Excerpt
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Curriculum inclusion.
3. Comprehensive Appraisal of Education Curriculums in East Africa.
3.1. Political Context of Curriculum Review
3.2. General learning theory curriculum
4. Preparing students for the “21st century”
4.1. Teaching and learning the future curriculum model
4.2. Learning technology for autistic and able students
5. ICT products and the learning process
5.1. The parallel curriculum model
5.2. Core parallel
5.3. Connections parallel
5.4. Practice parallel
5.5. Identity parallel
6. The ICT for future pre occupied learning program
6.1. Steps outlined in ICT problem resolving course
6.2. Schools and the future ICT curriculum
6.3. Content dimension of the curriculum
6.4. The process of curriculum instruction
7. Information, Communication and Technology Curriculum
7.1. Significant evaluation in the ICT curriculum
8. Conclusion.
Bibliography.
Course Objectives
The following are objectives of this course:
1. To explore various significant curriculum theories.
2. Examine useful strategies of implementing the curriculum
3. Effects of technology in curriculum change
Course Description
The course addresses the definition of curriculum, types of curriculums applied in educational setting in East Africa, implementation, internal and external evaluation criterion for curriculum effectiveness. Consequently, the course provides a vast explanation of relative ICT curriculum theories and further, focuses on the contribution of technology in enhancing higher education curriculum implementation.
1. Introduction
A noticeable gap in curriculum design and instruction is the involvement of stakeholders beyond the immediate teaching and learning environment. Representatives of the profession or similar wider community might have useful insights to offer given that educational disciplines are decided as much by professional issues, as they are academic ones. Transactional curriculum inquiry amongst different stakeholders is truly fundamental to the process of threshold concept identification. Who these players are, and how they are selected to participate in curriculum design should be considered. How the professional discipline is placed within the local, national and international community needs to be considered also. These external concerns will however, influence the validity of the identified threshold curriculum concepts. Given that threshold concepts are bounded and linked to the practice and thinking of each professional curriculum discipline, the discourse should naturally extend beyond the consideration of class teaching and learning environment to the wider professional community from other working forces. This is perhaps an easier; more explicit process for professional degrees which are often very collaborative in nature due to the work based learning requirements of the choice of the professional course. For example, clinical fieldwork is a necessary part of a health science degree. However, the principle can likely be applied to other areas of academic professions and services, even though in a modified way.
2. Curriculum inclusion.
Inclusion of the broader community in the process ensures that the identified threshold concepts are not just about what the lecturer and/or student views as necessary, but also what the professional discipline body and workforce entails (Cavendish 2013). Ultimately, many professional and specialist professional degrees have standards that they must work to in order for graduates to subsequently register and get involved in practice. At the same time these standards do not usually represent threshold concepts in themselves, implying that entry and core professional concepts should be linked back to these standards during any curriculum review process. By excluding the profession from the process of selective community verge concept identification, an important perspective is missing. Nonetheless, Vidergor (2010) advocates for transactional curriculum inquisition as one way to initiate professional discussion and create interest in ways in which more general educational issues may certainly become applicable. Similarly, Edwards (2013) encourages the use of entry concepts as a way to engage professional occupational practitioners in dialogue with academics, helping to forge a connection between academics for instance, with their knowledge of educational theories to form a comprehensive curriculum. We as educationist should choose not to enlighten participants about threshold concepts; rather use a threshold concepts lens to interpret responses to questions about troublesome and transformative areas of curriculum practice.
The discussion amongst various stakeholders is important in itself. It is vital that all professional participants have an understanding of what professional threshold concepts are in order to be able to make use of them in the organizational setting of providing an adequate curriculum. However, scholars recognize that these may be the strengths of the curriculum and occupational assignments significantly applied in the academic field (Null 2012).
However, a level of professional agreement as to what the identified threshold concepts are is also essential and is a good curriculum outcome to aim for in developing a relevant societal curriculum. How this is achieved may not be clear but likely the involvement in much discussion from experts may be significant. It seems the case that consensus consideration on choice of methodology on how to reach at an implementable curriculum may have much to offer here; firstly, at certain levels of the curriculum recognition process, a preliminary list of concepts have to be actually generated; secondly, in certain professional disciplines where threshold concepts might reasonably be linked to professional learning outcomes and competencies should be in the course of inclusion; and thirdly, in situations where a long list of identified new concepts would be productive to the agenda set purposely for that curriculum.
According to Vidergor (2010), “Nominal Group Technique (NGT) and the Delphi Technique” are both examples of consensus methodology and are two useful ways to explore the perspectives of individuals and groups over the given suggestion on the curriculum. This certainly seems relevant to professionally government outlined courses for instance, health sciences which must meet certain national requirements for the registration to be effected. For example, most of educational curriculums expose it vividly on the account that courses must cover particular content in order to be recognized and graduates must meet certain outcomes in order to become registered. It seems reasonable that threshold concepts could ultimately influence those outcomes through informing what is taught within profession based courses. A level of consensus is important if the true value of threshold concepts to curriculum design and the learning experience is to be reviewed and fully exploited. Fundamental to consensus methodology is collaboration which the threshold concepts literature argues is important both “conceptually and empirically” (Edwards 2013). Consensus curriculum methodology could be considered an important curriculum inquiry when viewing facts on the curriculum in use. Performance measurement of curriculum in the public sector is complex and has incurred much debate as to whether the integrated practices can be successfully implemented in both public and private sectors higher education institutions (Guskey 2012). The difficulty of developing performance measurement frameworks for the public sector has been complicated by the need to service the needs of a wide range of curriculum stakeholders that include various industry sectors and society, as well as motivating these curriculum operations.
3. Comprehensive Appraisal of Education Curriculums in East Africa.
Committees assigned by the Ministry of Education try to figure out how the education system will change in the future, and how this could affect the teaching-learning situation and skills students need to acquire in order to be prepared for the world outside school. Much thought has been invested in mapping the skills required to become a fulfilled, successful and contributing human being, functioning well in the global society. Eventually, it comes down to the teachers, who need to prepare students to develop and use these skills and modes of thinking they will find necessary in the constantly changing world. Most comprehensive curriculum models for gifted and able students could be considered as “good teaching” to be applied. However, the difference lies in the perspectives offered in the multidimensional curriculum model. This curriculum model would be sensitively introduced when looking through and further, applying the following criteria suggested by Vidergor (2010): offer a framework for curriculum design and development that is however translatable and usable in all context areas and should, on the basis of benefitting those that are gift and those that are not be inclusive across public and private school settings and further, in higher learning institution structures.
3.1. Political Context of Curriculum Review
Although there is a clear framework and standards guiding the curriculum process, politics has to be planned for as well. Curriculum changes can often be challenging and sometimes involve disagreements among various stakeholders (Null 2012). It is important to understand the political context in which the process of curriculum review is prioritized. Stakeholders connected with the program of review, including college administrators, personnel in partner higher education schools, faculty within the teacher education department, faculty in arts and sciences, and teacher candidates would be very interested in seeing change more especially transformative which they could support in this effort for the process of curriculum revolution. Nevertheless, Vidergor (2010) argues that when examining curriculum models, for instance, the multidimensional concept, it is far significant to value both the general learning theory and development, and specific curriculum models designed for teaching gifted and able learners.
3.2. General learning theory curriculum
One source of influence is the theory of constructivism focusing on the learners, their obligation for their own learning, and their way of construction of new knowledge. This theory constitutes a major perspective on how one could learn independently. Nowadays, the process of online studies has opted to take this type of curriculum although not in all online education issuing universities. Borrowing from “Piaget (1950)”, one of the outstanding curriculum scholars, who described how learning happens, following social constructivism, Vidergor (2010) stresses the background and culture of the learners and their responsibility and motivation for the process of learning of understanding the curriculum disposed to them.
However, in this process of curriculum learning, the teacher has to hold the obligation of becoming a facilitator who actual needs to display different curriculum skills and has to constantly challenge and engage students by teaching in the zone of interest based on the availability of the training market (Vidergor 2010).
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