Curriculum: Philosophical Foundations

• Curriculum is built upon philosophical, psychological, historical, and sociological foundations.

Philosophical Foundations

• Philosophy of education examines the nature, aims, and problems of education.
• A philosophy or strong belief around schooling and the classroom environment is a must for teachers, educators, policy makers, etc.
• Philosophy addresses fundamental questions regarding the purpose of schools, the importance of subjects, learning objectives, teaching methods, and desired outcomes.

Perennialism

• Aims to cultivate rational thought and intellect.
• Teachers guide students to think critically.
• Focuses on classical subjects, literary analysis, history, and geography with enduring curriculum.
• Employs classic literature such as the Bible, Koran and Liberal Arts.

Essentialism

• Promotes intellectual growth for learners to become competent.
• Teachers are authoritative figures in their subject areas.
• Focuses on essential skills (3Rs) and subjects.
• Emphasizes back-to-basics, excellence in education, and cultural literacy.

Progressivism

• Aims to promote democratic social living.
• Teachers facilitate growth and development.
• Focuses on interdisciplinary, learner-centered subjects and outcomes-based education.
• Promotes equal opportunities, contextualized curriculum, and humanistic education.

Social Reconstructionism

• Aims to improve and reconstruct society through education for change.
• Teachers act as agents of change and reform.
• Concentrates on the present and future educational landscape.
• Emphasizes school and curricular reform, global education, collaboration, convergence, standards, and competencies.

Historical Foundations

• Curriculum development can be understood in terms of chronological development.

Franklin Bobbit (1876-1956)

• Initiated the curriculum development movement.
• Curriculum is a science that emphasizes students’ needs.
• Objectives and activities should be grouped together when tasks are clarified.

Werret Charters (1875-1956)

• Considered curriculum a science that emphasizes students’ needs.
• Objectives and activities should align.
• Subject matter should relate to the objectives.

William Kilpatrick (1875-1952)

• Curricula should consist of purposeful and child-centered activities.
• The purpose of the curriculum is child development and growth.
• He introduced the project method, where teacher and student plan activities together.
• Curriculum should develop social relationships and small group instruction.

Harold Rugg (1886-1960)

• Curriculum should develop the whole child and be child-centered.
• Curriculum should produce outcomes with objectives and related learning activities.
• He emphasized social studies and suggested that teachers plan the curriculum in advance.

Hollis Caswell (1901-1989)

• Curriculum should be organized around social functions, organized knowledge, and learner’s interests.
• Curriculum, instruction, and learning should be interrelated.
• Curriculum should be a set of experiences, and subject matter should be developed around social functions and learners’ interests.

Ralph Tyler (1902-1994)

• Curriculum is a science and an extension of a school’s philosophy and based on students’ needs and interests.
• Curriculum is always related to instruction.
• Subject matter is organized in terms of knowledge, skills, and values.
• The curriculum process emphasizes problem-solving, and aims to educate generalists.

Hilda Taba (1902-1967)

• Contributed to the theoretical and pedagogical foundations of concepts development and critical thinking in social studies curriculum.
• Helped lay the foundations for a diverse student population.

Peter Oliva (1992-2012)

• Claimed curriculum change is a cooperative endeavor.
• Teachers and curriculum specialists constitute the professional core of planners.
• Significant improvement is achieved through group activity.

Psychological Foundations

• Psychological foundations include behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism, and humanism.
• Psychology provides a basis to understand the teaching-learning process.
• Psychological principles address how to organize curriculum to enhance learning and determine the optimal level of student participation.

Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)

• Father of Classical Conditioning Theory (S-R Theory).
• Training during early years is crucial.
• S-R (stimulus-response) Theory is a foundation of indoctrination.

Edward Lee Thorndike (1874-1949)

• Championed Connectionism Theory.
• Proposed the three laws of learning: readiness, exercise, and effect.
• Specific stimulus yields a specific response.

Robert Gagne (1916-2002)

• Proposed Hierarchical Learning Theory.
• Learning should follow a hierarchy.
• Behavior is based on prerequisite conditions.
• Introduced tasking in the formulation of objectives.

Jean Piaget (1896-1980)

• Cognitive Development Theory includes stages from birth to maturity: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operations, and formal operations.
• Keys to learning include assimilation, accommodation, and equilibration.

Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934)

• Developed Sociocultural Theory.
• Stressed cultural transmission and development.
• Children are able to perform certain cognitive actions prior to arriving at a developmental stage.
• Learning precedes development.
• Pedagogy creates learning processes that lead to development and the child is an active agent in their educational process.

Howard Gardner

• Proposed the theory of Multiple Intelligences: linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic.
• Humans have different ways of processing information that are relatively independent.

Daniel Goleman

• Emotional Intelligence (EQ) affects action.
• Emotional Intelligence includes self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management.

Humanistic Psychology

• Learning involves the “wholeness” of the problem.
• Humans respond to an organization or pattern of stimuli, not isolated stimuli.
• Learning is complex which means learners analyze problems, discriminate between essential and non-essential data, and perceive relationships.

Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)

• Advanced the Self-Actualization Theory and classic theory of human needs.
• A child whose needs are not met will not be interested in acquiring knowledge.
• He put importance on human emotions, based on love and trust.
• The goal of education is to produce a healthy and happy learner who can accomplish, grow, and actualize their human self.

Carl Rogers

• Developed Nondirective and Therapeutic learning.
• Established counseling procedures and methods for facilitating learning.
• Children’s perceptions influence their learning and behavior in class.
• Curriculum should focus on process, not product; personal needs, not subject matter; and psychological meaning, not cognitive scores.

Social Foundations of Curriculum

• Examines the relationship between school and society.
• Society serves as a source and agent of change.
• Knowledge serves as an agent of change.

John Dewey (1859-1952)

• Focuses on the topics of schools and civil society and reconstruction to experimental intelligence and plurality.

Alvin Toffler

• Believed that knowledge should prepare students for the future.
• Suggested that technology would enable parents to teach prescribed curriculum from home (homeschooling), and foresaw schools and students working creatively, collaboratively, and independently of their age.

Elements of Curriculum

• Include curriculum intent, content, learning experiences, and evaluation.

Curriculum Intent

• The direction curriculum developers wish to take.
• Includes aims, goals, and objectives in curriculum documents.

Aims

• Broad statements of social or educational expectations.

Goals

• Statements more specific than aims.
• General concepts, skills, and values to be learned in the curriculum.

Objectives

• Specific learning outcomes containing what specific concepts, skills, and values students should learn.
• Typically used in making decisions about instruction.

Content

• Includes values, concepts, or skills for learners to learn.

Learning Experiences

• Instructional strategies for curriculum implementation.
• Activities, strategies, methods, or approaches useful in implementing the curriculum or teaching the content.

Evaluation

• Ways and tools used to evaluate whether curriculum intents were realized.
• Also used to evaluate student performance after completing the curriculum.

Sources of Curriculum

• Tyler (1949) identified subject matter, society, and learners as major curriculum sources.
• These sources should be considered to identify the four elements of curriculum: goals, content, learning experiences, and evaluation.

Discipline or Subject Matter

• Understanding the nature of the subject matter is important to give knowledge and skills essential to the discipline and helps in selecting and designing curriculum contents.

Society

• Understanding society is important in curriculum development.
• Provides understanding of needs, demands, and problems of society.
• Gives available resources that can be used in development and implementation.
• Provides information about the context the curriculum will be used in increasing relevance and responsiveness.

Learner

• Understanding the nature of learners is important: needs, nature, and learner and thinking styles.
• Also important to be aware of the issues and problems the learners face.
• Learners are the direct subjects of the school curriculum, thus one of the curriculum sources for selecting learning experiences.

Curriculum Design

• A purposeful, deliberate, and systematic organization of curriculum.
• Involves planning activities, readings, lessons, and assessments that achieve educational goals.
• Centers on the teacher’s practice based on individual needs in the classroom.

When designing curriculum teachers must identify

• What will be done.
• Who will do it.
• What schedule to follow.
• The ultimate goal being student learning.
• Curriculum should have coherent course sequencing and structure designed to achieve intended learning outcomes.

Subject-Centered Design

• Prioritizes transmission of knowledge and skills within a specific discipline as a more traditional approach.
• Revolves around established bodies of knowledge dictated by standardized tests and frameworks.
• Aligned with academic expectations.
• Gives a structured framework ensuring students encounter key concepts.
• Teacher dominated and may neglect student needs and interests.
• Emphasizes content acquisition over broader learning goals.

Learner-Centered Design

• Puts the student at the forefront.
• Adapts to individual learning styles, interests, and prior knowledge.
• Has increased student engagement, motivation, and ownership of their learning journey.
• Fosters development of critical thinking, problem-solving, and self-directed learning skills.
• Requires more work for teacher planning and differentiation.
• Lacks a strong subject-based structure raising concerns about knowledge gaps.

Problem-Centered Design

• Presents real-world problems and challenges as the starting point for learning, drawing upon knowledge from various disciplines to find solutions.
• Cultivates critical thinking, collaboration, and real-world application of knowledge.
• Promotes interdisciplinary learning and engagement with contemporary issues.
• Creating authentic and effective learning experiences can be demanding and require careful scaffolding to ensure student success.

Integrating Approaches for Holistic Learning

• Effective curriculum design often lies in finding synergies between different educational approaches.
• Subject-centered frameworks provide a necessary knowledge base.
• Learner-centered strategies can ensure meaningful application.
• Problem-centered activities challenge students to synthesize information and apply it to real-world scenarios, fostering deeper understanding and transferable skills.
• The most effective curriculum designs are flexible, responsive, and tailored to the specific needs and contexts of learners.

Guidelines in Curriculum Design

• Curriculum design committee should involve teachers, etc.
• School’s vision, mission, goals and objectives should be reviewed and used as bases for curriculum design.
• The needs and interests of the learners, in particular, and the society in general, should be considered.
• Alternative curriculum designs should consider advantages and disadvantages in terms of costs, scheduling, class size, facilities, and personnel required.

Curriculum Influences

• In addition to the curriculum sources, Stark and Lattuca (1997) identified external, internal, and organizational factors that influence curriculum development.
• Identified curriculum influences affect curriculum at the school level.

Students

• The most influential factor in designing the implemented curriculum.
• Students have different interests, needs, talents, abilities, learning styles, and thinking preferences.
• Many students want varied learning experiences and practical application of lessons.
• Students have different cultures, religious affiliations, beliefs, language, and socio-economic statuses impacting teachers designs and lessons.

School’s Vision, Mission, and Core Values

• The fundamental bases in developing curriculum impacting goals/objectives, content, learning experiences, and evaluation.

Admission and Retention Policies

• Set standards for student conduct until graduation giving guidelines and order for curriculum.

Faculty Members

• Bring educational background, experiences, expertise, personal, professional, and political views.
• Teachers are expected to be experts in the content and pedagogy.

School Administrators and Board of Trustees

• Provide curriculum leadership, administer curriculum planning, implementation, and evaluation and serve as curriculum and instructional leaders.

Accrediting Agencies

• Set standards for curriculum, instruction, faculty, and facilities and influence how curricular programs are governed.
• They determine the quality of courses offered in an institution.
• Examples Include: ACSCU-AAI, PAASCU, and AACCUP.

Government Policies and Their Agencies

• Identified government policies and agencies as most influential in curriculum planning and development.
• The Department of Education issues Department Orders (DOs) and memoranda that serve as guides.
• For tertiary, the CHED prescribes the courses, course credits, and descriptions and faculty qualifications, facilities, and other requirements.

Market Demand

• It is imperative that students are prepared in terms of knowledge, values, and skills to meet the needs and demands of different institutions in the society.

Alumni

• External influences on curriculum development as living testimony of schools and education offered.
• Helpful in donating money to support programs for students, faculty scholarships, professional chairs, facilities, and financing students’ activities.

Media and Information and Communications Technologies (ICT)

• External curriculum influences that allow students and teachers to access information needed.
• Connects to global community through technology and changes how courses are planned and implemented.

Church and Church-Related Agencies

• Play an important role in religious schools and institutions.

School Facilities and Other Resources

• School facilities are very important in the implementation of the curriculum such as classrooms, libraries, laboratories, ICT equipment, dormitories, school clinics, counseling offices, etc.

Students’ Services

• Campus Ministry: spiritual support in sectarian schools.
• Guidance and Counseling Services: professional support for personal and psychological concerns.
• Health Services: health-related services through a clinic with full-time health workers.
• Financial Assistance and Scholarships provide aid.
• Student Affairs Office: guiding and supporting students.

Conclusion

• Responding to curriculum sources and influences helps curriculum workers and developers in planning, developing, and implementing a relevant and responsive curriculum for different learners and schools.
• When evaluating a curriculum, these curriculum sources and influences are looked into and reviewed.

Exploring the philosophical foundations of curriculum, including Perennialism and Essentialism. Philosophy addresses questions about the purpose of schools. Focuses on subjects, learning objectives, teaching methods, and desired outcomes.