1. What is a Curriculum?

2. Key Questions for Curriculum • What knowledge, skills & Attitudes are most useful to attainand Why? (Purpose, Valuations) • How are they most effectively attained? (Pedagogy - teaching approaches/learning theories) • How are they most validly and efficiently assessed? (Technical)

3. Reflect on these Quotes “It is not proposed that the children of the poor should be educated in a manner to elevate their minds above the rank they are destined to fill in society… Utopian schemes for an extensive diffusion of knowledge would be injurious and absurd.” (Colquhoun, 1806, writing about education in England) “We must get away from the idea that it is only the people at the top who should be thinking, and the job of everybody else is to do as told. Instead we want to bring about a spirit of innovation, of learning by doing, of everybody each at his own level all the time asking how he can do his job better.” (The Prime Minister of Singapore, Mr GohChok Tong, 1997, at the opening of the 7th International Conference on Thinking)

4. Major Influences on Curriculum Practitioners Educational institutions Industry Curriculum Dominant political ideology Dominant educational perspective Students “Curriculum can be seen as the battlefield of many competing influences and ideologies” (Kelly, 1995, p.149)

5. Curriculum Development Cycle Needs Analysis Learning Outcomes Evaluation Resources Content Assessment Instructional Strategies The various curriculum components must be Aligned, which means that: Learning Outcomes (and content) must be effectively & efficiently taught through the Instructional Strategies used and accurately measured in the Assessment System.

6. Broad Parameters of Curriculum Design & Development • Purpose of the curriculum • Curriculum qualification • Target groups • Competency standards • Subject matter

7. Purpose of the Curriculum Defined as the major learning goals and learning objectives of the curriculum

8. Educational Aims “Human beings have potential for developing in many directions and the problem of educational aims is deciding which kinds of development should be fostered and which discouraged” Wringe, C., 1988, ‘Understanding Educational Aims’, P.43)

9. Target Groups Profiled in terms of both • Demographic • Social & Psychological factors

10. Subject Matter Subject matter can be determined through: • literature Review of the latest findings on the field of knowledge • Creative (but evidence based) Inferences about what might be needed in future, but not explicitly identified at present

11. Competency Standards • Competency elements • Performance criteria • Underpinning knowledge • Range and context • Evidence sources

12. Curriculum Qualification WSQ System: Seven qualifications (but six levels)