Reflection 1

Reflection on curriculum and its characteristics:

My prior knowledge about curriculum and its characteristics is leaning towards Managerial/Administrative approach- Curriculum comes from Latin word race track that horses ran around.Today, we might call it a racecourse, and so we see that the words curriculum and course are closely related.It serves as a guideline on which a training or teaching organisation plans and guides learning. It could be in a formal or non-formal setting.Managerial approach considers the school as a social system, reminiscent of organizational theory, whereby groups of people such as students, teachers, curriculum specialists, and administrators interact according to certain norms and behaviors (Ornstein and Hunkins, 2004).

Inasmuch as the curriculum is the planned learning  outcome  for which the school is responsible, then the curriculum must be  carefully made to really reach the desired consequences of instruction.  The sets of learning opportunities for persons to be  educated   should include actual day-to-day interactions of students, teachers as they discuss  what is needed to be taught. In effect, the curriculum  must not merely  be in terms of how things ought to be , but how things are in real classrooms. Moreover, since education is lifelong learning, then the curriculum should  prepare students for changing needs and interest  in the present and future time.  Thus the  relationship between the curriculum and learning, teaching, instructional materials,  and  education should be taken into consideration.

I think I will adopt the  Humanistic approach which  focuses on learning by doing In as much as the purpose of the curriculum is to make students learn, then the best way of making them learn is to allow them to have a hands-on experience .

This is also student-centered  which focuses on the main object of the learning process. In the preparation of the curriculum the emphasis is on the  learners not the teacher who should establish the optimal conditions whereby learning can come about through the learners’ own efforts. This does not mean that the teacher should abandon the classroom to learners. Instead the teacher should allow students to learn independently.

Another important article of faith in the humanism approach is the consideration of the learners’ emotional attitude towards the teacher, the fellow learners and the  content of the lesson taught. It is crucial to give this a central place in the preparation of the curriculum, in the selection of the content, materials and learning activities. If learners can be encouraged to adopt the right attitudes, interests and motivation then successful learning will occur. 

Besides it has the  holistic approach  which touches on all the aspects of student learning  Knowing that students have individual differences a curriculum should include the varied intelligences that  a students may possess  such as the  verbal, logical, spatial, interpersonal, intrapersonal ,kinesthetic, and musical intelligences. One student may be good in linguistics, another in music, still some in other fields of learning. So a complete curriculum should cater to all these intelligences.

However it should be noted that all approaches have their own definite advantages and disadvantages. What is important is who is involved in the curriculum development to ensure that all the groups and individuals who have a real interest or stake in the training are able to contribute to the curriculum development.