Fundamentals of Curriculum Design

Contents: Preface. 1. Basic curriculum issues. 2. Selecting curriculum experiences. 3. Guiding the experiences of learners. 4. Providing for individual differences. 5. Using the resources of the whole school and the community. 6. Making evaluation an integral part of the curriculum. 7. Guiding a year\'s work in a fifth grade. 8. Caring for youth\'s special needs--a tenth-grade programme. 9. A first grade deals with persistent life situations.

From the Preface: "Curriculum design has focused on the transmission of discrete pieces of information from teacher to student. Because of frequent rote facts and formulas, the information in its own right, is considered important. The traditional curriculum designers often pay little attention to the students. They do not bother whether the students use the information in any real-life context or not. Segregated \'silos\' of knowledge and disciplines are used to impose order on information, in this kind of curriculum.

In fact and reality, most of the learning situations demand an integration of various kinds of knowledge and information is considered more valuable insofar as it fills an experienced desire and or need for information. The need or desire would determine how valuable the information is.

Since these facts and realities are not reflected by the curriculum design, it often does not provide students with opportunities to develop the kinds of critical thinking skills and problem solving abilities that are central to thinking and learning. Furthermore, curriculum design does not include opportunities to build the kinds of personal and collaborative skills that support learning.

Keeping in mind the need to provide adequate source of knowledge for the teaching faculty, researchers, students and policy makers, sincere efforts have been made to bring out this book."