Curriculum
In education, a curriculum (/kəˈrɪkjʉləm/; plural: curricula /kəˈrɪkjʉlə/ or curriculums) is broadly defined as the totality of student experiences that occur in the educational process.
Contents
Description
The term often refers specifically to a planned sequence of instruction, or to a view of the student's experiences in terms of the educator's or school's instructional goals.
In a 2003 study Reys, Reys, Lapan, Holliday and Wasman refer to curriculum as a set of learning goals articulated across grades that outline the intended mathematics content and process goals at particular points in time throughout the K-12 school program.
Evaluation
Curriculum may incorporate the planned interaction of pupils with instructional content, materials, resources, and processes for evaluating the attainment of educational objectives.
Categories
Curriculum is split into several categories:
- The explicit
- The implicit (including the hidden)
- The excluded
- The extra-curricular
Standardization and autonomy
Curricula may be tightly standardized, or may include a high level of instructor or learner autonomy.
National curricula
Many countries have national curricula in primary and secondary education, such as the United Kingdom's National Curriculum.
UNESCO
UNESCO's International Bureau of Education has the primary mission of studying curricula and their implementation worldwide.
Analogy: imperative programming versus declarative programming
In computer science, programming languages are categorized into various programming paradigms.
Two these paradigms -- imperative programming and declarative programming -- are analogous to curricula and syllabi, respectively:
Curriculum is to imperative programming
as
Syllabus is to declarative programming
See also
External links
- Curriculum @ Wikipedia
