Curriculum Design There Is No

Curriculum Design

There is no single, agreed-upon definition for curriculum design amongst educators. Ralph Tyler (1950) suggests that curriculum design involve asking the right questions when structuring the different course content of a school. These questions are: "What educational purposes should the school seek to attain? What educational experiences can be provided that are likely to attain these purposes? How can these educational experiences be effectively organized? How can we determine whether these purposes are being attained?" (Hlynka, 2005) These questions can be easily turned into four steps: define the purpose of the curriculum, design the experiences students will have to meet this purpose, organize these experiences in an appropriate manner and evaluate the success of these experiences in achieving the purpose. An alternative model is offered in the form of the Heinich, Molenda, Russell and Smaldino acronym ASSURE: "Analyze learners, State objectives, Select methods, media and materials, Utilize, Require learner participation, Evaluate" (Hlynka, 2005).

Both methods suggest that the broadest definition of curriculum design involves goal setting, selecting the right series of methods and materials to achieve these goals for a specific body of students, and then finding a means for evaluating the success of the teachers, students, and methods at the end of the learning experience. Curriculum design is adding methodology to the madness of the daily learning environment in the classroom.

Ultimately, setting the learning objectives of a particular curriculum involves answering the following questions: "What do you want the student to be able to do and know after successfully completing the module? Which of the outcomes are essential? If a student was not able to do or know a particular thing would the student fail the module? Check whether the outcomes are assessable" ("Learning Objectives," 2004). A curriculum designer must consider the nature of the students involved, the abilities and resources of the instructors, the objectives of the students, instructors, and the school and state, as well as take into consideration the research being conducted in the field of education when setting such goals. What must the student know after the year is done that he or she did know before?

Ideally, the best way to create an effective curriculum design is to create a community of learning, where teachers can pool their resources, and thus discuss what they have learned as educators with other educators. Making principals and school administrators involved in the process along with parents creates additional support and potential for learning reinforcement at home and in creates greater cohesiveness in terms of the school's overall learning environment. While any number of step-by-step curricular models exists for individual teachers, since the underlining principle of all curriculum design is to impart skills to students that build upon previous units of learning, it is better that there exist some continuity in curriculum planning between teachers. Also, if all teachers take a similar approach there is a greater chance that learning outcomes will build on one another, throughout a student's educational career.