In
formal education,
a curriculum is the set of
courses, and their content, offered at a school or university.
As an idea, curriculum came from
the Latin
word "Currere" which means race course/
to run/ run way, referring to the course of deeds
and experiences through which children grow to become mature adults. A curriculum is
prescriptive, and is based on a more general syllabus
which merely specifies what topics must be understood and to what level to
achieve a particular grade or standard. Curriculum has numerous definitions,
which can be slightly confusing. In its broadest sense a curriculum may refer
to all courses offered at a school. This is particularly true of schools at the
university level, where the diversity of a curriculum might be an attractive
point to a potential student.
A
curriculum may also refer to a defined and prescribed course of studies, which
students must fulfill in order to pass a certain level of education. For
example, an elementary school might discuss how its curriculum, or its entire
sum of lessons and teachings, is designed to improve national testing scores or
help students learn the basics. An individual teacher might also refer to his
or her curriculum, meaning all the subjects that will be taught during a school
year.
On
the other hand, a high school might refer to a curriculum as the courses
required in order to receive one’s diploma. They might also refer to curriculum
in exactly the same way as the elementary school, and use curriculum to mean
both individual courses needed to pass, and the overall offering of courses,
which help prepare a student for life after high school.
HISTORICAL
CONCEPTION
File:Curriculum Concept.svg In The Curriculum,[1]
the first textbook published on the subject, in 1918, John Franklin Bobbitt said that
curriculum, as an idea,
has its roots in the Latin word for race-course, explaining the
curriculum as the course of deeds and experiences through which children become the adults they should be, for success in adult society.
Furthermore, the curriculum encompasses the entire scope of formative deed and
experience occurring in and out of school, and not only experiences occurring
in school;
experiences that are unplanned and undirected, and experiences intentionally
directed for the purposeful formation of adult members of society. (cf. image
at right.)
To
Bobbitt, the curriculum is a social engineering arena.
Per his cultural presumptions and social definitions, his curricular
formulation has two notable features:
(i)
that
scientific
experts would best be qualified to and justified in designing curricula based
upon their expert knowledge of what qualities are desirable in adult members of
society, and which experiences would generate said qualities; and
(ii)
Curriculum
defined as the deeds-experiences the student ought to have to become the adult he or she ought to become.
Hence,
he defined the curriculum as an ideal, rather than as the concrete reality
of the deeds and experiences that form people to who and what they are.
Contemporary
views of curriculum reject these features of Bobbitt's postulates, but retain
the basis of curriculum as the course of experience(s) that forms human beings
into persons. Personal formation via curricula is
studied at the personal level and at the group level, i.e. cultures
and societies (e.g. professional formation, academic discipline via historical experience).
The formation of a group is reciprocal, with the formation of its individual
participants.
Although
it formally appeared in Bobbitt's definition,
curriculum as a course of formative experience also pervades John Dewey's
work (who disagreed with Bobbitt on important matters). Although Bobbitt's and
Dewey's idealistic understanding of "curriculum" is different from
current, restricted uses of the word, curriculum writers and researchers
generally share it as common, substantive understanding of curriculum.
PRIMARY
AND SECONDARY EDUCATION
A
curriculum may be partly or entirely determined by an external, authoritative
body (e.g., the National Curriculum for England
in English
schools).
In
the U.S.,
each state,
with the individual school districts, establishes the curricula
taught. Each state, however, builds its curriculum with great participation of
national academic subject groups selected by the United States Department of Education,
e.g. National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM)[6]
for mathematical instruction. In Australia
each state's Education Department establishes curricula with plans for a
National Curriculum in 2011. UNESCO's International Bureau of Education has
the primary mission of studying curricula and their implementation worldwide.
Curriculum means two things:
(i)
The
range of courses from which students choose what subject matters to study, and
(ii)
A
specific learning program. In the latter case, the curriculum collectively
describes the teaching,
learning, and assessment materials available for a given course of study.
Currently,
a spiral curriculum is promoted as allowing
students to revisit a subject matter's content at the different levels of
development of the subject matter being studied. The constructivist approach,
of the tycoil curriculum,
proposes that children learn best via active engagement with the educational
environment, i.e. discovery learning.
Crucial
to the curriculum is the definition of the course objectives that usually are
expressed as learning outcomes'
and normally include the program's assessment
strategy. These outcomes and assessments are grouped as units (or modules), and, therefore,
the curriculum comprises a collection of such units, each, in turn, comprising
a specialised, specific part of the curriculum. So, a typical curriculum
includes communications, numeracy, information technology, and social skills
units, with specific, specialized teaching of each.
CORE CURRICULUM
A
core curriculum is a curriculum,
or course of study, which is deemed central and usually made mandatory for all
students of a school
or school system. However, this is not always the case. For example, a school
might mandate a music appreciation class, but students may opt out if they take
a performing musical class, such as orchestra, band, chorus, etc. Core
curricula are often instituted, at the primary
and secondary levels, by school boards, Departments
of Education, or other administrative agencies charged with overseeing
education.
In
the United States, the Common Core State Standards
Initiative promulgates a core curriculum for states to adopt and
optionally expand upon. This coordination is intended to make it possible to
use more of the same textbooks across states, and to move toward a more uniform
minimum level of educational attainment.
HIGHER
EDUCATION
Core
curriculum has typically been highly emphasized in Soviet and Russian
universities and technical institutes. In this photo, a student has come to the
university's main class schedule board on the first day of classes to find what
classes he – and all students in his specialization (sub-major) – will attend
this semester.
Many
educational institutions are currently trying to balance two opposing forces.
On the one hand, some believe students should have a common knowledge
foundation, often in the form of a core curriculum; on the other hand, others
want students to be able to pursue their own educational interests, often
through early specialty in a major, however, other times through the free
choice of courses. This tension has received a large amount of coverage due to Harvard University's reorganization of its core
requirements.
An
essential feature of curriculum design, seen in every college catalog and at
every other level of schooling, is the identification of prerequisites for each
course. These prerequisites can be satisfied by taking particular courses, and
in some cases by examination, or by other means, such as work experience. In
general, more advanced courses in any subject require some foundation in basic
courses, but some coursework requires study in other departments, as in the
sequence of math classes required for a physics major, or the language
requirements for students preparing in literature, music, or scientific
research. A more detailed curriculum design must deal with prerequisites within
a course for each topic taken up. This in turn leads to the problems of course
organization and scheduling once the dependencies between topics are known.
UNITED
STATES
CORE
CURRICULUM
At
the undergraduate
level, individual college
and university
administrations and faculties sometimes mandate core curricula, especially in
the liberal arts.
But because of increasing specialization and depth in the student's major field
of study, a typical core curriculum in higher
education mandates a far smaller proportion of a student's course
work than a high school or elementary
school core curriculum prescribes.
Amongst
the best known and most expansive core curricula programs at leading American
colleges are that of Columbia College
at Columbia University, as well as the University of Chicago's. Both can take up
to two years to complete without advanced
standing, and are designed to foster critical skills in a broad
range of academic disciplines, including: the social sciences, humanities,
physical and biological sciences, mathematics, writing and foreign languages.
In
1999, the University of Chicago announced plans to
reduce and modify the content of its core curriculum, including lowering the
number of required courses from 21 to 15 and offering a wider range of content.
When The New York Times, The Economist,
and other major news outlets picked up this story, the University became the
focal point of a national debate on education. The National Association of
Scholars released a statement saying, "It is truly depressing to observe a steady abandonment of the
University of Chicago's once imposing undergraduate core curriculum, which for
so long stood as the benchmark of content and rigor among American academic
institutions. Simultaneously, however, a set of university administrators,
notably then-President Hugo Sonnenschein, argued that reducing
the core curriculum had become both a financial and educational imperative, as
the university was struggling to attract a commensurate volume of applicants to
its undergraduate division compared to peer schools as a result of what was
perceived by the pro-change camp as a reaction by “the average
eighteen-year-old” to the expanse of the collegiate core.
Further,
as core curricula began to be diminished over the course of the twentieth
century at many American schools, several smaller institutions became famous
for embracing a core curriculum that covers nearly the student’s entire
undergraduate education, often utilizing classic texts of the western canon
to teach all subjects including science. St. John’s College in the
United States is one example of this approach. Concordia University, Irvine (California)
has also implemented a similar classical core curriculum starting in the Fall
of 2010
DISTRIBUTION
REQUIREMENTS
Some
colleges opt for the middle ground of the continuum between specified and
unspecified curricula by using a system of distribution requirements. In such a
system, students are required to take courses in particular fields of
learning, but are free to choose specific courses within those
fields.
OPEN
CURRICULUM
Other
institutions have largely done away with core requirements in their entirety. Brown
University offers the "New Curriculum," implemented after
a student-led reform movement in 1969, which allows students to take courses
without concern for any requirements except those in their chosen
concentrations (majors), plus a single writing course. In this vein it is
certainly possible for students to graduate without taking college-level
science of mathematics or math courses, or to take only science or math
courses. Amherst College requires that students take one
of a list of first-year seminars, but has no required classes or distribution
requirements. Others include Evergreen State College, Hamilton College, and Smith College.[10]
These
types of approaches respect college students' choice as to which courses they
take.
REFERENCES
1.
Bobbitt, John Franklin. The
Curriculum. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918.
2.
Jackson, Philip W.
"Conceptions of Curriculum and Curriculum Specialists." In Handbook
of Research on Curriculum: A Project of the American Educational Research
Association, edited by Philip W. Jackson, 3-40. New York: Macmillan Pub. Co.,
1992.
3.
Pinar, William F., William
M. Reynolds, Patrick Slattery, and Peter M. Taubman. Understanding Curriculum:
An Introduction to the Study of Historical and Contemporary Curriculum
Discourses. New York: Peter Lang, 1995.
