A cybernetic model for curriculum development

The task of the curriculum developer is to design instructional systems which will produce consistently high levels of learning despite wide variation in pupil characteristics. This can be viewed as a cybernetic question of regulating variety in a system to produce stable and high level output. Six cybernetic principles—goal orientation, limitation of input, monitoring, control decisions, restoration of equilibrium, and positive feedback—are described, and their application to curriculum discussed. It is concluded that a cybernetic model can guide curriculum developers in designing effective learning systems.     

Competency-based curriculum development in the informal sector: The case of sewing skills training in rural South India

International Review of Education - Although India is one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, a large proportion of its people live in rural regions and is employed in the informal...     

我国农民工社会保障探析

近年来农民工问题受到广泛关注,但农民工的社会保障因各种原因还存在很多问题,社会保障状况令人堪忧,集中体现在工作环境恶劣、安全保障缺乏,对于享受社会福利与社会救助比较困难,未被纳入医疗保险体系和社会保障立法不健全。造成农民工社会保障困局的原因主要在于户籍制度带来的限制性政策以及农民工社会保障的各主体的意识不强。在这样的情况下,探索建立一种适应中国国情的农民工社会保障的体制,真正维护农民工的社会保障权益就非常重要。国家需要全力发展经济,制定健全的农民工社会保障的法律法规,加强对农民工就业单位的监管,监督他们严格执行劳动和社会保障法规,深入宣传农民工社会保障的制度和政策,把更多的农民工纳入到这一体系中来,彻底免除农民工的后顾之忧,促进社会和谐。     

Teachers designing curriculum as professional development: A model for transformational science teaching

We have designed a model for transformational science teaching focused on linking theory and practice through curriculum decision making that has been the framework for professional development sessions for middle-grade science teachers during the past 5 years. Interviews with teachers revealed that their experiences with curriculum development were of significant value in making decisions concerning the design of classroom environments. As teachers reflected on current research about teaching and learning, in collaboration with university scientists and science educators, they were informed by theoretical perspectives which held implications for their practice. Curriculum development became a vehicle for professional development and school reform; however, it was vital that the teachers were in clear communication with their administrators and communities concerning reform issues. Students and teachers from schools implementing the model and from control sites were interviewed to determine the model's influence on instructional practices and student attitude and achievement in science. The five-phase model for transformational science teaching is discussed here, accompanied by teacher comments about tensions experienced at each phase. This discussion is followed by an analysis of teacher and student interview data that reveals teachers' use of instructional strategies and students' attitudes toward science. Results and analysis of student performance on a mandated end-of-grade science test are also included. From this evidence, we recommend a new design for professional development opportunities for teachers that engages them in decision making as they reflect about the connections between theory and practice and the value of continually testing, revising, and reevaluating curriculum and instructional issues. J Res Sci Teach 34: 773–789, 1997.     

自由:一种评价社会发展的理论角度

对社会发展进行评价是社会发展理论的重要内容。传统的评价尺度是从国民经济学的角度来对发展进行评价的,它具有不可避免的理论局限性。而自由为我们提供了另一种评价发展的角度。     

Classroom structuration and the development of social representations of the curriculum

The study drew on Bernstein's theory and Moscovici's theory of Social Representations to investigate how children in classrooms with different types of structuration developed social representation of the curriculum. Comparable case studies were carried out in schools chosen to reflect three types of pedagogy according to Bernstein's typology. Twelve classrooms took part and ethnographic investigations were employed to compile a typology of recognition and realisation rules to map the range and type of curriculum structuration in each. Children's representations of the curriculum were investigated through specially designed tasks. Findings showed that as children gained experience of schooling they constructed more elaborate social representations of the curriculum regardless of the pedagogic mode and that classroom structuration became a feature of the junior rather than the infant children's representations. Older children in classrooms with performance pedagogies had two classifications for recognising classroom culture, while those in classrooms with mixed and competence pedagogies did not.     

Reconsidering curriculum development: A framework for co-operation

Conventional approaches to curriculum development employed in western countries have proved to be unsatisfactory. Much of the literature as well as the practice of curriculum development have focussed on two traditional stances — the administrative and grass-roots models — and neither has been able to accommodate concurrently the theoretical and practical objectives, skills, and needs of central administrators, teachers, and curriculum specialists. In this paper, a brief examination of the characteristics, prevalence, benefits, and major shortcomings of these two models provides a basis for describing an approach that may better fulfil the multiple and competing demands of educational administrators and users. The article elaborates upon and defends a theoretical plan for involving administrators and educators in co-operative curriculum development, and specifies additional organizational requirements and constraints which would need to be dealt with in order to effect its intent.     

Curriculum Development: a description of the development of the national curriculum for primary social studies in Nigeria

This paper is a case‐study of curriculum development in Nigeria. It described and analysed, with hindsight, the principles with which a committee had revised and developed a new social studies curriculum for primary (elementary) schools in Nigeria. An appraisal of the committee's pattern of activities shows the need for curriculum to be flexible, adaptable and functional to a particular circumstances. Moreover, the appraisal shows the inevitability of a curriculum design, willy‐nilly, in any curriculum development, as well as the need to make curriculum simple and usable to teachers. In the concluding part of the paper is a brief report of a study conducted to examine the effectiveness of the suggested problems‐approach technique in the teaching and learning of social studies in Nigeria. The effectiveness was established in the report, though within a limited purview.     

Career learning and development: a social constructivist model for the twenty-first century

In the UK there have been several calls for new models ‘fit for purpose’ for careers work in the twenty-first century and in response, this article presents a model for career learning and development. This brings together recent theory regarding the ways in which people make career decisions throughout their lives in rapidly changing, turbulent labour markets and globalised economies. The model is articulated through the metaphor of a suspension bridge, which is used to explore and explain the ongoing dilemmas experienced by career practitioners and their clients as they seek to balance the opposing tensions that enable the bridge to fulfil its vital functions.