Principles and Implementation of

Curriculum and Instructional

Design
Week 3
Summary of what we learned 2 weeks
ago
 Definitions of the curriculum
 Linkages among curriculum, instruction, and assessment
 Forces that shape the curriculum
 International forces (e.g., climate, economic, social)
 Local forces/trends
 Types of curriculum
 Planned, enacted, experienced, hidden
 Explicit, implicit, null

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Curriculum design
principles
(OECD, 2020)

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OECD

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Common curricular challenges (OECD, 2018)

 1. …schools are dealing with curriculum overload. As a result, students often

lack sufficient time to master key disciplinary concepts or, in the interests of a
balanced life, to nurture friendships, to sleep and to exercise. It is time to shift
the focus of our students from "more hours for learning" to "quality learning
time".

 2. Curricula reforms suffer from time lags between recognition, decision

making, implementation and impact. The gap between the intent of the
curriculum and learning outcome is generally too wide.

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Common curricular challenges (OECD, 2018)

 3. Content must be of high quality if students are to engage in learning and

acquire deeper understanding.

 4. Curricula should ensure equity while innovating; all students, not just a
select few, must benefit from social, economic and technological changes.

 5. Careful planning and alignment is critically important for effective

implementation of reforms.

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Activity 1

 Let’s answer Activity 1

Rank the curriculum problems from the most problematic to the least
problematic.

____ Curriculum overload

____ Gap between the intent of the curriculum and learning outcome
____ Quality
____ Equity
____ Planning and alignment
Curriculum design principles (OECD, 2018)

 1. Student agency. The curriculum should be designed around students to

motivate them and recognise their prior knowledge, skills, attitudes and
values.

 2. Rigour. Topics should be challenging and enable deep thinking and

reflection.

 3. Focus. A relatively small number of topics should be introduced in each

grade to ensure the depth and quality of students’ learning. Topics may
overlap in order to reinforce key concepts

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Curriculum design principles (OECD, 2018)

4. Coherence. Topics should be sequenced to reflect the logic of the academic

discipline or disciplines on which they draw, enabling progression from basic to
more advanced concepts through stages and age levels.

5. Alignment. The curriculum should be well-aligned with teaching and

assessment practices. While the technologies to assess many of the desired
outcomes do not yet exist, different assessment practices might be needed for
different purposes. New assessment methods should be developed that value
student outcomes and actions that cannot always be measured.

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Curriculum design principles (OECD, 2018)

6. Transferability. Higher priority should be given to knowledge, skills, attitudes and

values that can be learned in one context and transferred to others.

7. Choice. Students should be offered a diverse range of topic and project options,
and the opportunity to suggest their own topics and projects, with the support to
make well-informed choices.

8. Teacher agency. Teachers should be empowered to use their professional

knowledge, skills and expertise to deliver the curriculum effectively.

9. Authenticity. Learners should be able to link their learning experiences to the real
world and have a sense of purpose in their learning. This requires interdisciplinary and
collaborative learning alongside mastery of discipline-based knowledge. 11
Curriculum design principles (OECD, 2018)

10. Inter-relation. Learners should be given opportunities to discover how a

topic or concept can link and connect to other topics or concepts within and
across disciplines, and with real life outside of school.

11. Flexibility. The concept of "curriculum" should be developed from

"predetermined and static" to "adaptable and dynamic". Schools and teachers
should be able to update and align the curriculum to reflect evolving societal
requirements as well as individual learning needs.

12. Engagement. Teachers, students and other relevant stakeholders should be

involved early in the development of the curriculum, to ensure their ownership
for implementation.

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Activity 2: Choose 2 strengths and 2
weaknesses of the HK curriculum
Activity 3: Group discussion

Choose 1 of the 2 videos you watched to discuss with your peer:

 Sir Ken Robinson (How to Escape Education’s Death Valley) [learner centered?]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX78iKhInsc&t=377s

 1. What is the most important idea / lesson you took from the video?
 2. What are the views you agree with? Disagree with?
 3. How can you apply some ideas in your own personal/professional life
Different perspectives
on the curriculum
Curriculum perspective 1:
Academic Rationalist
 Formal education is a process of acculturating children into society in such a way
they become good citizens

 Involves teaching children ‘the basic information needed to thrive in the modern
world’ as a culturally literate adult (Hirsch, 1987, p. xiii)

 Academic disciplines are considered to be the depositories of our accumulated

wisdom which we have systematically organized into fields of study and bodies over
the years

 An academic discipline-based curriculum, with both appropriate processes and

content acquired through studying such subjects, provides a sound basis for the
student to become effective member in adult society.
Curriculum perspective 1:
Academic Rationalist
 ‘My thesis, briefly, is that all curriculum content should be drawn from the
disciplines, or, to put it another way, that only knowledge contained in
the disciplines is appropriate to the curriculum….This means that psychological
needs, social problems, and any of a variety of patterns of material based on
other than discipline content are not appropriate to the determination of what is
taught.’ (Phoenix, 1962, pp. 57-58)

 Priorities are clear: Subject matter comes first:

‘the choice of curriculum content [subject matter] can be made independent of
instructional methods, but the choice of instructional method is dependent upon
the nature of the curriculum content’ (Beauchamp & Beauchamp, 1967, p. 80)
Curriculum perspective 1:
Academic Rationalist
Curriculum perspective 1:
Academic Rationalist
Aims Initiate students to the accumulated knowledge of
culture (academic disciplines ) in order to
develop rational minds

Content Knowledge, ways of thinking, and values embedded

in academic disciplines

Instruction/Pedagogy Teacher-centered, didactic, expository methods

Assessment Examination and testing of knowledge and skills with

academic rigour
Curriculum Perspective 2:
Social efficiency view
 The purpose of schooling is to efficiently meet the needs of society by training
youth to function as future mature contributing members of society

 Goal is to train youth in the skills and procedure they will need in the workplace
and at home to live productive lives and perpetuate the functioning of society

 Essence of the learners lies in their competencies and the activities they are
capable of performing
Curriculum Perspective 2:
Social efficiency view
 Teachers manage instruction by selecting and using educational strategies
designed to help learners acquire behaviors prescribed by the curriculum;
instruction is guided by clearly defined behavioral objectives

 Social efficiency educators’ first job is to determine the needs of society, the
things that will fulfill these needs are called terminal objectives

 Educated person – one who meets the terminal objectives of the curriculum and
thus fulfills the needs of society
Curriculum Perspective 2:
Social efficiency view
 In 1913, Bobbitt launched the Social Efficiency ideology…educators used scientific
techniques of industrial production

“The central theory is simple. Human life, however varied, consists in the
performance of specific activities. Education that prepares for life is one that
prepares….for these specific activities…the abilities, attitudes, habits,
appreciations, and forms of knowledge that men need. These will be the
objectives of the curriculum…The curriculum will then be that series of
experiences which children and youth must have by way of attaining those
objectives….that series of things that children must do and experience by way of
developing abilities to do the things well that make up the
affairs of adult life…” (p. 42)
Curriculum Perspective 2:
Social efficiency view
 Applies the routines of scientific procedure to curriculum making:
 assumption that change in human behavior (i.e. learning), takes place within a fairly
direct cause-effect, action-reaction, or stimulus-response context
 Predetermine the relationship between cause and effect, action and reaction, and
stimulus and response, and to predict the causes, actions, and stimuli i.e. learning,
that will lead to the desired effects, reactions, and responses
 Three important things to note: Concept of learning (or change in human behavior),
the creation and sequence of learning experiences, and accountability
Curriculum Perspective 3:
Learner-centered
 Focus is on the needs and concerns of the individual

 People contain capabilities for growth, are agents who must actualize their own
capabilities, and are essentially good in nature

 People are viewed as sources of content for the curriculum; their ends are
considered to be the appropriate ends for curriculum

 Growth as the central theme; potential for growth lies within people
Curriculum Perspective 3:
Learner-centered
 Education involves drawing out the inherent capabilities of people; teachers as
facilitators

 Schools should be enjoyable places where people develop naturally according

to their own innate natures;

 The goal of education is the growth of individuals, each in harmony with his /her
unique intellectual, social, emotional, and physical attributes
Curriculum Perspective 3:
Learner-centered
 Central to the conversations was always a child: What does he need? What is
he ready for? What are his purposes? How does he follow them? What are his
questions? What is he playing? These questions about children seemed to be
uppermost in developing plans for the classroom, for plans were made not from
the vantage point of a syllabus of demand which a child had to meet, but with
relevance to children in the most immediate way… (Weber, 1971, pp. 169-170)
Curriculum Perspective 4:
Social reconstructionist
 Social reconstructionists are conscious of the problems of our society and the injustices done to its members,
such as those originating from racial, gender, social, and economic inequalities
 Assume that the purpose of education is to facilitate the construction of a new and more just society that offers
maximum satisfaction to all of its members

 Have faith in the ability of education, through the medium of the curriculum, to teach people to understand
their society in such a way that they can develop a vision of a better society and act to bring that vision into
existence

 View education from social perspective – the nature of society as it is and as it should be become the
determinants of most of their assumptions

 Consider human experience to be shaped most powerfully by cultural factors, and assume that meaning in
people’s lives is determined by their social experiences; believe that truth and knowledge are based in and
defined by cultural assumptions
Curriculum Perspective 4:
Social reconstructionist
 ‘The traditional view of classroom instruction and learning as a neutral
process…removed from the concepts of power, politics, history, and context
can no longer be credibly endorsed...[R]esearchers have given primacy to the
social, the cultural, the political, and the economic, in order to better understand
the workings of contemporary schooling.’ (McLaren, 2007. p. 187)

 ‘schooling…is always implicated in relations of power, social practices, and the

favouring of forms of knowledge that support a specific vision of past, present,
and future.’ (McLaren, 2007. p. 188)
Curriculum Perspective 4:
Social reconstructionist
 Schools must face ‘courageously every social issue, come to grips with life in all
of its stark reality, establish an organic relation with the community, develop a
realistic and comprehensive theory of welfare…and fashion a compelling and
challenging vision of human destiny’ (Counts, 1932, p.259)

 ‘Educators need to assume the role of leaders in the struggle for social and
economic justice….Educators must connect what they teach and write to the
dynamics of public life…and concern for…democracy.’ (Giroux, 2006, p. 9)
Bottom 25% in socioeconomic status but
achieving at the top 25% - resilient HK students
Curriculum Perspective 5:
Cognitive process view
 Purpose is to provide students with the necessary skills or processes to help
them learn how to learn, and to provide student with the opportunities to
employ and enhance the variety of intellectual faculties that they possess

 Premised on argument that the mind consists of numerous cognitive faculties,

e.g. ability to solve problems, to visualize, to extrapolate, to synthesize, to
conceptualize, to evaluate, to deal with ambiguity, to analyze etc, which can
and should be deliberately enhanced
Curriculum Perspective 5:
Cognitive process view
 The teacher infuses cognitive models in the curriculum design and classroom
setting.

 A thinking classroom and specific teaching techniques such as modeling,

explanation, interaction, and feedback.

 Teacher should be creative, reflective, and analytical.

 Teach skills beyond knowledge and comprehension towards abstract mental

levels of analysis, application, synthesis, & evaluation
Hong Kong’s Learning to Learn Document
Activity 3: Think-pair-share

 1. What are the dominant curricular orientations in your school? Or in

HK/Mainland China more generally?

 2. What is the least dominant curricular orientation in your school? Or in

HK/Mainland China more generally?

 3. What are the advantages and disadvantages of such a curriculum

orientation?
Exit Card

Please choose one of the three questions below and write it down:

 1. What is the most important lesson you learned today?

 2. One question I have is…
 3. I want to learn more about