recent dimensions in curriculum development

RECENT DIMENSIONS IN CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT

THE CONCEPTUAL APPROACH

ROSE NANNETTE J. SAN JUANMA Mathematics

The recent dimensions in curriculum development consist of a number of

innovations relevant to the curriculum.

These are the new ideas designed to meet the changing needs and

conditions made since the establishment of a modern formal

educational system in the Philippines in the early 1900s.

These innovations are:Integrative method of the 1950s and the conceptual and process approaches of

today patterned after educational policies and practices in the US.

The other innovations are results of assessment of Philippine needs and

problems such as the community school movement, bilingualism, and the use of the

vernacular as the medium of instruction, the barrio high schools, and the work education

program.

Directions in Curriculum Reform1) Attention is drawn farther away from the teacher in the

direction of the learner.

2) The emphasis is upon the learner and only indirectly and secondarily

upon subjects, materials and activities.

3) Whatever is taught must be understood by the learner to be in some definite manner vitally

related to the achievement of his purpose.

4) The organization of the curriculum should begin with vital concerns of the present and relate these concerns with

the past as the past is recognized as essential to an understanding of definite

concerns of the present.

5) The organization of the curriculum should lead the

learner to project the broad next steps from the events of the present and immediate past.

6) Textbooks become source materials rather than ends in

themselves.

7) The gradual elimination of the artificial barriers that set off one subject from another in present

curriculum practice.

8) The broad organization of materials and activities into unit situation most likely to result in

significant learning experience on the part of the pupil.

9) More thorough integration of the life of the school with that of

the home and the community.10) The recognition that the outside

class activities of the school are often more significant for learning than the traditionally recognized

activities.

11) The experience approach requires the teacher to draw upon a wide range of varied

resources in order to meet the different learning situations

arising in the normal life of the learner.

12) Teachers, to contribute in maximal degree to the education of the pupil, must know intimately the home and community environment

of the learner.

13) Teachers must be versatile in the use of adoption of different

methods to meet varied learning situations.

14) Teachers must have a much more rigorous background of

training both in its extent and its breadth.

15) The teacher must have experienced life broadly and

deeply to be a guide and interpreter of life.

16) Teachers must have a more practical internship experience

similar to that of the physician to meet the demands of the new

curriculum.

17) Every teacher must be well grounded in the broad area

known as the social sciences. 18) Primary emphasis is drawn from academic

scholarship to pedagogical and academic scholarship.

19) There is a move from the involvement of only academic-

scholars and teachers to the involvement of all levels of

decision-makers in the schools, including parents, students and

scholars, but with special emphasis on the teachers’

participation.

20) There is a move from child-, society-, or discipline-centered

curriculum to the total curriculum and humanistic

curriculum.

21) There is a move from selling prepackaged programs

to truly experimental programs.

22) Focus is drawn from the means of education to the ends,

aims, objectives of education.

23) There is a move from the tendency to teach everything to

establishing priorities.

24) Focus is drawn from the gifted and the deprived students

to all students.

25) There is a move from offering one course at a time to higher

education and adult education as well.

26) There is a move from mere in-service training of teachers to continuing career development

of teachers.

THE CONCEPTUAL APPROACHThe phenomena of knowledge

explosion, obsolescence, changing complex world, wide range of abilities in

the classroom have led to the formulation of this approach in

education.

This approach is a method of organizing the curriculum around

basic concepts and generalization.


Concept is the categorization or classification of things, events, or

ideas.


The relationship and interrelationship of concepts result into generalizations.


Structure refers to the foundational concepts and

generalizations of a discipline.


Since concepts and generalizations are abstractions

that grow from one’s experiences, the process of

conceptualizing is subjective; it is personal to the learner.


Conceptualizing means examining and reflecting on

similar experiences in order to identify their common elements

and build an orderly image of them.


The strategy preferred in the conceptual approach may be generally described as “inquiry” which is mainly premised on

the idea that due to the fast turnover of knowledge, it is better to stress the

“how to learn” rather than “what to learn.”


David Kellum affirms that the supreme accomplishment of the inquiry approach is that it trains

students to think and it gets them to the habit of thinking.


The inquiry approach views the learner as an active thinker – seeking, probing, processing data from his environment toward a variety of destinations along paths best suited to his own mental

characteristics.

THE CONCEPTUAL APPROACHCarpenter comments on the inquiry

method in this way:

It rejects passiveness as an ingredient of effective learning and the concept of mind as a reservoir for the storage of

knowledge presented through expository instruction directed toward a

pre-determined, close end.


method in this way:

The inquiry method seeks to avoid the dangers of note memorization and

verbalization as well as the hazard of fostering dependency in citizens as

learners and thinkers.


method in this way:

The appropriateness of the inquiry method for the Filipinos according to

Dr. Leonardo de la Cruz:


The inquiry mode of learning is probably even more imperative for Philippine schools, since only about 55.8% of Filipino youth stay in school up to the 6th

grade, only about 25.3% manage to reach high school, and only about 11.5% complete college. Therefore, the sooner Filipino children are taught how to continue to

think and learn by themselves, the more self-reliant Filipinos could be harnessed by our schools.

The conceptual approach concerns not merely cognitive but also the affective side.


It leads the learner into the realm of valuing and attitude formation and/or

reformation.It aims at the characterization level, the stage

where learners can be said to have internalized the value and are not merely professing about the value they have chosen, but are behaving

accordingly.

Benjamin Bloom (1956)


developed a classification of levels of intellectual behavior in learning. This

taxonomy contained three overlapping domains: the cognitive, psychomotor, and

affective.

Critical thinking involves logical thinking and reasoning including skills such as comparison,

classification, sequencing, cause/effect, patterning, webbing, analogies, deductive

and inductive reasoning, forecasting, planning, hypothesizing, and critiquing.


Creative thinking involves creating something new or original. It involves the skills of

flexibility, originality, fluency, elaboration, brainstorming, modification, imagery, associative thinking, attribute listing,

metaphorical thinking, forced relationships. The aim of creative thinking is to stimulate

curiosity and promote divergence.


Bloom’s scheme


CHARACTERIZATION

ORGANIZATION

VALUING

RESPONDING

RECEIVING

The experiential method in the conceptual approach is based on three basic educational

principles, as stated by Pine and Horne.


Learning is change as a result of an experience which is personally meaningful and relevant to the individual.

Learning is both an intellectual and an emotional process.

Learning is a cooperative and collaborative process.

Fritz Perls describes this process beautifully when he affirmed:

Learning is discovery. There is no other means of effective learning. You can tell a

child a thousand times that the stove is hot. It doesn’t help. The child has to discover for

himself.


The conceptual approach aims at developing a

thinking-feeling-acting man.

Reference:

Andres, Tomas Quintin D. and Francisco, Felizardo Y.,

Curriculum Development in the Philippine Setting, Philippine

Printing Press, Q.C., 1989

Thank you.God bless.