Selecting Curriculum Content

Selecting Curriculum Content

Curricularists must determine what
knowledge students need in order to succeed.
What knowledge is of most worth in the
global and digital world?
2 obvious truths:
Useful knowledge is both culturally and
historically specific
The skill level for using selected knowledge varies
with individuals interests and needs.
Selecting Curriculum Content
The challenge: schools are responsible for
creating progammes of study for a local
community, a national society, a global
society; educators are selecting content for
anticipated, imagined, emerging, expanding
and contracting societies.
Selecting content from 2 worlds: real and
virtual.
Selecting Curriculum Content
There are many dominant cultures that are
constantly interacting.
Numerous learning styles.
Conceptions of Content
Curriculum planning must select content that
enables students to learn the most.
Supply info that relates to students concerns.
Contents should be organised -> students find
the info useful and meaningful.
Curriculum planners must take into account
how well it addresses students cognitive,
social and psychological dimensions.
Organisation of Content
Within any knowledge domain, concepts are
organised into specialised networks.
Content can be organised in logical,
psychological, political, or practical terms.
Organisation of Content
Curriculum planners who:
use logical orientation organise content according to
certain rules and concepts.
use psychological organisation focus on how students learn
or process info.
behaviourists think that content should be selected and
organised so that correct responses are reinforced.
Cognitivists think that content should prompt students to
analyse, hypothesize, investigate, identify patterns, and
draw conclusions.
In terms of political aspect, content should be sequenced
so that emphasis is given to topics and people important
to various pressure groups.
Organisation of Content
Content should be organised from the
concrete to the abstract.
Practicality- cost effectiveness, eg. the
expense of structuring the content in a
particular way.

Criteria for Selecting Content
Regardless of their curriculum design
preferences or their philosophical
orientations, curriculum planners must apply
criteria in choosing curriculum content.
Criteria for Selecting Content
Self-sufficiency
learners can actualise their potential and
crystallise their identities.
furnishing content that enables learners to
connect their intellectual, emotional, and spiritual
selves.
allow learners to transform themselves into more
complete individual and social beings.
Criteria for Selecting Content
Significance
Content to be learnt is significant which means it
can contribute to the basic ideas, conceptsm
principles, generalisations and so on of the overall
aims of the curriculum.
Considering the development of particular
learning abilities, skills, processes and attitudes
formation.
Criteria for Selecting Content
Validity
The authenticity of the content selected.
Validity must be verified at the initial selection of
curriculum content and it must be checked at
regular intervals through the duration of the
curricular programme to determine if content
originally valid.
It means something is either accurate or
inaccurate.
Criteria for Selecting Content
Interest
The content is meaningful to learners life.
The childrens interest should determine the
curriculum.
To allow for pupils maturity, their prior
exeperiences, the educational and social value of
their interests and the way they are expected to
interact within society.
Must contribute to the welfare of the pupils.
Criteria for Selecting Content
Utility
The usefulness of the content.
To those fovoring the subject-centered design is
often judged in terms of how the content learnt
enables pupils to use that knowledge in job
situations and other activities.
To those favoring the learner-centered design is
related to attain meaning in their life.
Problem-centered content has direct application
to ongoing life.
Criteria for Selecting Content
Utility
Two types:
Current utility pupils must learn for immediate
application to be successful in their current lives.
Future utility getting pupils to be futurists
themselves, to engage in futures planning, to assess
future consequences of current and emerging trends.
Criteria for Selecting Content
Learnability
relates to the optimal placement and appropriate
organisation and sequencing of content.
Feasibility
The allocation time, the available resources, the
expertise of current staff, the nature of the
political climate and so on. (page 207)
Selecting Curriculum Experiences
Selecting Curriculum Experiences
Must consider not only content, but also how
pupils experience that content.
Must consider instructional strategies and
educational activities.
Purpose- impart knowledge, enhance pupils
values and attitudes, abilities to think critically
and creatively, and desire to learn individually
and collaboratively.
Selecting Curriculum Experiences
Should nurture the enhancement of
intellectual activities in both hemispheres of
the brain.
Eg. The sequential, literal, functioanl, textual
and analytic
Stimulate pupils excitement in adapting to
and managing complexity, celebrating
uncertainty and rewarding intellectual risk
taking will serve pupils.
Selecting Curriculum Experiences
Should go from didactic teacher presentation
to teacher-student, student-student, and
student-outside expert interactions.
With such balancing, pupils attain a greater
understanding of themselves as individual
pupils and members of groups, both local and
worldwide.
Selecting Curriculum Experiences
Educators and curriculum planners are striving
for best practice and attempting to attain high
standards.
Must realise that content and experiences are
inseparable.
Selecting Educational Environments
The learning environment is a complex, living
reflection of a teachers values

An educational environment is a
representation of values from communities of
persons, seen and unseen.
Selecting Educational Environments
An educational environment represents a milieu
in which teachers andstudents engage in mutual
communication about content and mutually
participate with educational materials and
technological programmes to attain meaningful
educational experience.
Eg. Children who experience a creative
environment are much more likely to be
stimulated, to realise their potential, and to be
excited about learning.
Selecting Educational Environments
An environment must be arranged both physically
and conceptually to challenge the breadth and
depth of pupils abilities and interests.
An environment must be created and
orchestrated so that pupils feel intellectually safe;
so that purposeful pupils activity is stimulated.
A classroom is a biosphere as an ecosystem;
completely natural.
Selecting Educational Environments
The educational environment must develop an
ecocentric ethic; a school particular culture; the
relationship among all the people within the
school and outside the school.
Eg. In an ecocentric school, pupils interact with
institutions and social practices.
The educational environment should be
considered and developed so that pupils acquire
knowledge and understanding at deep
conceptual levels explicitly and implicitly.
What are some major challenges to educators in
determining and selecting curricular content?
Useful knowledge is both culturally and historically specific
The skill level for using selected knowledge varies with
individuals interests and needs
Curricular content may vary from one society to another.
The schools are responsible for creating programmes of
study for a local community, a global society (world
societies)
Content are being selected for anticipated, imagined,
emerging, expanding and contracting societies.
Content selection is chosen from 2 world- real and virtual
worlds

What are the central criteria to consider when
selecting curriculum content? Curriculum
experiences?
Self-sufficiency
Significance
Validity
Interest
Utility
Learnability
Feasibility
Curriculum experiences?
Based on instructional strategies (eg. Inquiry strategies, lecture,
discussion and demonstration) and educational activities.
Capable to impart knowledge and enhance pupils values and
attitudes and the abilities to think critically and creatively.
Capable to nurture the enhancement of intellectual activities in
both hemispheres of the brain.
Capable to stimulate pupils excitement in adapting to and
managing complexity, celebrating uncertainty and rewarding
intellectual risk taking.
Should go from didactic teacher presentation to teacher-
student, student-student, and student-outside expert
interactions.
Why is it necessary to consider carefully
educational environments?
It is a representation of values from communities of
persons, seen and unseen.
In order to attain meaningful educational experience.
For pupils to be stimulated, to realise their potential
and to be excited about learning.
For pupils to feel intellectually safe.
So that the purposeful pupils activity is stimulated.