith, knowledge, ethics, thought, and
action.
 MORAL AS A SOURCES
Some curriculum designers stress what
they regard as lasting truths advanced by the
great thinkers of the past. Their emphasis is on
the content and labels some subjects as more
influential than others.
The Bible or religious documents are
references of some people who believe that
curriculum design should be based on it.
DWAYNE HUEBNER – education can address
spirituality without bringing in religion. Being
touch with the spirit allows one to see the
essences of reality and to generate new ways of
viewing knowledge, new relationships among
people, and ne ways of perceiving one’s
existence.
JAMES MOFFET – spiritual fosters mindfulness,
attentiveness, awareness, of the outside world,
and self-awareness.
Spiritual curriculum designers ask question
about nature of the world, the purpose of life,
and what it means to be human and
knowledgeable.
 KNOWLEDGE AS A SOURCES
Knowledge is the primary source of
curriculum
Herbert Sepencer – positioned knowledge within
the framework of curriculum.
Placing knowledge at the center of the
curriculum design recognize that knowledge is
perhaps a discipline, having th specific structure
and methods by which scholars stretch out its
boundaries.
The Learner as a Source

How do the students learn, form attitudes,

generate interest, and develop values.
This returns to the ideas of Science as a
Source by putting an emphasis on the way our
brain reacts and how we can develop curriculum
through the brains activity
Horizontal and Vertical Organization
Reyes, 2000 – stated that horizontal
organization refers to the arrangement of
content, skills, and processes from the
viewpoints of scope and horizontal integration.
Vertical organization – refers to vertical
arrangement or sequence of the curriculum
content such that learning is based on previous
content.
 Curriculum Design Qualities

No curriculum design is really unique.

Instead, all designs have some qualities in
common with other designs. It is the
combination of features that make each design
unique. Examples of features are the following:
 SCOPE
- It refers to the breadth and depth of
curriculum content. All the types of educational
experiences constructed to involve students in
learning are part of the scope.
All the content, topics, learning experiences,
and organizing threads comprising the educational
plan. (RALPH TYLER)
Scope of the curriculum is usually
structured in units and units are divided into lesson
plans.
 SEQUENCE
-Order of topics overtime
-Also called vertical dimension
-Jean Piaget provide a framework for
sequencing content.
-Based on the Piaget’s Theory Cognitive
Development
 4 PRINCIPLES FOR SEQUENCE
SIMPLE TO COMPLEX LEARNING – content to
optimally organize in a sequence preceding from
simple subordinate components to complex
components highlighting interrelationships among
components.
PREREQUISITE LEARNING - similar to part-to-
whole learning. It works on the assumption that
bits of information must be grasped before other
bits can be comprehended
Whole-to-learning – receives support from
cognitive psychologists. Curriculum be arranged
so that the content is first presented in an
overview that provides students with a general
idea of the information.
Chronological learning – refers to content
whose sequence reflects the times of real world
occurrences.
Ex. History, political science, and world events
frequently are organized chronologically.
Continuity – refers to “smoothness” or absence
of disruption in the curriculum over time. A
curriculum might have a good sequence but
might also have disruption.
 Curriculum 1 Curriculum2 Curriculum 3
A A A
B B B
C D
D D C
E E E
F F
G G H
H H G
Integration – linking all types of knowledge and
experiences contained within the curriculum
plan

Articulation – refers to the smooth flow of the

curriculum on both vertical and horizontal
dimension.
Balance – educators attempt to provide
necessary weight to each design. Therefor,
students must obtain and use knowledge in a
ways and progress their personal, social and
intellectual goals.
 Guidelines for Curriculum Design
• Create a curriculum design committee
comprising teachers, parents, community
members, administrators, and, if appropriate,
students.
• Create a schedule for meetings to make
curriculum-design decisions.
• Gather data about educational issues and
suggested decision.
• Process data on available curriculum designs,
and compare designs with regard to
advantages and disadvantages.
• Schedule time for reflection on the design.
• Schedule time for revision of design.
• Explain the design to educational colleagues,
community embers, and if appropriate,
students.
 Types of Curriculum Design
Subject-Centered Design Learner-Centered Deisgns Proble-Cetered Designs

Subject Design Child-centered Design Core Design

Discipline Design Experience-Centered Social

Design Problem/Reconstructionis
t Design
Broad Field Design Romantic/Radical Design

Correlation Design Humanistic Design

Process Design
 SUBJECT-CENTERED DESIGN
Subject Design
-The oldest and best known school design to
both Teachers and laypeople.
Henry Morrison claimed that the subject matter
curriculum aimed most to literacy, and therefore
should be the focus of the elementary curriculum.
Robert Hutchins indicated which subjects
such a curriculum design would comprise a
school:language, mathematics, sciences, history,
and foreign languages.
Discipline Design
-this new design acquired popularity
during 1950s and reached its peak during the
mid 1960s. The basis of discipline design is with
content’s inherent organization.
Arthur King and John Brownell
-Specific knowledge that has the following
important characteristics: a community person,
an expression of human imagination, a domain,
a tradition, a mode of inquiry, a conceptual
structure, specialized language, a heritage of
literature, a network communication, a valuative
and affective stance, and an instructive
community.
 The discipline knowledge emphasizes
science, mathematics, English, history, and other
disciplines.
In the subject matter design, students is
considered to have learned if they simply
acquire information; while in the discipline
design, students experience the disciplines so
that they can understand and theorize.
Broad-Field Design
-known to others as the Interdisciplinary design.
Designers of this discipline tried to give students a comprehensive
understanding of all content areas.

Sputnik era, and Broudy and his colleagues suggested that the entire
curriculum be organized into these categories:
1. Symbolic of information (English, foreign languages, and mathematics)
2. Basic sciences
3. Development studies(social and human culture)
4. Exemplars (Art, drama, music, and literature)
5. Moral Problems (social problems)
Correlation Design
Separates and total content integration,
was born the correlation design which attempts
to identify ways in which subjects can be linked
yet maintain their own identities
Progress Design
How to think
“ The good thinker, processing a spirit of
inquiry, a desire to pose questions vital to the
world. The good thinker consider the world, actual
and desired, inquiring things valued and desired.”
The design stresses those procedures that
allow students to analyze reality and construct
frameworks different from the way the world
appears to the causal viewer.
Learner-Centered Design
-progressive proponents have come called to
be learner-centered.
-These designs are realized more often at the
Elementary and Secondary. In Elementary schools,
teachers manage to highlight the whole child. While
in the secondary level, the stress is more on
subject-centered designs, ,mainly because of the
influence of textbook and the colleges and
universities at which the discipline is a foremost
planner for the curriculum
Child-Centered Design
-Proponents of this design believe that students
must be enthusiastic in their learning environments and
that learning should not be detached from students lives
which is mostly in the paradigm of the subject-centered
designs.
According to Arthur Ellis, he stated that “ attending
to students’ needs and interest requires careful
observation of students and faith that they can articulate
those needs and interests. Also, young students’ interest
must have educational value.”
Experience-Centered Design
-This design closely look like child-centered
design for which children’s concern are the
source for shaping children’s school world. But
it’s different from the child-centered design, is
that children’s needs and interest cannot be
planned for all children.
 -In this design, the teacher’s role is to build
an inspiring learning environments in which
students can explore, come into direct contact ‘
with knowledge, and observe others learning
and action. The social activity for this design is
the child’s learning.
Romantic (Radical) Design
-The radicals reflect current society as
corrupt, suppressive, and powerless to remedy
itself.
Freire – education should inform the masses
about their oppression, provoke them to feel
dissatisfied with their condition, and give them
the skills necessary for correcting the identified
injustice.
 Curricular Leaders who supports radical
views consider that individuals must learn ways
of involvement in an analysis of knowledge.
Learning is reflective, it is nor externally inflicted
by someone in power. Knowledge does not
reside in an unit plan or course syllable.
Humanistic Design
-This new psychological orientation
stressed that human action was more than a
reaction to stimulus, the meaning was more
important than methods, that emphasis of
consideration should be on the subjective rather
than objective nature of human existence, and
that there is an association between learning
and feeling.
 Problem-Centered Designs
- Focuses on the individual and society’s real
life problems.

- Based on social issues, life situations, areas

of living and reconstructing society.

- Differ from learner-centered designs

because them are planned before students arrive.
 Life-Situations Design
Herbert Spencer’s curriculum stressed activities
that:
a. sustain life
b. enhance life
c. aid in rearing children
d. maintain the individual’s social and political
relations, and
e. enhance leisure, tasks, and feelings.
 Reconstructionist Design
Provide students with learning requisites for
altering social, economic, and political realities.
Curriculum should foster social action, aimed
at reconstructing society.
Encourages industrial and political changes
Students should be involved in creating a
more equitable society.
Question and Answer.

Thank you and God Bless!