The Process of Curriculum Development
Abstract
Childhood obesity has reached epidemic levels in developed countries and is showing no signs of abating. The causes of obesity in adolescence are extremely complex, and therefore approaches to prevention and treatments must be multifaceted. Early adolescence is a developmental period when youth are becoming more independent, are influenced by peers, and are making more decisions related to their own health and lifestyles. The purpose of this article is to describe the development, implementation, and evaluation of a multilevel school-based intervention program for middle school students in the Teen Eating and Activity Mentoring in Schools ...view middle of the document...
320).
* Worthen and Sanders (1987) define curriculum evaluation as “the formal determination of the quality, effectiveness, or value of a programme, product, project, process, objective, or curriculum” (p.22-23).
* Gay (1985) argues that the aim of curriculum evaluation is to identify its weaknesses and strengths as well as problems encountered in implementation; to improve the curriculum development process; to determine the effectiveness of the curriculum and the returns on finance allocated.
* Oliva (1988) defined curriculum evaluation as the process of delineating, obtaining, and providing useful information for judging decision alternatives. The primary decision alternatives to consider based upon the evaluation results are: to maintain the curriculum as is; to modify the curriculum; or to eliminate the curriculum.
Evaluation is a disciplined inquiry to determine the worth of things. ‘Things’ may include programmes, procedures or objects. Generally, research and evaluation are different even though similar data collection tools may be used. The three dimensions on which they may differ are:
* First, evaluation need not have as its objective the generation of knowledge. Evaluation is applied while research tends to be basic.
* Second, evaluation presumably, produces information that is used to make decisions or forms the basis of policy. Evaluation yields information that has immediate use while research need not.
Third, evaluation is a judgement of worth. Evaluation result in value judgements while research need not and some would say should not.
DEFINITION OF CURRICULUM COMPONENTS
Curriculum components are the components that define the parts or segments of curriculum development, of which gives a correct picture of progression from larger ideas to smaller instructional components within the educational lexicon of curriculum development. They are as follows:
Component 1: Curriculum Aims, Goals and Objectives
1. Aims: Elementary, Secondary, and Tertiary
2. Goals: School Vision and Mission
3. Objectives: educational objectives
Domains:
1. Cognitive – knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation
2. Affective – receiving, responding, valuing, organization, characterization
3. Psychomotor – perception, set, guided response, mechanism, complex overt response, adaptation, and origination
Component 2: Curriculum Content or Subject Matter
Information to be learned in school, another term for knowledge ( a compendium of facts, concepts, generalization, principles, theories.
1. Subject-centred view of curriculum: The Fund of human knowledge represents the repository of accumulated discoveries and inventions of man down the centuries, due to man’s exploration of his world
2. Learner-centred view of curriculum: Relates knowledge to the individual’s personal and social world and how he or she defines reality.
Gerome Bruner: “Knowledge is a model we...
