Overview
This lecture covers the key elements, criteria, and principles of curriculum design, emphasizing how these components ensure effective and coherent teaching and learning.
What is Curriculum Design?
- Curriculum design is a purposeful and systematic organization of curriculum elements (Schweitzer, 2019).
- It acts as a blueprint that arranges objectives, content, teaching strategies, and assessments (Nega).
- The process ensures every part of the curriculum is aligned and meaningful.
Essential Elements of Curriculum Design
- Elements include curriculum intent, content, learning experiences, and evaluation.
- All elements must work together for coherent and effective learning.
Curriculum Intent
- Curriculum intent sets the direction, aims, and objectives for teaching and learning.
- It ensures all parts of the curriculum align toward desired learning outcomes.
Content Selection in Curriculum
- Content covers topics, concepts, and skills for learners to acquire.
- Criteria for content selection:
- Self-Sufficiency: enables learners to use knowledge independently.
- Significance: develops cognitive, affective, and psychomotor skills.
- Validity: content must be authentic, accurate, and current.
- Interest: content should engage and connect with learners’ experiences.
- Utility: ensures learning is useful now (current) or in the future.
- Learnability: matches learners’ developmental level and prior knowledge.
- Feasibility: considers available resources, teacher expertise, and time.
Learning Experiences
- Learning experiences are the instructional strategies and activities for achieving objectives.
- They must align with intended outcomes, suit learners’ levels, and be feasible.
- Effective experiences are engaging, foster independence, and develop higher-order thinking.
- Activities should support all learning domains: cognitive, affective, and psychomotor.
Evaluation and Assessment
- Assessment measures both learner progress and teaching effectiveness.
- Must align with objectives and may include traditional tests or authentic tasks (projects, performances, portfolios).
- Provides feedback to both teachers and students for improvement.
Key Terms & Definitions
- Curriculum Design — Structured planning and organization of all curriculum elements.
- Curriculum Intent — Overall aims and desired learning outcomes guiding curriculum.
- Content — Topics, concepts, and skills included in the curriculum.
- Learning Experiences — Methods and activities facilitating learning.
- Assessment/Evaluation — Tools and processes for measuring learning achievement.
Action Items / Next Steps
- Review the detailed elements of curriculum design discussed today.
- Prepare to examine each element (intent, content, learning experiences, evaluation) in more depth in the next lesson.