EDUC 7

Lesson 1.1

The Curricula In School

Desired Learning Outcomes

Discuss the different curricula that exist in the schools

Analyze the significance of curriculum and curriculum development in the teacher's

classroom

H&VALES

Mother

Take Off

Have you read "The Sabre-Tooth Curriculum by Harold Benjamin

(1939)?" Take some time to read it and find out what curriculum is all about during those
times.

Start here and enjoy reading.

A man by the name of New-Fist-Hammer-Maker knew how to do things his community

needed to have done, and he had the energy and the will to go ahead and do them. By
virtue of these characteristics, he was an educated man. New-Fist was also a thinker.
Then as now, there were few lengths to which men would not go to avoid the labour and
pain of thought New-Fist got to the point where he became strongly dissatisfied with the
accustomed ways of his tribe. He began to catch glimpses of ways in which life might be
made better for himself, his family and his group. By virtue of this development, he
became a dangerous man.....

New-Fist thought about how he could harness the children's play to better the life of the
community. He considered what adults do for survival and introduced these activities to
children in a deliberate and formal way, These included catching fish with bare hands,
clubbing little woolly horses, and chasing away-sabre-toothed-tigers-with-fire. These
then became the curriculum and the community began to prosper-with plenty of food,
hides for attire and protection from threat. "It is supposed that all would have gone well
forever with this good educational system, if conditions of life in that community
remained forever the same." But conditions changed.The glacier began to melt and the
community could no longer see the fish to catch with their bare hands, and only the
most agile and clever fish remained which hid from the people. The woolly horses were
ambitious and decided to leave the region. The tigers got pneumonia and most died.
The few remaining tigers left. In their place, fierce bears arrived who would not be
chased by fire. The community was in trouble.

One day, in desperation, someone made a net from willow twigs and found a new way
to catch fish-and the supply was even more plentiful than before. The community also
devised a system of traps on the path to snare the bears. Attempts to change education
system to include these new techniques however encountered "stern opposition."These
are also activities we need to know. Why can't the schools teach them? But most of the
tribe particularly the wise old men who controlled the school, smiled indulgently at this
suggestion. "That wouldn't be education... it would be mere training". We don't teach
fish grabbing to catch fish, we teach it to develop a generalized agility which can never
be duplicated by mere training... and so on.

"If you had any education yourself, you would know that the essence of true education
is timelessness. It is something that endures through changing conditions like a solid
rock standing squarely and firmly in the middle of a raging torent"

The story was written in 1939. Curriculum then, was seen as a tradition of organized
knowledge taught in schools of the 19th century.

Two centuries later, the concept of a curriculum has broadened to include several
modes of thoughts or experiences.

Formal, non-formal or informal education do not exist without a curriculum. Classrooms

will be empty with no curriculum. Teachers will have nothing to do, if there is no
curriculum. Curriculum is at the heart of the teaching profession. Every teacher is
guided by some sort of curriculum in the classroom and in schools.

In our current Philippine educational system, different schools are established in

different educational levels which have corresponding recommended curricula. The
educational levels are.

1. Basic Education. This level includes Kindergarten, Grade 1 to Grade 6 for

elementary; and for secondary, Grade 7 to Grade 10, for the Junior High School and
Grade 11 and 12 and for the Senior High School. Each of the levels has its specific
recommended curriculum. The new basic education levels are provided in the K to 12
Enhanced Curriculum of 2013 of the Department of Education.
2. Technical Vocational Education. This is post-secondary technical vocational
educational and training taken care of Technical Education and Skills Development
Authority (TESDA). For the Tech Voc track in SHS of DepEd, DepEd and TESDA work
in close coordination.
3. Higher Education. This includes the Baccalaureate or Bachelor Degrees and the
Graduate Degrees (Master's and Doctorate) which are under the regulation of the
Commission on Higher Education (CHED)

Content Focus

In whatever levels of schooling and in various types of learning environment, several

curricula exist. Let us find out how Allan Glatthorn

(2000) as mentioned in Bilbao, et al (2008) classified these:

Types of Curricula Simultaneously Operating in the Schools

Are you aware that in every classroom, there are several types of curricula operating at
the same time? Let us study each one.

1. Recommended Curriculum. Almost all curricula found in our schools are

recommended. For Basic Education, these are recommended by the
Department of Education (DepEd), for Higher Education, by the Commission
on Higher Education (CHED), and for vocational education by TESDA. These
three government agencies oversee and regulate Philippine education. The
recommendations come in the form of memoranda or policies, standards and
guidelines. Other professional organizations or international bodies like
UNESCO also recommend curricula in schools.
2. Written Curriculum. This includes documents based on the recommended
curriculum. They come in the form of course of study, syllabi, modules, books
or instructional guides among others. A packet of this written curriculum is the
teacher's lesson plan.
The most recent written curriculum is the K to 12 for
Philippine Basic Education.
3. Taught Curriculum. From what has baun write or plane, o curriculum has to be
implemented o tariculum. teacher an en learners will put life to the written the
written the skil of in teacher to facilitate learning based on the written curriculum
vig the aid of instructional materials and facilities will be necessen The taught
curriculum will depend largely on the teaching styl of the teacher and the learning
style of the learners.
4. Supported Curriculum. This is described as support materials that the teacher
needs to make learning and teaching meaningful.
These include print materials like books, charts, posters, worksheets, or non-
print materials like Power Point presentation, movies, slides, models, realias,
mock-ups and other electronic illustrations. Supported curriculum also includes
facilities where learning occurs outside or inside the four-walled building.
These include the playground, science laboratory, audio-visual rooms, zoo,
 museum, market or the plaza. These are the places where authentic learning
through direct experiences occur.
5. Assessed Curriculum. Taught and supported curricula have to be evaluated to
find out if the teacher has succeeded or not in facilitating learning. In the
process of teaching and at the end of every lesson or teaching episode, an
assessment is made. It can either be assessment for learning, assessment as
learning or assessment of learning. If the process is to find the progress of
learning, then the assessed curriculum is for learning, but if it is to find out how
much has been learned or mastered, then it is assessment of learning. Either
way, such curriculum is the assessed curriculum.
6. Learned Curriculum. How do we know if the student has learned? We always
believe that if a student changed behavior, he/she has learned. For example,
from a non-reader to a reader or from not knowing to knowing or from being
disobedient to being obedient. The positive outcome of teaching is an indicator
of learning. These are measured by tools in assessment, which can indicate
the cognitive, affective and psychomotor outcomes.
Learned curriculum will also demonstrate higher order and critical. thinking and
lifelong skills.
7. Hidden/Implicit Curriculum. This curriculum is not deliberately planned, but has
a great impact on the behavior of the learner.
Peer influence, school environment, media, parental pressures, societal
changes, cultural practices, natural calamities, are some factors that create the
hidden curriculum. Teachers should be sensitive and aware of this hidden
curriculum. Teachers must have good foresight to include these in the written
curriculum, in order to bring to the surface what are hidden.

However, in every teacher's classroom, not all these curricula may be present at one
time. Many of them are deliberately planned, like the recommended, written, taught,
supported, assessed, and learned curricula.

However, a hidden curriculum is implied, and a teacher may or may not be able to
predict its influence on learning. All of these have significant role on the life of the
teacher as a facilitator of learning and have direct implication to the life of the learners.

Now, let us observe further if these curricula are existing in a teacher's classroom. Do
the activities that follow.
Lesson 1.2

The Teacher as a Curricularist

Desired Learning Outcome

• Enhance understanding of the role of the teacher as curricularist in the classroom and
school

Take Off

What specific roles do teachers play as a curricularist? Should they do these roles?

This lesson will bring all of you to an enhanced understanding and realization of the
multifaceted roles of the teacher which relate to the curriculum. Let us find out!

Look at the words inside the box. Read each one of them. Which one describes the
teacher as a curricularist? Circle the word.

Exciting

Facilitating

Knowing

Planning

Frustrating

Growing

Initiating

Growing

Evaluating Innovating

Broadening

Building

Rewarding
Believing

Recommending

Showing

Copying

Are you aware that the teacher's role in school is very complex?

Teachers do a seriés of interrelated actions about curriculum, instruction, assessment,

evaluation, teaching and learning. A classroom teacher is involved with curriculum
continuously all day. But very seldom has a teacher been described as curricularist.

Curricularists in the past, are referred only to those who developed curriculum theories.
According to the study conducted by Sandra Hayes

1991) the most influential curricularist in America include John Dewey, Ralph Tyler,
Hilda Taba and Franklin Bobbit. You will learn more of them in the later part of the
module.
Content Focus

In this lesson, we will start using the word curricularist to describe a professional who is
a curriculum specialist (Hayes, 1991; Ornstein & Hunkins, 2004; Hewitt, 2006). A
person who is involved in curriculum knowing, writing, planning, implementing,
evaluating, innovating, and initiating may be designated as curricularist. A TEACHER'S
role is broader and inclusive of other functions and so a teacher is a curricularist.

So what does a TEACHER do to deserve the label curricularist?

Let us look at the different roles of the teacher in the classroom and in. the school. The
classroom is the first place of curricular engagement.

The first school experience sets the tone to understand the meaning of schooling
through the interactions of learners and teachers that will lead to learning. Hence,
curriculum is at the heart of schooling.

Let us describe the teacher as a curricularist.

The teacher as a curricularist... •

1. knows the curriculum. Learning begins with knowing.

The teacher as a learner starts with knowing about the curriculum, the subject
matter or the content. As a teacher, one has to master what are included in the
curriculum. It is acquiring academic knowledge both formal (disciplines, logic)
or informal (derived from experiences, vicarious, and unintended). It is the
 mastery of the subject matter.
(KNOWER)
2. writes the curriculum. A classroom teacher takes record of knowledge
concepts, subject matter or content. These need to be written or preserved.
The teacher writes books, modules, laboratory manuals, instructional guides,
and reference materials in paper or electronic media as a curriculum writer or
reviewer. (WRITER)
3. plans the curriculum. A good curriculum has to be planned It is the role of the
teacher to make a yearly, monthly or daily plan of the curriculum. This will
serve as a guide in the implementation of the curriculum. The teacher takes
into consideration several factors in planning a curriculum.
These factors include the learners, the support material, time, subject matter or
content, the desired outcomes, the context of the learners among others. By
doing this, the teacher becomes a curriculum planner. (PLANNER)
4. initiates the curriculum. In cases where the curriculum is recommended to the
schools from Deped, ched, TESDA, UNESCO, UNICEF or other educational
agencies for improvement of quality education me teacher is obliget i
implement it. Implementation of a new curriculum requires the open
mindedness of the teacher, and the full belief that the curriculum will enhance
learning. There will be many constraints and difficulties in doing things first or
leading, however, a transformative teacher will never hesitate to try something
novel and relevant. (INITIATOR)
5. innovates the curriculum. Creativity and innovation are hallmarks of an
excellent teacher. A curriculum is always dynamic, hence it keeps on changing.
From the content, strategies, ways of doing, blocks of time, ways of evaluating,
kinds of students and skills of teachers, one cannot find a single eternal
curriculum that would perpetually fit. A good teacher, therefore, innovates the
curriculum and thus becomes a curriculum innovator. (INNOVATOR)
6. implements the curriculum. The curriculum that remains recommended or
written will never serve its purpose.
Somebody has to implement it. As mentioned previously, at the heart of
schooling is the curriculum. It is this role where the teacher becomes the
curriculum implementor. An implementor gives life to the curriculum plan. The
teacher is at the height of an engagement with the learners, with support
materials in order to achieve the desired outcome.
It is where teaching, guiding, facilitating skills of the teacher are expected to
the highest level. It is here where teaching as a science and as an art will be
observed. It is here, where all the elements of the curriculum will-come into
play. The success of a recommended, well written and planned curriculum
depends on the implementation.
(IMPLEMENTOR)
7. evaluates the curriculum. How can one determine if the desired learning
outcomes have been achieved? Is the curriculum working? Does it bring the
desired results. What do outcomes reveal? Are the learners achieving? Are
there some practices that should be modified? Should the curriculum be
 modified, terminated or continued? These are some few questions that need
the help of a curriculum evaluator. That person is the teacher.

The seven different roles are those which a responsible teacher does in the classroom
everyday! Doing these multi-faceted work qualifies a teacher to be a curricularist.

To be a teacher is to be a curricularist even if a teacher may not equal the likes of John
Dewey, Ralph Tyler, Hilda Taba, of Franklin Bobbit. As a curricularist, a teacher will be
knowing, writing, implementing, innovating, initiating and evaluating the curriculum in
the school and classrooms just like the role models and advocates in curriculum and
curriculum development who have shown the way.