Curriculum Studies Questions and Answers

Answer: A

Tyler (printed 'Taylor') focused on behavioural objectives.

Ralph Tyler's Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction (1949) organised curriculum planning around four questions, beginning with what educational purposes the school should seek. He insisted that objectives be stated in terms of the behaviour expected of learners, which led to the behavioural objectives model and to Bloom's taxonomy.

Democratic principles and progressive social norms belong to Dewey and the social reconstructionists, and political ideology to critical theorists.

Answer: B

This is curriculum design.

Curriculum design is the arrangement or organisation of the components of a curriculum (objectives, content, learning experiences and evaluation) planned and prepared in advance for instruction. Subject-centred, learner-centred and problem-centred designs are its main types.

Curriculum change is the process of altering a curriculum, evaluation judges its worth, and criticism is a mode of appraising it; none of them is the prepared arrangement itself.

Answer: D

This is the embodied curriculum.

The embodied curriculum is the curriculum as it takes form in people's experience, what they actually live through and carry with them, as distinct from the curriculum written in documents. It emphasises learning as lived and bodily experience rather than as content planned in advance.

A core or common curriculum is a set of studies required of all students, and 'empirical curriculum' is not the term for curriculum as lived experience.

Answer: B

The key calls a curriculum framework a subject specific document.

A curriculum framework sets out the areas of study and the aims and principles for each of them, so it is organised around subjects and learning areas. It is wider than a single method or one teaching objective, and it does not describe one learner, which is why learner specific, method specific and objective specific fit worse.

This is a weak, textbook-style question: a framework such as the National Curriculum Framework 2005 covers every subject, so "subject specific" is not literally exact. I could not find a source that settles the wording, and the key is kept as printed.

Answer: D

This is holistic curriculum.

Holistic education, associated with writers such as John P. Miller, aims to develop the whole person, physical, emotional, intellectual, moral and spiritual, and to connect learners with their community and the natural world. The holistic curriculum puts that aim into practice.

A core curriculum is a common set of subjects, a comprehensive curriculum offers academic and vocational courses side by side, and a liberal curriculum centres on the liberal arts and intellectual development.

Answer: C

Kilpatrick popularised the project method and child-centered curriculum.

William Heard Kilpatrick, Dewey's student at Teachers College, Columbia, published 'The Project Method' in 1918. He defined a project as a 'wholehearted purposeful activity' carried out in a social setting, and the method became the emblem of child-centred progressive education.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed is Paulo Freire's, and the democratic approach and analytical planning are not what Kilpatrick is known for.

Answer: A

Objectives of curriculum are statements that describe the end points or desired outcomes.

Curriculum objectives state what learners should know, be able to do or value at the end of a course or unit. They guide the choice of content, learning experiences and evaluation, as in Tyler's model.

Institutional activities and student-teacher interaction are means of carrying out the curriculum, and a systematic arrangement of content is curriculum organisation, not its objectives.

Answer: A

The foundation is Curriculum objectives.

Ralph Tyler's rationale, the basis of most curriculum planning, begins with the question of what educational purposes the school should seek to attain. Once the objectives are fixed, they decide which content is selected, how it is transacted (the learning experiences) and what is evaluated.

Content, transaction and evaluation all depend on the objectives, so they cannot be the foundation; evaluation, in particular, measures whether the objectives have been reached.

Answer: D

The incorrect criterion is They should be convenient to teachers' work schedule.

Good curriculum objectives are judged by educational standards: they should be consistent with the broader aims of education, stated in terms of observable and verifiable changes in learners' behaviour so that they can be tested, and worthwhile, of real educational significance.

Convenience to a teacher's timetable is an administrative concern. An objective chosen because it suits the work schedule may be trivial or irrelevant to learners, so it is not a criterion of a good objective.

Answer: C

This is the Hidden curriculum.

The term was popularised by Philip Jackson in Life in Classrooms (1968). It refers to the values, attitudes and habits that students learn from the way school is organised, its rules, routines, rewards and relationships, such as punctuality, obedience or competition, even though none of these appears in the official syllabus or timetable.

The core curriculum is the common set of compulsory subjects, the spiral curriculum (Bruner) revisits topics at increasing depth, and the optional curriculum is the set of elective subjects. All three are part of the planned, stated curriculum.