CHAPTER REPORT:
PLANNING GOALS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES
By Ignasia Yuyun
I. INTRODUCTION
Another crucial dimension of decision making in curriculum planning is determining the goals and outcomes of a program. There are several key assumptions about goal characterize the curriculum approach to educational planning. They are (1) people are generally motivated to pursue specific goals, (2) the use of goals in teaching improves the effectiveness of teaching and learning, and (3) a program will be effective to the extent that its goal are sound and clearly described. These principles appear to be self – evident and uncontroversial, and most language programs describe their goals in terms of aims and objectives.
However, the nature of aims and objectives is not necessarily straightforward because they refer to knowledge, skills, and values that educational planers believe learners need to develop. In deciding on goals, planners choose from among alternatives based on assumptions about the role of teaching and of a curriculum. Formulating goals is not, therefore, an objective scientific enterprise but a judgment call. For this reason, the nature of goals in the design of educational programs has aroused considerable controversy and debate in the curriculum literature, and continues to do so. This debate is reflected in such issues which are all related to questions of curriculum goals.
Eisner (1992, 302) observes: “Because educational practice is concerned with the achievement of certain desired and states, it relies on a larger value matrix to secure and justify the directions in which it removes.” In order to appreciate how value system shape decisions about what schools should teach and the outcomes they seek to achieve, this chapter report will discuss goals by considering five curriculum ideologies (borrowing Eisner’s term) that shape the nature of the language curriculum and the practices of language teaching in different ways: academic rationalism, social and economic efficiency, learner-centeredness, social reconstructionism, and cultural pluralism.
II. THE CONTENT OF CHAPTER REPORT
A. THE IDEOLOGY OF THE CURRICULUM
In developing goals for educational programs, curriculum planners draw on their understanding both of the present and long-term needs of learners and of society as well as the planners’ belief and ideologies about schools, learners, and teachers. These beliefs and values provide the philosophical underpinnings for educational programs and the justification for the kinds of aims they contain. At any given time, however, a number of competing or complementary perspectives are available concerning the focus of the curriculum. Kliebard comments:
“We do not find a monolithic supremacy by one interest group; rather we find different times, achieving some measure of control depending on local as well as general social conditions. Each of these interest groups, then, represents a force for different selection of knowledge and values from the culture and hence a kind of lobby for a different curriculum. (1986:8)
Each of the five curriculum perspective examined here emphasizes a different approach to the role of language in the curriculum.
This curriculum ideology stresses the intrinsic values of subject matter and its role in developing the learner’s intellect, humanistic values, and rationality.
The content matter of different subjects is viewed as the basis for a curriculum and mastery of content is an end in itself rather than a means to solving social problems or providing efficient means to achieve the goals of policy makers.
The role of schools is to provide access to the major achievements of a particular cultural tradition and to know the insights gained from studying enduring fields of knowledge.
This curriculum ideology is sometimes used to justify the inclusion of certain foreign languages in school curricula, where they are taught not as tools for communication but as an aspect of social studies.
This curriculum ideology is sometimes used as a justification for including courses on literature, or American or British culture, in a language program. For example, English curriculum in Hongkong, Singapore and Malaysia was traditionally a literature-based one.
Clark (1987, 6) points out that in the United Kingdom academic rationalism is concerned with:
(1) The maintenance and transmission through education of the wisdom and culture of previous generations.
(2) The development for the elite of generalizable intellectual capacities and critical faculties.
(3) The maintenance of stands through an inspectorate and external examination boards controlled by the universities.
2. Social and economic efficiency
This educational philosophy emphasizes the practical needs of learners and society and the role of an educational program in producing learners who are economically productive.
One of the founders of curriculum theory, Bobbitt, advocated this view of the curriculum. Curriculum development was seen as based on scientific principles, and its practitioners were “educational engineers” whose job it was to “discover the total range of habits, skills, abilities, forms of though, etc. that its members need for the effective performance of their vocational labors” (1918, 43). He concluded that an appropriate metaphor for curriculum development was that of the factory ad production. In language teaching, this philosophy leads to an emphasis on practical and functional skills in a foreign or second language.
Socioeconomic ideology stresses the economic needs of society as a justification for the teaching of English. Successful economies in the twenty first century are increasingly knowledge-based, and the bulk of the world’s knowledge is in the English language. As Kin stated that the learning of English, now a global language, is essential for Japan to have a bright future…the linguistic handicap of the Japanese could hold them back in an increasingly Internet-oriented world, where the bulk of information is written in English (Kin, 1999).
In many countries where English is a foreign language, over the past two decades there has been a move away from academic rationalism as the underpinnings of the English curriculum toward one based more on a socioeconomic efficiency model. The Threshold Level, the notional-functional syllabus, and outcomes-based approaches such as the use of graded objectives and the competency-based outcomes in foreign language learning reflect this move toward an efficiency model in curriculum planning, one that Clark (1987) suggests often also reflects a Research, Development, and Diffusion model.
Critics of this view of the curriculum have argued that such a view is reductionist and presupposes that learner’s needs can be identified with a predetermined set of skills and objectives. Knowledge is seen as something external to the learner that is transmitted in pieces. Freire describes this as a “banking model”: “Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are depositories and the teacher is the depositor” (1975, 138). Advocates of the social-efficiency approach argue that the curriculum should above all focus on knowledge and skills that are relevant to the learner’s everyday life needs and that the curriculum should be planned to meet the practical needs of society.
This educational philosophy stresses the individual needs of learners, the role of individual experience and the need to develop awareness, self-reflection, critical thinking, learner strategies and other qualities and skills.
Reconceptualists emphasize the role of experience in learning. Meanwhile, constructivists emphasize that learning involves active construction and testing of one’s own representation of the world and accommodation of it to one’s personal conceptual framework. In this case, all learning is seen to involve relearning and reorganization of one’s previous understanding and representation of knowledge. (Roberts, 1998: 23).
According to Dewey, there is no intellectual growth without some reconstruction, some reworking (Dewey, 1934: 64). Roberts (1998) comments that constructivism has had a strong influence on language curriculum design, influencing the way, for example reading and listening comprehension are taught with an emphasis on the prior knowledge, beliefs, and expectations that learners bring to listening and reading.
Clark (1987, 49) suggests that it involves seeing education “as a means of providing children with learning experience from which they can learn by their own efforts. Learning is envisaged as a continuum which can be broken up into several broad developmental stages … Growth through experience is the key concept.” In addition, he sees that this educational philosophy as leading to an emphasis on process rather than product, a focus on learner differences, learner strategies, and learner self-direction and autonomy.
Marsh (1986, 201) points out that the issue of child-centered or learner-centered curricula reappears every decade or so and can refer to any of the following: (a) individualized teaching, (b) learning through practical operation or doing, (c) laissez faire (allow to do) – no organized curricula at all but based on the momentary interests of children, (d) creative self-expression by students, (e) practically oriented activities directed toward the needs of society, and (f) a collective term that refers to the rejection of teaching-directed learning.
4. Social reconstructionism
This curriculum perspective emphasizes the roles schools and learners can and should play in addressing social injustices and inequality. Curriculum development is not seen as a neutral process. Schools likewise do not present equal opportunities for all (Freire, 1972; Apple, 1986) but reflect the general inequalities in society. Here schools must engage teachers and students in an examination of important social and personal problems and seek ways to address them. This process is known as “empowerment”.
The most persuasive and currently popular representatives of this viewpoint are associated with the movement known as critical theory and critical pedagogy.
One of the best-known critical pedagogues is Freire (1972), who argued that teachers and learners are involved in a joint process of exploring and constructing knowledge. In this case, students are no the “objects” of knowledge; they must find ways of recognizing and resisting various forms of control.
In language teaching. Auerbach’s (1992) work is an important application of critical pedagogy. It stresses that teaching must seek to empower students and help them bring about change in their lives. Critics of this position argue that teachers and students may not be able to change the structure of the systems in which they work and that other channels are often available to address such changes.
This philosophy argues that schools should prepare students to participate in several different cultures and not merely the culture of the dominant social and economic group.
Banks (1988) argues that students in multicultural societies such as the Unites States need to develop cross-cultural competency or what is sometimes termed intercultural communication. This means that one cultural group is not seen as superior to others and that multiple perspectives representing the viewpoints of different cultural groups should be developed within the curriculum.
Cultural pluralism seeks to redress racism, to raise the self-esteem of minority groups, and to help children appreciate the viewpoints of other cultures and religions (Uhrmacher, 1993).
In the USA, the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) has recently identified three dimensions to inter-cultural competence in foreign language programs: the need to learn about cultures, to compare them, and to engage in intercultural exploration. Then, Crozet and Liddicoat (1999) explore the implications of these dimensions for the design of language programs in Australia. In multicultural societies such as Canada, USA, and Australia, cultural pluralism has motivated demands for a bilingual approach to English- language teaching (Burnett, 1998).
Auerbach has questioned the rationale for the exclusive use of English in ESL classrooms and argues that literacy in the first language is a significant factor in the learning of a second language (Auerbach, 1995: 25).
Collingham (1988) emphasizes the importance of valuing learners’ language knowledge: ‘to treat adult learners as if they know nothing of language is to accept the imbalance of power and so ultimately to collude with instructional racism; to adopt a bilingual approach and to value the knowledge that learners already have is to begin to challenge that unequal power relationship” (Collingham, 1988: 85).
B. STATING CURRICULUM OUTCOMES
In curriculum discussions, the terms goal and aims are used interchangeably to refer to a description of the general purposes of a curriculum and objective to refer to a more specific and concrete description of purposes.
An aim refers to a statement of a general change that a program seeks to bring about in learners. The purpose of aim statements are:
· To provide a clear definition of the purposes of a program
· To provide guidelines for teachers, learners, and material writers
· To help provide a focus for instruction
· To describe important and realizable changes in learning
Aims statements reflect the ideology of the curriculum and show how the curriculum will seek to realize it. For example, the following statements describe the aims of teaching English at the primary level in Singapore:
Our pupils learn English in order to:
· communicate effectively, in both speech and writing, in everyday situations to meet the demands of society
· acquire good reading habits to understand, enjoy, and appreciate a wide range of texts, including the literature of other cultures
· develop the ability to express themselves imaginatively and creatively
· acquire thinking skills to make critical and rational judgments
· negotiate their own learning goals and evaluate their own progress
· acquire information and study skills to learn the other subjects taught in English
· cope effectively and efficiently with change, extended learning tasks, and examination
· acquire knowledge for self-development and for fulfilling personal needs and aspirations
· develop positive attitudes toward constructive ideas and values that are transmitted in oral and/or written forms using the English language
· develop a sensitivity to, and an appreciation of, other varieties of English and the culture they reflect
These statements reflect several of the philosophies discussed in the preceding sections. The following are examples of aim statements from different of language programs.
A business English course
· to develop basic communication skills for use in business contexts
· to learn how to participate in casual conversation with other employees in a workplace
· to learn how to write effective business letters
Aims statements are generally derived from information gathered during a needs analysis. For example, the following areas of difficulty were some of those identified for non-English-background students studying in English-medium universities:
· participating in seminars
· taking notes during lectures
· reading at adequate speed to be able to complete reading assignments
· presenting ideas and information in an organized way in a written assignment
In developing course aims and objectives from this information, each are of difficulty will have to be examined and researched in order to understand what is involved in understanding lectures, participating in seminars, and so on. What knowledge and skills does each activity imply? Normally the overall aims of a short course can be described in two or three aim statements, however, in a course spanning a longer time period, such as the primary school course referred to earlier, a greater number of aim statements will be needed.
In developing aim statements, it is important to describe more than simply the activities that students will take part in. the following, for example, are not aims:
· students will learn about business-letter writing in English
· students will study listening skills
· students will practice composition skills in English
· students will learn English for tourism
For these to become aims, they need to focus on the changes in the learners that will result. For example:
· students will learn how to write effective business letters for use in the hotel and tourism industries
· students will learn how to listen effectively in conversational interactions and how to develop better listening strategies
· students will learn how to communicate information and ideas creatively and effectively through writing
· students will be able to communicate in English at a basic level for purpose of tourism
Aims are very general statements of the goals of a program. They can be interpreted in many different ways. In order to give a more precise focus to program goals, aims are often accompanied by statements of more specific purposes. These are known as objectives (instructional objectives or teaching objectives).
An objective refers to a statement of specific changes a program seeks to bring about and results from an analysis of the aim into its different components. Objectives have the following characteristics:
· They describe what the aim seeks to achieve in terms of smaller units of learning.
· They provide a basis for the organization of teaching activities.
· They describe learning in terms of observable behavior or performance.
The advantages of describing the aims of a course in terms of objectives are:
· They facilitate planning: once objectives have been agreed on, course planning, materials preparation, textbook selection, and related processes can begin.
· They provide measurable outcomes and thus provide accountability: given a set of objectives, the success or failure of a program to teach the objectives can be measured.
· They are prescriptive: they describe how planning should proceeds and do away with subjective interpretations and personal opinions.
Statements of objectives have the following characteristics:
· Objectives describe a learning outcome
· Objectives should be consistent with the curriculum aim
· Objectives should be precise
· Objectives should be feasible
The difficulty of drawing up statements of objectives should not be underestimated. In developing language objectives one is doing more than creating a wish list off the top of one’s head. Sound objectives in language teaching are based on an understanding of the nature of the subject matter being taught (e.g. listening, speaking, reading, writing), an awareness of attainable levels of learning four basic, intermediate, or advanced-level learners, and the ability to be able to describe course aims in terms of logical and well-structured units of organization.
Objectives are therefore normally produced by a group of teachers or planners who write sample objectives based on their knowledge and experience and revise and refine them over time. In developing objectives, it is necessary to make use of variety of sources, such as diagnostic information concerning students’ learning difficulties, description of skilled performance in different language domains, information about different language levels as well as characterizations of the skills involved in different domains of language use. Objectives cannot therefore be regarded as fixed. As instruction proceeds, some may have to be revised, some dropped because they are unrealistic, and others added to address gaps.
The following are the suggestion how to set goals, to think about goals, and to match teaching and learning strategies to goals:
OUTCOME | QUESTION ANSWERED | FUNCTION | EXAMPLE |
Aim | Why is the course being taught | Gives shape and direction for the course | To provide students with an introduction to the Canadian Health Care System |
Goal | What will the student be able to do as a result of taking the course | Provides scope for the course | At the end of the course will be able to critically assess the contribution of various elements of the health care system to the health of a population |
Objective | What will the student be able to do as a result of the particular lesson or experience | Provides direction for specific teaching and learning activities | At the end of the course will be able to differentiate between a "sick cares" versus a "health care" orientation. |
Suggestions for thinking about goals
- statements should be short and begin with a verb
- in general two or three goals are enough to express the intentions of the course
- goals are typically referred to as knowledge, skill or attitude
TYPE | DEFINITION | EXAMPLE At the end of this course, students should be able to... |
Knowledge (cognitive) | Refers to intellectual development | List, classify, apply, analyze, construct, argue... |
Skills (psychomotor) | Refers to development of physical skills | Perform, grasp, handle, operate... |
Attitude (affective) | Refers to the development of emotions, attitudes and values | Appreciate, accept, challenge, share, support... |
Suggestions for matching teaching and learning strategies to goals
Knowledge goals (based on Bloom's Taxonomy)
Levels | Definition | Goals | Teaching Strategy |
KNOWLEDGE | The ability to remember and recall information and facts without error or alteration | List
Memorize
Order
Duplicate
Lecture
Readings | Lecture
Readings |
COMPREHENSION | The ability to understand what is being communicated and to make use of the material without necessarily relating it to other material | Classify
Describe
Discuss
Explain | Lecture
Summarizing question and answer laboratory work group discussion |
APPLICATION | The ability to abstract, relate or apply general ideas to explain specific situations | Apply
Choose
Employ
Interpret | discussion
role play
examples
case studies
group/individual projects |
ANALYSIS | The ability to break down information into its constituent parts such that each part is understood and/or relationships are explicit | Analyze
Compare
Contrast
Calculate | questions - (compare, contrast, what if, why)
group discussion
critiques |
SYNTHESIS | The ability to put together past so as to form a whole. Working with pieces and parts so as to create new patterns or structures. | Construct
Create
Develop
Formulate | essay writing
presentations
group discussion |
EVALUATION | The ability to make judgments about the value of information and the degree to which information satisfies certain criteria | Argue
Assess
Judge
Defend | written/oral
critiques
position papers
debates
evaluation |
SKILLS (relates to physical skill development) | The ability to exhibit actions which demonstrate fine motor skills such as the use of precision instruments or gross motor skills such as the use of body in dance or athletic performance | Perform
Grasp
handle
operate | laboratory work
work in the gym
work in the studio |
ATTITUDES (relates to emotions, attitudes and values) | The ability to exhibit behaviors indicating attitudes of awareness, interest, attention, concern, and responsibility, ability to listen and respond in interactions with others | appreciate
accept
challenge
share
support | team projects
group discussions
position papers |
3. Competency-based program outcomes
An alternative to the use of objectives in program planning is to describe learning outcomes in terms of competencies, an approach associated with Competency-Based Language Teaching (CBLT). According to Schneck (1978) and Grognet and Crandall (1982), CBLT seeks to make a focus on the outcomes of learning a central planning stage in the development of language programs. CBLT shifts the focus to the ends of learning rather than the means. As a general educational and training approach, CBLT seeks to improve accountability in teaching through linking instruction to measurable outcomes and performance standards.
According to Schneck (1978), CBLT has the following characteristics: (1) learning as performance-based instruction, mastery learning and individualized instruction, (2) it is outcome-based and is adaptive to the changing needs of students, teachers, and the community, and (3) competencies differ from other students goals and objectives in that they describe the student’s ability to apply basic and other skills, commonly encountered in everyday life.
· The nature of competencies
Competencies refer to observable behaviors that are necessary for the successful completion of real-world activities. Docking (1994, 11) points out the relationship between competencies and job performance. A qualification or a job can be described as a collection of units of competency, each of which is composed of a number of elements of competency.
Tollefson (1986) observes that the analysis of jobs into their constituent functional competencies in order to develop teaching objectives goes back to the mid nineteenth century.
Spencer (1860s) outlines the major areas of human activity should be basis for curricular objectives. Similarly, Bobbit (1926) developed curricular objectives according to his analysis of the functional competencies required for adults living in America.
· The standards movements
Standards are descriptions of the targets students should be able to reach in different domains of curriculum content. These standards or benchmarks are stated in the form of competencies. For example, TESOL organization undertook to develop school standards for ESL for grades K-12. These are described in terms of competencies. The standards are framed around three goals and nine standards. Each standard is further explicated by descriptors, sample progress indicators, and classroom vignettes with discussions.
C. NONLANGUAGE OUTCOMES AND PROCESS OBJECTIVES
Non language outcomes refer to such outcomes go beyond the content of a linguistically oriented syllabus. Meanwhile, process objectives refer to such outcomes that describe learning experiences rather than learning outcomes.
According to Jackson (1993, 8), non language outcomes represent more than desirable or optional by-products of the language learning process. They are essential prerequisites for on-going and meaningful involvement with the process of language learning and learning in general. Thus, non language outcomes are teaching and learning issues strongly related to issues of access and equity for non-English-speaking background learners and workers. It is important that the development of knowledge and learning skills represent a significant component of the adult ESL curriculum.
Meanwhile, in general education, process objectives are associated with the ideas of Bruner (1966) and Stenhouse (1975). Bruner argued that the curriculum should focus less on the outcomes of learning and more on the knowledge and skills learners need to develop. These include the concepts and procedures that children should acquire through the processes of inquiry and deliberation. Then, Stenhouse argued that the curriculum should focus on activities that engage learners in such processes as investigation, decision making, reflection, discussion, interpretation, making choices, cooperation with others, and so on.
Objectives in the category of learning how to learn refer to learning strategies. Learning strategy theory suggests that effective learning involves (1) developing an integrated set of procedures and operations that can be applied to different learning, (2) selecting strategies appropriate to different tasks and (3) monitoring strategies for their effectiveness and replacing or revising them if necessary.
The following are the examples of a description of objectives for national secondary schools curriculum in an EFL country:
The course should develop students’ awareness of the learning processes and their role as learners by developing the following knowledge and skills:
1. Ways of organizing learning and dividing learning tasks into smaller sub-tasks
2. Familiarity with how to use reference words designed to assist them in independent learning
3. Awareness of their own learning styles and strengths and weaknesses
4. Familiarity with various techniques of vocabulary learning and identification of techniques that are particularly useful to themselves
5. Awareness of the nature of learning strategies and the difference between effective and ineffective strategies
6. Ability to monitor their own learning progress and ways of setting personal goals for language improvement
Jackson (1993, 41) gives examples of objectives designed to help develop different types of learning strategies. The following relate to developing strategies for effective organization and management of time:
1. To explicitly introduce students to the concept of time allocation on relation to study
2. To assist students to identify realistic times and time spans for home study and individual study in the learning center
3. To assist students to prioritize study time allocation in relation to other everyday activities and family commitments
4. To assist students to create a daily/ weekly timetable of study
The English Language Syllabus for the Teaching of English at Primary Level (1991) in Singapore includes a number of categories of process objectives, such as, thinking skills, learning how to learn and language and culture.
The planning of learning outcomes for language course is closely related to the course planning process.
Having discussion in this chapter report, there are some criticisms on planning goals and learning outcomes for a language course. Therefore in this part, I would like to give some criticisms on the aspects which are discussed in this chapter report.
The first criticisms are concerning with the use of objectives:
Ø Objectives turn teaching into a technology
There is a danger that curriculum planning becomes a technical exercise of converting statements of needs into objectives. In the process, the broader goals of teaching and learning may be lost. Therefore, this criticism is more applicable to the form of objectives known as “behavioral objectives”. To ensure that the curriculum addresses educationally important goals, objectives should be included that address “meaningful and worthwhile learning experiences.” One way to do this is to include objectives that cover both language outcomes and non language outcomes.
Ø Objectives trivialize teaching and are product-oriented
By assuming that every purpose in teaching can be expressed as an object, the suggestion is that only worthwhile goal in teaching is to bring about changes in student behavior. Therefore, objectives need not be limited to observable outcomes. They can also describe processes and experiences that are seen as an important focus of the curriculum.
Ø Objectives are unsuited to many aspects of language use
Objectives may be suitable for describing the mastery of skills, but less suited to such things as critical thinking, literary appreciation, or negotiation of meaning. Therefore, objectives can be written in domains such as critical thinking and literary thinking but will focus on the experiences that curriculum provide rather than specific learning outcomes.
The second criticisms are concerning with the use of competencies:
v Definition of competencies
Tollefson (1986) argues that no valid procedures are available to develop competency specifications. Typically, competencies are described based on intuition and experiences, a process similar to the one used to develop statements of objectives. In addition, focusing on observable behaviors can lead to a trivialization of the nature of an activity. Therefore, competencies related to effective performance on a job will tend to include such things as “reading directions or following orders on a job” but not “to change or question the nature of the job”.
v Hidden values underlying competency specifications
CBLT is based on a social and economic efficiency model of curriculum design that seeks to enable learners to participate effectively in society. Consequently, as Tollefson and others have pointed out, the competencies selected as a basis for instruction typically represent value judgments about what such participation involves.
The philosophy of curriculum is the result of political judgment in that it reflects a particular set of choices about curriculum options. Therefore, theory and practice provide useful information in designing a curriculum. Curriculum leaders should consider; learning theories, learning styles and learners' unique ways of processing information, brain research and inquiry-based learning, blended means of delivery and presentation, and alternative assessments when setting standards and lesson plans for teachers. Curriculum and instruction complement one another.
In addition, a curriculum should focus on learners, the subject matter, and the society. Here, it can also be valuable to include the students’ perspective in the needs assessment process so that their interests, needs, and goals are addressed by the curriculum. Questionnaires, interviews, and focus group discussions (conducted in students’ primary language) are some ways of gathering student input and can also help to create a language-friendly environment.
When planning for student achievement of the outcomes, decisions need to be made about approaches to curriculum design, teaching methods and strategies, learning opportunities and activities, resources to support learning, and the systems of assessment.
Learning outcomes are particularly important in a project like this where materials and learning activities are produced by many people in order to be used by others. By stating what you expect students to be able to do as a result of what you have written, you can help colleagues elsewhere better judge its appropriateness to their circumstances and consider how to change it to meet their own local needs.
Learning outcomes help instructors more precisely to tell students what is expected of them. By doing this, educationalists assert that they:
- help students learn more effectively. They know where they stand and the curriculum is made more open to them.
- make it clear what students can hope to gain from following a particular course or lecture.
- help instructors to design their materials more effectively by acting as a template for them.
- help instructors select the appropriate teaching strategy, for example lecture, seminar, student self-paced, or laboratory class. It obviously makes sense to match the intended outcome to the teaching strategy.
- help instructors more precisely to tell their colleagues what a particular activity is designed to achieve.
- assist in setting examinations based on the materials delivered.
- ensure that appropriate assessment strategies are employed.
Therefore, in planning for outcomes-focused curriculum provision, teachers, working individually and in groups, need to review (1) student achievement, (2) the learning environment, (3) classroom approaches to curriculum provision, (4) pedagogy, and (5) the school plan. In other words, teachers or curriculum planners are expected to plan a thoughtful, deep, well-organized curriculum that draws forth those desired outcomes from every student. It is because effective planning and monitoring processes with an outcomes focus will lead to a balanced curriculum.
The curriculum ideologies discussed in this chapter report serves as the ideological underpinning of the curriculum and the relative emphasis they receive in the curriculum will reflect the particular context in which the curriculum occurs. The philosophy of the curriculum is the result of political judgment in that it reflects a particular set of choices about curriculum options. It reflects what the participants in the planning process believe to be worthwhile goals to attain and the changes they feel the curriculum should bring about. Because these judgments and values are often not stated explicitly, identifying them, making them explicit and reflecting on the unstated values and assumptions driving the curriculum are an essential part of the process of curriculum planning.
Therefore, creating aims, goals, and objectives are important to make the process of curriculum planning successfully done. In this case, teachers or curriculum planners are expected to plan a thoughtful, deep, well-organized curriculum that draws forth those desired outcomes from every student. It is because effective planning and monitoring processes with an outcomes focus will lead to a balanced curriculum.
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