Apr 10, 2018 10 characteristics of a good curriculum Stand.org puts it best: At the heart of a high quality curriculum is the premise that all students are able to learn and are capable of being successful. In effect, a standard curriculum is built on high expectations and should be rigorous to undertake. Six Principles of Effective Curriculum Design for Inclusion Big Ideas. Limit the number of new concepts introduced in a lesson, and focus first on the most basic concepts before advancing to the more complex concepts. Be sure that students understand one concept before introducing the second. The best video templates for 7 different situations; Oct. How sales EQ can help you close more deals; Oct. How to make a video presentation with Prezi in 6 steps. Effective Curriculum Ideas is designed by Mr Anton Reiter, a primary school teacher from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

How many types of curriculum are you familiar with?

©Leslie Owen Wilson. Ed. D.

When considering all of the types of curriculum what are the different definitions?

When I asked my students what curriculum means to them, they always indicated that it means the overt or written curriculum – thinking of a curriculum manual with goals and objectives, or their textbooks. However, the word “curriculum” as it is defined from its early Latin origins means literally “to run a course.” If one thinks of a marathon with mile and direction markers, signposts, water stations, and officials and coaches along the route, this beginning definition is a metaphor for what the curriculum has become in the education of our children.

Here are multiple definitions for curriculum, from Oliva (1997) (4)

Curriculum is:

That which is taught in schools
A set of subjects.
Content
A program of studies.
A set of materials
A sequence of courses.
A set of performance objectives
A course of study
Is everything that goes on within the school, including extra-class activities, guidance, and interpersonal relationships.
Everything that is planned by school personnel.
A series of experiences undergone by learners in a school.
That which an individual learner experiences as a result of schooling. p 4

What are the different types of curriculum?

Obviously the answer to this question is subject to interpretation. Since curriculum reflects the models of instructional delivery chosen and used, some might indicate that curriculum could be categorized according to the common psychological classifications of the four families of learning theories “Social, Information Processing, Personalist, and Behavioral.” Longstreet and Shane have dubbed divisions in curricular orientations as: child-centered, society-centered, knowledge-centered, or eclectic. Common philosophical orientations of curriculum parallel those beliefs espoused by different philosophical orientations – Idealism, Realism, Perennialism, Essentialism, Experimentalism, Existentialism, Constructivism, Reconstructivism and the like. With all of these sources it should be obvious that there are lots of types of curriculum.

Whatever classification one gravitates toward, the fact remains that at one time or another curriculum in the United States has, at some level, been impacted by all of the above. In essence, American curriculum is hard to pin down because it is multi-layered and highly eclectic.

My personal definition (Wilson, 1990) of curriculum is:

Anything and everything that teaches a lesson, planned or otherwise. Humans are born learning, thus the learned curriculum actually encompasses a combination of all of the following — the hidden, null, written, political and societal etc. Since students learn all the time through exposure and modeled behaviors, this means that they learn important social and emotional lessons from everyone who inhabits a school — from the janitorial staff, the secretary, the cafeteria workers, their peers, as well as from the deportment, conduct and attitudes expressed and modeled by their teachers. Many educators are unaware of the strong lessons imparted to youth by these everyday contacts.”

The following represents the many different types of curriculum used in schools today.

Type of Curriculum December news and notesteach to be happy.	Definition
1. Overt, explicit, or written curriculum	Is simply that which is written as part of formal instruction of schooling experiences. It may refer to a curriculum document, texts, films, and supportive teaching materials that are overtly chosen to support the intentional instructional agenda of a school. Thus, the overt curriculum is usually confined to those written understandings and directions formally designated and reviewed by administrators, curriculum directors and teachers, often collectively.
2. Societal curriculum (or social curricula)	As defined by Cortes (1981). Cortes defines this curriculum as:…[the] massive, ongoing, informal curriculum of family, peer groups, neighborhoods, churches, organizations, occupations, mass media, and other socializing forces that “educate” all of us throughout our lives. 24 This type of curricula can now be expanded to include the powerful effects of social media (YouTube; Facebook; Twitter; Pinterest, etc) and how it actively helps create new perspectives, and can help shape both individual and public opinion.
3. The hidden or covert curriculum	That which is implied by the very structure and nature of schools, much of what revolves around daily or established routines. Longstreet and Shane (1993) offer a commonly accepted definition for this term – the “hidden curriculum,” which refers to the kinds of learnings children derive from the very nature and organizational design of the public school, as well as from the behaviors and attitudes of teachers and administrators…. ” 46 Examples of the hidden curriculum might include the messages and lessons derived from the mere organization of schools — the emphasis on: sequential room arrangements; the cellular, timed segments of formal instruction; an annual schedule that is still arranged to accommodate an agrarian age; disciplined messages where concentration equates to student behaviors were they are sitting up straight and are continually quiet; students getting in and standing in line silently; students quietly raising their hands to be called on; the endless competition for grades, and so on. The hidden curriculum may include both positive or negative messages, depending on the models provided and the perspectives of the learner or the observer. In what I term floating quotes, popularized quotes that have no direct, cited sources, David P. Gardner is reported to have said: We learn simply by the exposure of living. Much that passes for education is not education at all but ritual. The fact is that we are being educated when we know it least.
4. The null curriculum	That which we do not teach, thus giving students the message that these elements are not important in their educational experiences or in our society. Eisner offers some major points as he concludes his discussion of the null curriculum. The major point I have been trying to make thus far is that schools have consequences not only by virtue of what they do teach, but also by virtue of what they neglect to teach. What students cannot consider, what they don’t processes they are unable to use, have consequences for the kinds of lives they lead. 103 Eisner (1985, 1994) first described and defined aspects of this curriculum. He states: There is something of a paradox involved in writing about a curriculum that does not exist. Yet, if we are concerned with the consequences of school programs and the role of curriculum in shaping those consequences, then it seems to me that we are well advised to consider not only the explic

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