[MUSIC] Welcome to Foundations of Teaching for Learning. This is week two on curriculum development, lecture one, focusing on formulating the curriculum. When we talk about formulating the curriculum, we have two systems of education to look into, that is a decentralised system and a centralised system. And there is a list of characteristics given on both systems here. Take a look at it for a while. [MUSIC] In a decentralised system curriculum is very much handled autonomously and with a framework provided from the state. Whereas in a centralised system, like in Malaysia, it is totally controlled by the central government, like the Ministry of Education, and the curriculum is developed by the central government and handed down to the schools. So, in your school system you may want to think about whether a centralised system or a decentralised system is in practice. When we talk about curriculum development, there are many contributors who play a key role. And in this slide you will see various agencies that are involved in curriculum development. We have schools. We have the national or the state level policy makers. We have specialist groups. We have government departments, legal agencies, beneficiaries and executive bodies who participate at different levels in the curriculum development process. Take an example of the schools. At the school level, we have the leadership, that is, the top management in the school will be involved in curricular planning, and we also have teachers involved as curriculum developers. Sometimes students are also involved in some systems, and we have curriculum specialists, or the master teachers, or excellent teachers, who are consulted every now and then in curriculum development. But the entire process is very much influenced on the needs of the other bodies, like the beneficiaries, the industries, or the agencies. They may say what they want and that school might want to respond to the expectation or the needs of the different agencies. And now let's look at the fundamentals of curriculum. This is an example that I have taken from the Malaysian system. In Malaysia curriculum is developed very much based on the National Education Charter. The National Education Charter has two components. One is the education philosophy. The education philosophy looks into the personal and the societal needs, whereas the education policy is aimed at the academic and economic aspects of the society. Together, personal, social, academic, economic, all these components are supposed to serve the individual needs and the societal needs. But there's always some kind of tension between to what extent the individual needs and societal needs are met. Here is a example from Madeus and Stufflebeam who explains the personal and societal aspirations. Needs of the learner and the needs of the society, they are two different aspects. The needs of the learner is not always met in the curriculum. At the same time, there might, the needs of society not met at all times for many reasons. It again depends on the government or the curriculum developers to decide which is very important for the system. And in your school, you may think about the needs of the learner and needs of society, and to what extent these are being fulfilled. It is also important to focus on curriculum alignment. It's important to think about three questions when we talk about curriculum alignment. One is about the national curriculum itself, and about the facilities or the technical arrangements that are being made to assist in the curriculum implementation. Finally, about the teacher professional development, to what extent teachers are prepared to implement the curriculum that is provided. When we talk about shaping the natural curriculum by age or grade level there are many things to think about. The subjects, the range of subjects, content selection, what kind of content should be taken into consideration, time allocation for each subject, the teaching learning strategies that can be used in the curriculum implementation and the assessment suggestions. So these are important aspects to think about when you are shaping a national curriculum. And then let's think about-- let's look at the technical arrangements. It's important to think about what kind of facilities are available, the teaching resource materials, textbooks production and teacher guides. And coming to teacher professional development, there are many suggestions how teachers can be helped to learn about the different aspects of the teaching-learning process, that is, how do we develop the teacher expertise in the teaching. So, these three areas like the shaping of national curriculum, facilitating technical arrangements and providing teacher professional development, all these need to go hand-in-hand in order to ensure there is proper curriculum implementation. Now, we have come to the section on think, pair and share. With a colleague of yours or in groups, you may want to discuss about what do you see as the key purpose of the curriculum, the needs of the child or the needs of the society? And what do you think is more effective, a centralised or a decentralised system? Think about these two questions and discuss with your friend. Thank you very much and I shall see you in the next lecture. [MUSIC]
