Planning goals and learning outcomes (curriculum material development)


Planning goals and learning outcomes

  1. The Ideology of The Curriculum

In developing goals for educational program, curriculum planners draw on their understanding both of the present and long-term needs of learners and of society as well as the planners’ beliefs and ideologies about school, learners, and teacher. Each of the five curriculum perspective examined here emphasizes a different approach to the role of language in the curriculum.

    1. Academic Rationalism
This justification for the aims of curriculum stresses the intrinsic value of the subject matter and its role in developing the learners’ intellect, humanistic value, and rationality.
Academic rationalism is sometimes used to justify the inclusion of certain foreign language in school curricula: where they are taught not as tools for communication but as an aspect of social studies.
The role of school is to provide access to the major achievement of a particular cultural tradition and to know the insights gain from studying enduring fields of knowledge.
The basic educational aim was the assimilation of British culture through the medium of English literature.

    1. 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.
In language teaching, this philosophy leads to an emphasis on practical and functional skills in a foreign language.
Socioeconomic ideology stresses the economic needs of society as a justification for the teaching of English.
Learners’ need can be identified with predetermining set of skill and objective.
The curriculum focuses on knowledge and skill that are relevant to the learners’ everyday life needs that the curriculum should be planned to meet the practical needs of society.

    1. Learner –centeredness
This term groups together educational philosophies that stress the individual needs of learners, the role of individual experience and the need to develop awareness, self reflection, critical thinking, learners’ strategies, and other qualities and skills that are believed to be important for learners  to develop.
Ø  Reconceptualist emphasize the role of experience in learning.
Ø  Constructivist emphasize that learning involves active construction and testing one’s own representation of the world and accommodation of it to one’s personal conceptual framework.
Ø  Progressivism- learning is envisaged as a continuum which can be broke up into several broad development stages. Growth through experience is the key concept.

Marsh (1986, 201) points out that issue of child-centered or learner-centered curricula reappears every decade or so and can refer to any of the following:
Ø  Individualized teaching
Ø  Learning through practical operation or doing
Ø  Laizzes faire-no organized curricula at all based on the momentary interest of children
Ø  Creative self experience by students
Ø  Practically oriented activities directed toward the needs of society
Ø  A collective term that refers to the rejection of teaching-directed learning.

In language teaching, Clark sees 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.

    1. Social Reconstructionism
This curriculum perspective emphasizes the roles of school and learners can and should play in addressing social injustices and inequality.
Teacher must empower their students so that they can recognize unjust systems of class race, or gender, and challenge them.
One of the best-known critical pedagogues is:
a.       freire (1972) : teachers and learners are involved in a joint process of exploring and constructing knowledge. Students are not the “object” of knowledge. They must find ways of recognizing and resisting various forms of control.
b.      Aurbach’s (1992) : that teaching must seek to empower students and help them bring about change in their lives. That teachers and students may not be able to change the structure of the system in which they work and that other channels are often available to address such changes.

    1. Cultural Pluralism
This philosophy argues that school should prepare students to participate in several different cultures and not merely culture of the dominant social and economic group.
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 religious.
In the USA the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Language (ACTFL), there are 3 dimensions:
a.       The need to learn about cultures
b.      To compare any cultures
c.       Engage in intercultural exploration.

The philosophy of the curriculum is the result of political judgment in that it reflects a particular set of choice about curriculum options.

B.     Stating Curriclum Outcomes

1.      Aims
An aim refers to a statement of a general change that a program seeks to bring about in learners. Aim is broader than objective.
The purposes of aim statements are:
·         To provide a clear definition of the purposes of a program
·         To provide guidelinesfor teachers, learners, and material writers
·         To help provide a focus of instruction
·         To describeimportant and realizable changes in learning
Aims statement reflect the ideology of the curriculum and show how the curriculum will seek to realize it.

2.      Objectives
An objective refers to a statement of specific changes a program seek to bring about and result from an analysis of the aim into different components.
Objectives generally have the following characteristics:
·         They describe what the aim seeks to achievein terms of smaller units of learning.
·         They provide a basis for the organization of teaching activities
·         They describe learning in terms of observable behaviour or perfomance.

The advantages of describing the aims of a course in terms of objective 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 succes or failure of a program to teach the objectives can be measured
·         They are perpective: they describe how planning should proceed and do away with subjective interpretations and personal opinions.

Statement of objectives has the following characteristics:
·         Objectives describe a learning outcomes
·         Objectives should be consistent
·         Objective should be precise
·         Objectives should be feasible

3.      Criticisms of the use of objective
·         Objectives turn teaching into a technology
Objectives are linked to an efficiency view of education. Based on the assumption that must efficient means to an end is justified.
To ensure that the curriculum addressed additionally important goals, objective should be included.
·         Objectives trivialize teaching and are product-oriented
By assuming that every purpose in teaching can be expressed as an objective, the suggestion is that the only worthwhile goal in teaching is to bring about changes in student behavior.
Objectives need not be limited to observable outcomes. They describe processes and experiences that are seen important focus of the curriculum.
·         Objectives are unsuited to many aspect 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 negotiating of meaning.
Objectives can be written in domain such as critical thinking and literary appreciation but will focus on the experiences the curriculum will provide rather than specific learning outcomes.

4.      Competence-based program outcome
Competence-based education has much in common with such approaches to learning as performance-based instruction, mastery learning and individualized instruction. It is outcome-based and is adaptive to changing needs of students, teachers, and the community.
Competencies differ from other student goals and objectives in that they describe the student’s ability to apply basic and other skills in situations that are commonly encountered in daily life.

5.      The nature of competency
Competencies refer to observable behaviors that are necessary for the successful completion of real-world activities.  Competency descriptions are very similar to statement of objective. They can be regarded as objective that are linked to specific domains or activities.
            E.g. topic: housing
1.   Identify common household furniture/ room
2.   Answer simple questions about basic housing needs
3.   Ask for simple information about housing, including rent, utilities, and date available
4.   Report household problems and emergencies
5.   Request repairs
6.   Arrange time for repairs  

6.      Criticism of the use of competencies
The use of competencies in program planning is not without its critics.
These criticisms focus on the following issues:
Definition of competencies Tollefson (1986) argues that no valid procedures are available develop competency specifications. Although lists of competencies can be generated intuitively for many areas and activities. Criticisms such as these essentially argue for a different curriculum ideology.

7.      The standards movement
The most recent realization of competency perspective in the United States is seen in the “standards” movement, which has dominated educational discussions since the 1990s.
Standards are descriptions of the largest students should be able to reach in different domains of curriculum content, and throughout the 1990s there was drive to specify standard for subject matter across the curriculum. These standards are states in the form of competence.
Each standard is further explicated by descriptions, sample progress indicators and classroom vignettes with discussions.

C.    Nonlanguage Outcomes And Process Objectives

A language curriculum typically includes others kinds of outcomes apart from language-related objectives of t kinds described above. If the curriculum seeks to reflected values related to learners centeredness, social reconstrutionism, or cultural pluralism, outcomes related to these values will also need to be included.
The categories of nonlanguage outcomes:
  • Social, psychological, and emotional support in the new living environment
  • Confidence
  • Motivation
  • Cultural understanding
  • Clarification of goals
  • Access and entry into employment, further study, and community life

Objectives in these domains related to the personal, social, cultural, and political needs and rights of learners. If these are not identified, they tend to get forgotten or overlooked in the curriculum planning process. Examples of objectives in on-arrival progress:
  • To assist students to identify local providers
  • To assist students to identify the main functions of the above
  • To assist students to ascertain relevance of above services for themselves in terms of eligibility and accessibility.

Objectives in the category of learn how to learning to strategies. Learning strategies that effective learning involves:
·         Selecting strategies appropriate to different tasks
·         Monitoring strategies for their effectiveness and replacing or revising them if necessary

The numbers of categories of process objective:

1.      Thinking skills
At the end of the course, pupils be able to :
·         Explore an idea, situation, or suggested solution for specific purpose
·         Think creatively to generate new ideas
·         Analyze or evaluate an idea, a situation, or a suggested solution for a specific purpose

2.      Learning how to learn
At the end of the course, pupils should be able to :
·         Appreciate that there are varieties of English reflecting different cultures and use this knowledge appropriately and sensitively in communication
·         Adopt a critical, but not negative, attitude toward ideas , thoughts, and values reflected in spoken and written texts of local and foreign origin

The planning of learning outcomes for a language course is closely related to the course planning process. 

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