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Dimensions and Principles of Curriculum Design

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20 views

Dimensions and Principles of Curriculum Design

Uploaded by

Lovely Jean Padaz
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Dimensions and Principles of Curriculum Design

By: Purita B. Bilbao


Dimensions:

1. Scope
○ Tyler in Ornstein(2004) defines scope as all the content, topics, learning
experiences and organizing threads comprising the educational plan.
○ Scope does not only refer to the cognitive content, but also to the affective and
psychomotor content.
○ It is the depth, as well as, the breadth of these contents.
○ The terms broad, limited, simple, general are few of the words that can describe
the scope.
○ The scope of the curriculum can be divided into chunks: units, sub-units,
chapters or sub-chapters.
Considerations in determination of the Scope:
a. Curricular coverage
b. Time
c. Diversity
d. Maturity of the learners
e. Complexity of content
f. Level of education

2. Sequence
○ To provide continuous and cumulative learning, a vertical relationship among the
elements of the curriculum provides the sequence.
○ Contents and experiences are arranged in hierarchical manner.
○ Some schools formulate their curricular objectives, content, and experiences by
grade levels and consider the stages of thinking.

4 Principles of Sequence (by: Smith, Stanley & Shore)


a. Simple to complex – Content & experiences are organized from simple to
complex, from concrete to abstract, from easy to difficult.
b. Prerequisite learning – It means that there are fundamental things to be
learned ahead. Like addition before multiplication in Mathematics of letters before
words, words before phrases and phrases before sentences.
c. Whole to part learning – This has a relations to gestalt. The forest before the
trees. The overview before the specific content of topics. The meaning can be
very well be understood if everything will be taken as a whole.
d. Chronological learning - This principle is closely allied to history, political
science, and world events. The sequence can be arranged from the most recent
Five major principles for organizing content in units (by Posner & Rudnitsky
1994)
a. World-related sequence
Space – spatial relations will be the basis for the sequence.
Time – from the earliest to the most recent
Physical Attributes – the physical characteristics of the phenomena such as age,
shape, size, brightness & others.
b. Concept-related sequence
- how ideas are related together in logical manner
Class relations – group or set of things that share common practices
Propositional relations – a statement that asserts something
c. Inquiry-related sequence
-based on the process of generating, discovering & verifying knowledge, content
and experiences are sequenced logically and methodically
d. Learning-related sequence
- How people learn
Empirical Prerequisites - based on empirical studies where the prerequisite is
required before learning the next level
Familiarity – prior learning is important in sequence
Difficulty – easy content is taken ahead than the difficult one
Interest – use interesting contents and experiences to boost their appetite in
learning
e. Utilization-related sequence
- based on the order of occurrence or the frequency of usage of the item.

3. Continuity
○ This process enables the learners to strengthen the permanency of learning and
development of skills. Gerome Bruner calls this “spiral curriculum” where the
content is organized according to the interrelationship between the structure/
pattern of a basic idea of major disciplines. Example:1.Concepts of living things
in science which continuously occurs in the elementary curriculum but with
different complexity from level to level

4. Integration
○ Emerging themes. This is the essence of integration in the curriculum design.
Merging or integrate the subject like math to science.

5. Articulation
○ This can be done either vertically or horizontally. In vertical articulation, contents
are arranged from level to level or grade to grade so that the content in a lower
level is connected to the next level.
○ Horizontal articulation happens when the association is among or between
elements that happen at the same time like social studies in grade six is related
to science in grade six.

6. Balance
○ Equitable assignment of content, time, experiences and other elements to
establish balance is needed in curriculum design.
○ Too much or too little of these elements maybe disastrous to the curriculum.
○ Keeping the curriculum “in balance” requires continuous fine tuning and review
for its effectiveness and relevance.

Guidelines:
1. Curriculum design committee should involve teachers, parents, administrators,
and even students.
2. School's vision, mission, goals, and objectives should be reviewed and used as
bases for curriculum design.
3. The needs and interests of the learners, in particular, and the society in general,
should be considered.
4. Alternative curriculum design should consider advantages and disadvantages in
terms of cost, scheduling, class size, facilities, and personal required.
5. The curriculum design should take into account cognitive, affective, psychomotor
skills, concepts, and outcomes.

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