Difference between revisions of "Curriculum"

Latest revision as of 06:54, 23 April 2016

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.

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

• Education
• Syllabus
• Syllabus versus curriculum

External links

• Curriculum @ Wikipedia