A curriculum that is most efficient today in causing students to learn may not be effective two or three years from now. This is so because curriculum changes with the needs of the times.Thus there are situational factors that influence the curriculum itself. If I have to be involved in the making of a curriculum, then I have to consider societal factors that affect curriculum development.
Societal factors will include questions like:
1.What society do we want? What are the values, traditions, beliefs of society?Will the curriculum be applicable within the society? What are the experiences and traditions in teaching?
2. If the current curriculum was a failure, questions like: Will the strategy for the next curriculum be changed? If so what strategy will be used this time?
3. What are the teachers’ views? The curriculum will be directly implemented by the teachers, so it is but proper to determine teachers’ views on the curriculum. Sometimes teachers complain about the curriculum concept, because they deal with some difficulties in implementing it. Through their experiences in the classroom, they can pinpoint the inappropriateness of the curriculum.
Do the teachers’ have the ability to implement the curriculum? This should be taken into consideration since the success of the curriculum depends on qualified teachers.
Moreover, natural resources and media are also vital to be considered because those support the implementation of the curriculum.
4. What are the concerns by the industrial sector? Employers’ and business community’s views will have to be considered inasmuch as one of education curriculum’s goals is how to produce educated humans that have industrial prospects.
Project Factors will also be examined. Since a curriculum is produced by a team of experts questions like:
1. Who constitutes the project group and how are they selected?
2. How are goals and procedures determined?
3. Who reviews the progress of the project and the performance of the team?
Learner factors will also be taken into consideration. Because student achievements best indicate the success of a curriculum, then questions like:
1. What are the learners’ past learning experiences?
2. How motivated are the learners to learn?
3. What type of learning approach do they favor?
4. What learning resources will they typically have access to? If the schools have no computer units in school, then exercises adopted should not be computer based.
Other factors include adoption factors which exist when the curriculum is adopted by teachers. Questions include:
1.Will the changes made in the curriculum be accepted by the teachers?
2. What advantages does the curriculum change offer?
3. How compatible are the changes with the existing beliefs, and organization attitudes which exist in the school or institution?
4. Have the features and benefits of the innovation been clearly communicated to teachers and institution?
Having all these questions in mind, I realize that in a Situational analysis it is important to identify the factors which have positive and negative impact to the curriculum planning and its implementation. And as I continue to read on situational analysis I was drawn to SWOT analysis; S=Strengths (the factors have positive impact to the curriculum), W=Weakness (the factors have negative impact to the curriculum), O=Opportunities (the factors give opportunities for improvement), and T=Threats (the factors should be reduced). Thus,to do situational analysis is to identify the most probable obstacles that one may meet in the implementation of the curriculum, and the factors that are needed to be considered when planning the parameters of a project.
Since Curriculum development is a process by which teachers meet learners’ needs,then an analysis of the factors that affect student learning should be made. Curriculum developers should gather as much information as possible to determine how students learn.All the relevant information needed to satisfy learning requirements should be collected and studied.
(K-12 Computer Educational Program in light of the cognitive skills)
It is assumed that after formal education, students are able to(a) retain knowledge and skills they acquire in school,and (b) can apply them in situations outside the classroom. However, based on researches made, the low achievement scores of students are attributed to poor quality of basic education to the present school setup.Thus the Government proposed the K 12 education where high school graduates will be able to: acquire mastery of basic competencies, be more emotionally mature; be socially aware, pro-active, involved in public and civic affairs;be adequately prepared for the world of work or entrepreneurship or higher education;be legally employable with potential for better earnings; and be globally competitive.And all these will be met through the development of students’ cognitive skills.
Cognitive skills refer to the brain –based skills needed to carry out any task. They have to do with the mechanisms of how students learn, remember, problem-solve, and pay attention.Problem solving is regarded by cognitive psychologists as fundamental to learning. Today, computers are an integral part of education. With the addition of computer education into the K-12 curriculum, the cognitive abilities of the student will be enhanced since WWW is a cognitive tool in itself. The e-learning environment will further develop students thinking processes, planning ability, vocabulary, and visual-motor coordination, as well as on measures of response style including reflectivity. In a computer-aided learning environment, where the teacher mediates the learning of students, the young learner's curiosity, is aroused. The learner becomes vigilant. The young learner's required functions for temporal, spatial, and cause-effect relationships are enhanced.
Thus with K12 education, the cognitive aspect of student learning is assured. Add to this the additional years which will further make the child emotionally prepared for work and for college life.
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