WEEK 7

TOPIC 10. CURRICULUM EVALUATION: CURRICULUM ISSUES AND TREND

 
Evaluation

The process or group of processes that people perform in order to gather data that will enable them to decide whether to accept, change, or eliminate something.

Concerned with "relative values" and "statements of worth".

 

Student Evaluation

Objective Based (goals and objectives)

Domains of Learning

Cognitive - knowledge assessment

Psychomotor - skill assessments

Attitudes - values

Multiple Activities and Assessments

 

The Five Value Questions

Intrinsic Value --

the goodness and appropriateness of the curriculum.

Does the curriculum incorporate the best thinking to date on what is known of the content and the presentation of the content?

 

Instrumental Value --

What use is the curriculum, and who is the intended audience? Does the curriculum address the goals and objectives?

Comparative Value --

Is the new program better that the one it replaced?

Idealization Value --

How can the curriculum be improved for optimal benefit?

Decision Value --

Should the new program be retained, modified, or discarded?

 

Scientific vs. Humanistic Evaluation

Scientific Evaluation --

More focused on quantifiable data gathering

Uses tests results of experimental subjects

Analyzes data statistically

 

Humanistic Evaluation --

More focused on qualifiable data gathering

Relies on impressions of what is observed

Engages in actual incidents that are observed

Today, most evaluators use both types of evaluation.

 

Focus of Training Evaluation

Program Evaluation -- How efficient and effective is the training or education program?

Individual competence -- How well did the participant learn?

Program Value -- Does the training provide a good return on cost or investment?

WEEK 6

TOPIC 7:CURRICULUM THEORY AND PRACTICE.
 Curriculum theory and practice.

•Four ways of approaching curriculum theory and practice:

  1. Curriculum as a body of knowledge to be transmitted.

  2. Curriculum as an attempt to achieve certain ends in students – product.

  3. Curriculum as process.

  4. Curriculum as praxis.

 

 

 Steps in getting the ‘product’
 

Step 1: Diagnosis of need

Step 2: Formulation of objectives

Step 3: Selection of content

Step 4: Organization of content (educators to   prepare the content)

Step 5: Selection of learning experiences

Step 6: Organization of learning experiences

Step 7: Determination of what to evaluate and of the ways and means of doing it. (Taba 1962).

 The advantage

•This approach of curriculum theory and practice is systematic and has considerable ‘organizing power’. 

•Central to the approach is the formulation of behavioural objectives – providing a clear notion of outcome so that content and method may be organized and the results evaluated.

 Disadvantage

 

•The problem here is that such programmes outside the learning experiences of learners.  This takes much away from learners. 

•Learners can end up with little or no voice.  They are told what they must learn and how they will do it. 

•The success or failure of both the programme and the individual learners is judged on the basis of whether pre-specified changes occur in the behaviour and person of the learner (the meeting of behavioural objectives). 

week 5

WEEK 5
T0PIC 4: Psychological Foundations of Curriculum.
Describe briefly the three major theories of learning

•1.Behaviorist or association that deals with various aspects of stimulus-response and reinforces.

•2.Cognitive-information processing theories, which view the learner in relationship to the total environment (information) and consider the way the learner applies information.

•3.Phenomenological and humanistic which consider the whole child including his or her social, psychological, and cognitive development.

 
 Behavioral Psychology

•Edward Thorndike is considered the founder. He focused his work on testing the relationship between a stimulus and a response (classical conditioning).

•Defined learning as habit formation – as connecting more and more habits into a complex structure. Knowledge resulted from the accumulation of these stimulus-response associations within this complex structure.

•Defined teaching as arranging the classroom to enhance desirable connections and associations as bonds

 Name and describe Jean Piaget’s stages of Cognitive Development

1.Sensory motor stage (birth to age two).

2.Preoperational stage.

3.Concrete operations stage

4.Formal operations stage.

5.Piaget’s cognitive stages presuppose a maturation process in the sense that development is a continuation and is based on previous growth.

6.Assimilation is the incorporation of new experiences into existing experiences

7.Accommodation stage is where the child’s existing cognitive structures are modified and adapted in response to his or her environment.

8.Equilibration is the process of achieving balance between those things that were previously understood and those yet to be understood

 

Name and describe Taylor’s three methods of organizing learning experiences




   
The leaders of critical thinkers are Robert Ennis, Matthew Lip Man, and Robert Sternberg.  
 

The 13 attributes of critical thinkers are:

–Open minded

–Take a position when the evidence calls for it

–Take into account the entire situation

–Seek information

–Seek precision situation

–Deal in an orderly manner of a complex whole

–Look for options

–Search for reasons

–Seek a clear statement of the issue

–Keep the original problem in the mind

–Use credible sources

–Remains relevant to the point

–Exhibit sensitivity to the feelings and knowledge level of others

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