LECTURE NOTE ON CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT IN AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION (AED 605) BY PROF. NICODEMUS OCHANI AGBULU AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION DEPARTMENT UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURE, MAKURDI. 1
OUTLINE - General concept of curriculum - Definition relevance - Aims, Goals and Objectives - Content - Learning experience - Evaluation - Theories of curriculum - Specific concept - Agricultural Education Curriculum 2
The Concept of Curriculum The summation of all activities intra-and extra curricula practices that involves intra-instruction and extra instructional activities that go on in the school system in assist the recipient to attain a set goal. It has to be systematically organized to go wire methods of teaching. The extra curricula activities involve games, religious activities, drama etc. The total document that contains all that will go on so as to ensure achievement of the set goals. Curriculum Intra curriculum Extra curriculum Teaching methods, Techniques Sports, Dance (cultural) Dramatization, Discussing No single definition is all encompassing. Various authors have different definitions. Example, some authors say: 1. Curriculum is the systematic group of course or sequences of subjects and planned experiences required for graduation or certification of learner under the guidance of a teacher in the school. Others say: 2. Curriculum is the totality of experiences of each learner under the influence of the school. 3. Curriculum is a planned and guided learning experiences and intended learning outcome formulated with the systematic reconstruction of knowledge and experience under the auspices of the school for the learners continuous and willful growth in personal social competence i.e. it consists of activities usually in sequence from simple complex encompassing both the cognitive, psychomotor and effective. STRATEGIES FOR CURRICULUM PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT A new trend towards a more comprehensive approach to curriculum definition is to view it in terms of major component. In this direction, there is an order is must be followed for a more dynamically conceived and planned curriculum. This order includes: 1. Diagnosis of need 2. Formulation of objectives 3. selection of content 4. Organisation of content 5. Selection of learning experience 6. Organisation learning experience 7. Determination of what to evaluate and the ways and means of doing it. 3
THE CONCEPT OF AIMS, GOALS AND OBJECTIVES. Objective: An objective is stated capability of a student i.e. an intended learning outcome of a single learning activity. They are stated in terms of students and at different levels as understanding (knowledge) skills (doing) and effects (appreciation); they are commonly specified with action verbs especially the behaviour that are hoped for e.g. to recognize, acquire, understand and appreciate etc. A goal is broader in outlook and objectives. Goals are derived mostly from the needs of the people e.g. the need of the people may to produce more technologist in the country. This may then become the goals of our schools or colleges of technologies and can be achieved by increasing the intake of people or learners offering technical courses in colleges of technology. AIMS: Defined as proposition which may not be easily attainable but not impossible. From this definition it could be inferred that aims are much more general and frequently referred to philosophical issues under the context of the education. They also tend to refer to end-product of the system. E.g. the aim of technical education in Nigeria might be self-reliance in terms of technical manpower needs of the country. The realization of this aim will never be immediate. It entails long term activities and inputs, perhaps in the country s educational system. Like curriculum planning and reconstruction, content selection, appropriate instruction, technical teacher training, government s general financing of technical education until eventually the aim is attained. The attainment of such aims of course depends on how much that was put in and how effective is the system. CONCEPT OF CONTENT As opposed to the popular believe of some teachers and people concerned with curriculum, content is not the curriculum or system. It is not as it exists in text book or as it is contained in the oral instruction of the teacher. The content of a text book is rather what the author have selected from total knowledge of thee subject that he is writing. This should be appropriately referred to as subject-matter. Content is simply what is to be learnt by the students either from text book or oral instruction or from the experiences in the environment. Content of Learning Experience The usage of this term originated with the philosophical notion of experience in the sense expressed by John Dewey who insisted that for an individual to have an experience is will be necessary for the learner to engage himself in activities from which he can learn something which he has not learned before. 4
The concept of curriculum design CD is a statement which identifies the elements of curriculum, includes what their relationships are to each other and indicates the principles of organisation in the requirement of that organisation for the administrative conditions under which it is to operate. It therefore means that the framework or structural organisation used in selecting, planning and carrying out educational experiences in the school. It can be said to be a plan for teachers to follow in providing learning activities. The Concept of Evaluation Evaluation is a means of ascertaining the success or failure of educational enterprise by measurement and assessment of changes in behaviour of the learner. In the curriculum plan, the goals of educations are stated in terms of expected students behaviour. There is every need to know whether the expected changes in behaviour occurred in the students or whether the right attitude, skills and values are acquired. This may involve some form of measurement or assessment which is known as Evaluation techniques. Evaluation therefore is a tool which helps the curriculum planer to know whether the existing curriculum should be re-organized or discarded. This is why evaluation should take place in all phases of curriculum development. THEORIES IN CURRICULUM Curriculum theory may be characterized by one or more of the following dimensions: 1. Unifying statements or harmonized propositions 2. Universal propositions and/or predictive statements. Many people have defined it to depict one or more of the characteristics identified above. Theory can also be defined as systematically related statements including some laws like generalizations that are empirically testable. Some authors also said it is an integral body of definitions, assumption and general propositions covering a given subject matter from the comprehensive and consistent set of specific and testable hypothesis can be deduced logically. Theory also, consist of generalizations intended to explain phenomena and that the generalization must be predictive. Theory is a set of inter-related construct definitions and propositions at present a systematic view of phenomenon by specifying relations among variables with the purpose of explaining the predictive phenomenon. The set of related statements may take the form of descriptive or functional definitions, hypothesis, generalizations, laws or theories. 5
TYLER S MODEL OF CURRICULUM THEORY In his book Basic Principles of Curriculum, he stated by suggesting questions which he thought should be answered in connection with curriculum. They are as follows: - What educational purpose should the school seek to attain? - What educational experiences can be provided that are likely to attain these purposes. - How can these educational experiences be effectively organized. - How can we determine whether these purposes have been attained? These interpretations of the curriculum can be translated into a simple model called Tyler s Model. Aims and Objectives Content = experiences Organisation = of Evaluation The simple linear representation of Tyler s Model gives an over simplified view of the interaction of these components of curriculum design. It gives the impression that evaluation is the end of the live. Lawton criticized this and made public his dissatisfaction when he said that: one objection to the whole curriculum model based on a 4-stage progression from objectives to content organisation evaluation is that it is far too simple. Reasons: Leaving evaluation until the final stage of curriculum process is rather like doing military intelligence after the war is over. In other words, evaluation should take place at every stage. Another shortcoming he counted lies in the selection of objectives. In his work, he treated other sources from where the objectives should be selected without providing any weighted criteria for the selection which is therefore what should be borne in mind that the curriculum planner should make a decision. Another inherent planner in this model is the practicality of drawing up a long check list of precise objectives. It may be possible for some kind of mathematical or other skilled programs but may not be possible in other subjects e.g. Literature in English teaching, it is not easy to set up a precise checklist of 6
objectives to be covered as a result of studying Achebe s novel Things Fall Apart In searching for the alternative to Tyler s model due to understanding of the complex nature of curriculum. Whether in his own theory model seems to provide answers to pms inherent in linear model of Tyler by converting Tyler s model into a cyclical one. Wheeler s Curriculum Theory Model Aims and Objectives (1) Evaluation (5) (2) Selection of learning Experience (4) (3) Organisation & Selection of contents Integration of Learning experience Components of Wheeler s theory model. In order to reduce confusion in the understanding of curriculum it is necessary to break it up into its major component units. 1. The Need of the Society The members of the society recognize education as a means by which their culture is transmitted and transform in the modern consequent growing complexity in knowledge and life, a society looks up to the school and the curriculum as necessary for enabling the rising generation to gain the needed in sight and power to build and better society. Education Goals It is believed that the end of education is to change behaviour. In order words every student undergoing formal education in the society is expected to learn some of the appropriate ways or behaviour inherent in his society and in addition to internalizing the patterns, value and skills appropriate to him in order that he may function within the society. These expectations cannot come expect. The individual requires centric knowledge, skills, technologies and attitudes that are stated to form the educational and curriculum goals. Educational goals can be clarified into cognitive, systematical, affective and applicative goals. 7
Cognitive are basic concepts of knowledge, skills ideas, generalizations, principles and laws. Syntactical - modes of requiring for solving pms in the area of organized knowledge such observations, clarification, inference and prediction. Affective Development of affective behaviours. This is the domain of values, beliefs, emotions, attitudes and appreciation. Appreciative Consist of development of abilities to make applications of learning to social and personal plans having particularly the pms. The knowledge, skills developed from the three above. This form the basis for the provision of the content or learning experience in the school curriculum. Educational goals also help in making curriculum decision. Educational goals are these statements in the curriculum that indicate the ends towards which the school is to strive. In order words, the following questions will assist on how to develop curriculum. 1. What is curriculum; and what does it include? and what differences are these between the issues of curriculum and those of the methodology curriculum? 2. What are the chief elements of curriculum and what principles govern the decision regarding this selection and the roles they play in the total curriculum? 3. What should be the relationship between these elements ad their supporting principles and what criteria and principles apply in establishing these relationships. 4. What principles and issues are involved in organizing curriculum in making decision about the patterns and methods of organizing it? 5. What is the principle of a curriculum pattern or design to the practical and admin conditions under which functions? 6. What is the order of making curriculum decisions and how does one move from one to the other. In an attempt to answering those questions, the whole goal of the curriculum is attained. ASSIGNMENT In 6 groups, one to each question provides answers to above questions as a term paper. 8
Modern Appreciation in Curriculum Making: Improvement on earlier approaches to curriculum technology constitute modern approach which seem to posses some others over these existing before those modern approaches includes. The board fields, the integrated, the task or job analysis and the occupational area approaches. The Broad Field Approach: The criticism of the subject curriculum approach has resulted in the form of the broad field approach to curriculum technology. This broad approach removes the sharp boundaries that exist in the subject approach. The broad field approach to curriculum design seeks rather to bring together into a broad organization of the subject matter, the knowledge and understanding relating to a whole area of study. The broad field approach represents an effort to diffuse and integrate subject matter of closely related disciplines. E.g. can be seen in Agric or Biology as they are taught in post-secondary institutions. In the case of agriculture, it represents an effort to bring together the knowledge, concept and principles of the highly specialized disciplines of crop science, animal science, soil science, food and nutrition, and similar or closely related subject matter area. With Biology, it tends to bring together also the concept knowledge and principles from the specialized areas of zoology, botany anatomy, physiology bacteriology and others similar closely related subject matter area. The field of science and social studies best illustrates the use of these approaches to synthesizing knowledge. For instance in the field of science, the general principles of generalizations are stated in terms of the problems at man faces in living in the modern world. In modern text book of Agric science for example, units are outlined as follows:- 1. Importance of Agric and development. 2. Agric system 3. Soil fertility and management. 4. Plant pests and their agric importance. 5. Crop improvement. 6. Pests and diseases (plant and animals) 7. Farm animals and management etc. Example in a text book in science such as exploration of the universe, the book may illustrate the use of broad field approach through the content of the book as follows: 1. The scope of astronomy. 2. Newton s laws and gravitation 3. Earth and sky. 4. The solar system 5. The planets 6. the stars 9
7. The Galaxy 8. Cosmic rays Example 3 in social sciences. A program on society and man could illustrate the approach thus: 1. Citizenship 2. culture 3. Personality 4. Social clan 5. Democracy 6. Freedom 7. Delinquency 8. The modern farmer 9. The industrial worker 10. Role of unions 11. Role of government 12. Education and power 13. The Judiciary 14. Bureaucracy 15. War and Peace 16. Under developed countries and trade 17. Government and foreign policy. Criticisms of the Broad Field Approaches: Emeruwa observed that the broad field approach have facilitated integration of subject matter. He said that the broad field design provides for more functional organisation of knowledge. The whole trend is to organize the subject matter on a much more meaningful basis in terms of the organizing concerns and the actual life situations faced by the learners. The broad field approach places emphases on basic principles and generalization rather than on information and facts. He also continued that the broad field approach provides only a sketchy knowledge of a subject area. Some critics said that the pupils are only given a small amount of information at the subject and the pupils have no opportunity to form real knowledge of any other subject area. Does not enable learner to grasp the inherent logic of subject matter. The learner does not obtain experience in the method of analyzing and synthesizing knowledge terms of basic principles of formulating and organizing of a particular body of a subject matter. 10
MODIFIED APPROACHES 1. Competency based approach 2. Function Analysis approach 3. Occupational approach 4. Modular Approach. Competency Based In patterns category propagation Cluster at seed/sexual vegetative Competencies (Seed propagation) o Understand the advantage and disadvantage by seed o Understand the need for seed selection for propagation o Select good seeds for propagation o Posses the seeds for planting/sowing. Why on CBA = combined three levels of knowledge acquisition cognitive, psych and affection Understand factors process need for selection Analysis Functional approach (FAA) Trimunal down to specific operation. (In particular and special situation) Occupational Analysis Approach (OAA) Interest is the predicate and attributes Considerations on health parlor, ability as required by the occupation e.g. chemistry physics biology. MODULAR APPROACH Is an iterative arrangement of learning tasks such that one level is properly understood and assimilated before proceeding to the next one. Time is a factor for measuring knowledge acquired. Time on the land laboratory (Practical) is usually greater than class teaching. Entry level of learners is another factor to consider. E.g teaching of sowing or planting of seeds otherwise called seed sowing. Read page 31 of Functional Curriculum in Agricultural Education by Agbulu O.N. and Ekele, G. 11