CHAPTER ONE:
THE DEFINITION OF CURRICULUM TERMS AND CONCEPTS
1.1 CURRICULUM
A number of definitions have been provided to the term curriculum. The term curriculum refers to a set of courses and the content offered at a school or university. Curriculum
refers to the means and materials with which students will interact for the purpose of achieving identified educational outcomes.
A curriculum is a “plan or program of all experiences which the learner encounters under the direction of a school” (Tanner and Tanner, 1995: 158). According to Gatawa (1990: 8), it is “the totality of the experiences of children for which schools are responsible”. All this is in agreement with Sergiovanni and Starrat (1983), who argue that curriculum is “that which a student is supposed to encounter, study, practice and master… what the student learn”. For others such as Beach and Reinhatz (1989: 97), a curriculum outlines a “prescribed series of courses to take”.
From the definitions above, it is possible to state that a curriculum has the following characteristics:
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It comprises the experiences of children for which the school is responsible.
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It has content.
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It is planned.
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It is a series of courses to be taken by students.
In addition, a curriculum considers the learners and their interaction with each other, the teacher and the materials. The output and outcomes of a curriculum are evaluated. Bringing all these points together, the curriculum is viewed as a composite whole including the learner, the teacher, teaching and learning methodologies, anticipated and unanticipated experiences, outputs and outcomes possible within a learning institution.
1.2. CURRICULUM DESIGN
It is a deliberate process of devising, planning and selecting the elements, techniques and procedure of the critical variables of subjects matter, pupils, teachers and the environment in order to facilitate teaching. In other word curriculum design is the structure, pattern or organization of the curriculum. It aims at identifying the collective components of the plan of instruction.
1.3 CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT
The process of curriculum development signifies devising or planning curricular materials and piloting them. It also involves deploying manpower and utilizing resources. All these activities need to be carried out within a particular context and they involve answering
questions about what to teach, to whom and in what way the political and economic atmosphere shape the philosophy based on knowledge, the interests, needs of society and the individual. It also involves knowing whether instructional material and building are available and how the program would be run. There are also considerations as to whether tradition would bear a lot on the curriculum. Curriculum development does not necessarily precede curriculum design in a linear way.
Instead the two activities overlap.
In short, curriculum development deals with assembling materials to build/make a curriculum.
In short, development describes the process of curriculum-making. Design describes the end result, or the productof curriculum development.
