Issues and trends in healthcare curriculum design

¶ … Curriculum Design

ISSUES AND TRENDS IN CURRICULUM DESIGN

The obj3ective of this study is to review and research issues and trends in curriculum design relating to healthcare and to elaborate on recommendations dealing with the issues and in view of the trends.

Gone are the days in education when the issues were simple and the lessons followed course since in today's society there are healthcare issues such as AIDS, premarital sex and needed birth control measures as well as other non-sexually related diseases including cancer and other health issues. The curriculum for healthcare education is a touchy issues because of the various religion, political, social, and familial values that exist in a diverse society with many races, ethnicities, and backgrounds. For this reason, the educator in healthcare must understand the volatile ground on which curriculum design may tread and the various view of parents, communities, as well as religious and political leaders in the community.

I. The Literature

Albert (2007) reports that he medical education literature describes 4 main elements of curriculum development that should be used: (1) curriculum design, which comprises the content and organization; (2) instructional design, which comprises teaching and learning strategies; (3) the assessment of learners; and (4) evaluation of curriculum." (p.1) The last and critical element as noted by Albert is the evaluation of the curriculum. Historically and traditionally the content of curriculum has been teacher driven most particularly becaus3e teacher "clearly have an interest and a stake in delivering what they feel to be a high quality product." (Albert, 2007, p. 1) it was noted by Saxton and Olsen (1994) the health educators have "historically advocated both health education and healthy environments for students" and specifically noted is that health care education in the 1960s was focused on the exploration of the "status of student's health knowledge and behavior in grades 6, 9 and 12.." (Albert, 1994, p.2 ) It is reported that there were 17,000 students from 36 U.S. states that participated and conclusions were shocking including that home life did not provide encouragement for the practice of good health habits and the instructional methods were not effective. In addition parents and the community were highly resistive to specific topics about and there was no coordination of the health education program at all levels of the school and moreover, professional preparation of staff was very poor. The work of Stevenson (2010) is notable in that Stevenson share the facts in the work entitled "Educational Trends Shaping School Planning, Design, Cosntr7uction, Funding and Operation that "Families living in poverty often have much higher incidences of: a) parents being under-educated; b) only one parent living at home; c) few informal educational resources or opportunities for learning available at home; d) limited health care, with little or none being preventive; and e) low expectations regarding school completion (p.3 ) What this all means is that parents who had failed to receive proper health education are very poorly prepared to teach their children good health practices and this means more and more children are arriving at school without having practiced good hygiene, who do not know the important of washing their hands, covering their mouth when they cough and that are poorly educated on sexually related health care issues, proper nutrition, practicing good care of their oral health and many children likely arrive unclean, experiencing poor nutritional intake and making students less apt to pay attention in school. These issues in combination with the more tenuous issues of designing health care curriculum results in teachers, educators, and curriculum designers unsure which direction to head to ensure that these students receive the information that they require to navigate through the world society safely and to ensure that their poor healthcare practices do not affect other children throughout the school and community.

Summary and Conclusion

Today's healthcare curriculum lessons can easily be supported with online tutors and learning sessions that tie in with classroom learning and that educates parents, religious, political and community members about what is being taught in the classroom overcoming the fear of the unknown that crates dissent and tension in the communities and the diverse society in which students and their parents exist.

In short health care in today's classrooms must be interesting, informative, useful, and motivational and must be something that students can apply in their lives not only personally but in their families and communities. Rote learning from the view of the healthcare curriculum in today's society is a waste of resources and precious time especially when so many critical healthcare issues are the reality in the lives of students, their families and community. Curriculum designer needs to step forward and make healthcare education something that students look forward to because their learning is stimulated and they are able to help their families to a better and more healthy life by applying their classroom learning both at home and in the world around them.