Policy makers

This also refers to both the dynamic discussions that continuously take place across a idée range Of curricular issues and the evolutionary thinking about concepts and approaches in curriculum development. Changes in society constantly demand new knowledge and skills and require the continuous development of our educational system. This book focuses on the following questions: How do processes of curriculum of curriculum development evolve? What actually is curriculum? And how to ensure the quality of curricular products?
This book also provide the teachers, educators, policy makers and other parties involved in educational development with a clear and concise introduction onto the tricks of the trade of curriculum development. CHAPTER 1 CURRICULUM AND CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT The very short definition of curriculum as “a plan for learning”, used by the American Hills Tab in 1 962 is reflected by related terms in many languages, including the classical Dutch term learn which permits all sort of elaboration for specific curricular levels, contexts and representations.
A first, extremely useful, distinction appears to be a specification of the level of curriculum and curriculum development namely: SUPRA, MACRO, MESS, MICRO, ANNA. A second, clarifying distinction concerns the different forms in which curricula can be represented in the following three levels: intended, implemented and attained. The core and the nineteenths of the so-called Spider Web refers to the ten parts of the curriculum, each concerning an aspect of learning and the learning programmer for learners.

The components: Rationale, Aims and Objectives, Content, Learning Activities, Teacher Role, Materials and Resources, Grouping, Location, Time and Assessment are basis for curriculum design and innovation. Curriculum Development is focused on the improvement and innovation of education. During this process, desires and ideals are incorporated in a cyclic process of design, implementation, and evaluation to achieve concrete results in practice.
This chapter describes the processes of curriculum development at three levels within the educational system: national level (macro), school level (mess), and pupil level (micro). Curriculum development at macro level focuses on the development of generic curricular frameworks. An important challenge in the development of these frameworks is to meet with the great diversity of societal demands on education.
Schools build on synergy between curriculum development, teacher development and school organization development. For curriculum innovation to be successful, it is important that the school’s innovation ambitions are in line with the teachers’ commitment and their willingness to change, the abilities of the different teams, the culture and the infrastructure of the school. Curricular products that are developed at micro level include lesson trials and resources.
For teachers who strive to put the innovation into practice, lesson materials that are exemplary are important carriers of the intended innovation. The quality of education is often subject for debate. There are different ways in which people assess the quality of curriculum: relevance, consistency, practicality and effectiveness. The quality criteria more or less build on one another. Whether a curriculum effective will also depend on the practicality – can it be implemented as intended? ND On the relevance and consistency of the intended objectives and content components. In the list of quality criteria a distinction has been made between the expected and the actual practicality and the effectiveness of a curriculum. Concerning teaching materials, for example, the expected practicality and effectiveness can be assessed through screening of the materials by teachers. In order to develop a high-quality curriculum, evaluation is of great importance.
During the curriculum development process, the emphasis on implementation reveals itself on the following ways: analysis of lessons from past and of current use in practice, intensive deliberation with the target group and other stakeholders, formative evaluation of preliminary designs, assessment in an increasingly wide circle of schools, formulation of recommendations for the professional support of teacher and the other team, and contribute to the professional development of educational us providers of institutions that can organize activities.
Moreover, the placement of the school’s organization and culture is also essential to ensure sustainable curriculum changes within the school. Collaboration among all sections and levels in and around the school is an important precondition for sustainable educational development. Harvests and Shirley (2009) also draw attention to the importance Of broad ownership and the shared responsibility for sustainable innovation. The active involvement of relevant social organizations- from parents to trade and industry – will also foster broad public support for and commitment to innovations.