Curriculum Development? All you need to know

 

Review of curriculum development

There should be an attentive consideration from concerned education partners when the curriculum development in higher education is being developed since higher education covers the enhancement of studying of science, technology, culture and society with high capacity, knowledge, skills, morality, inventiveness and the spirit of entrepreneurship for the socio-economic development of the country (GmbH, June 2007). If not, unpredictable and unbelievable negative consequences will happen to current community and it lasts to next young generations

 Influent factors on curriculum development

According to Owen Hicks, in the UK the most progressive development incurriculum in higher education is the process in which a network of practitioners who believe that designing a curriculum is a creative process in which knowledge, skill,imagination and passion of a subject, come together. This means that such process needs to seek and encourage students in active process-based learning.

Figure 1: The influent factors on curriculum development. Flinder Uni, (2010).

Figure 2 is the influential factors on curriculum development. There are many factors that potentially influence curriculum development. Those potential factors are what will be in the curriculum (content/input) and the process of how to develop curriculum and transfer knowledge to students

The vision of the institution plays an important role in directing the curriculum of course in its institution. Principally, the content of each course needs to align with the vision in which policy and regulation are stated.

It explicitly demonstrates that what influences the content or what should be considered in the input of curriculum are the vision of university/higher education institution, the students’ background and capacity, the objective of course/ major, the social perspective, and educational theory. These are vital components in shaping the content of the curriculum.

The second influential factor is students’ background. The curriculum developer should understand the background of students. The more they need the existing knowledge, attitudes, and orientation of students, the more effective their content will be. The level of the content and the background of students are very important to build the strong learning and retention of their academic performance with good merit. The separate discipline of the academic course for each major is also important for students. They need to know the assessment criteria and extra discipline for a specific major.

Another significant factor of curriculum development is the social perspective. This element strongly influences the content of the curriculum since they are the future employers of the graduates. They also project the skills and professional demands for today and the future. The curriculum needs to consider the context and perspective of society by inviting them to involve in the process of curriculum development or study the current social condition and take the social demands and expectation put into the content

The last important element that influences the content of the curriculum is educational theory. According to Cohen, L.M (1999), there are four general or world philosophies of education. They are idealism, realism, pragmatism, and existentialism. Hence, the content of the curriculum will vary based on the theory that is going to be used by developers. The education theory is slightly related to the teaching methodology. The curriculum developer can adopt theories of learning in different approaches too. The selection of learning styles is different by the context of students, teacher, content, and environment. Even those four philosophies of education are significant indicators for curriculum development, the method that will be used for teaching and learning will base on the content and vice versa.