Language Curriculum

MAJORSHIP

Area:    ENGLISH

Focus: Language Curriculum

LET Competencies:

1.     Define Curriculum and Syllabus.

2.     Distinguish Curriculum from syllabus

3.     Discuss the ideology of a curriculum

Identify key features of curriculum

CURRICULUM

¨       A curriculum is more than a list of topics to be covered by an educational programme, for which the more commonly accepted word is a ‘syllabus’. A curriculum is first of all a policy statement about a piece of education, and secondly an indication as to the ways in which that policy is to be realized through a programme of action. It is the sum of all the activities, experiences and learning opportunities for which an institution (such as the Society) or a teacher (such as a faculty member) takes responsibility – either deliberately or by default (Coles, 2003)

¨       May be defined as an educational plan that spells out which goals and objectives should be achieved, which topics should be covered and which methods are to be used for learning, teaching and evaluation (Wojtczak, 2002)

¨       Is the planned and guided learning experiences and intended learning outcomes, formulated through the systematic reconstruction of knowledge and experiences, under the auspices of the school, for the learners’ continuous and wilful growth in personal social competence (Tanner, 1980)

¨       The term curriculum refers to the sum total of organized learning stated as educational ends, activities, school subjects and/or topics decided upon and provided within an educational institution for the attainment of the students (Garcia, 1976, SEAMEO RELC)

¨       'A curriculum is an attempt to communicate the essential principles and features of an educational proposal in such a form that it is open to critical scrutiny and capable of effective translation into practice'. A curriculum is rather like a recipe in cookery (Stenhouse,1975)

SYLLABUS DESIGN

¨       One aspect of curriculum development but is not identical with it. A syllabus is a specification of the content of a course of instruction and lists what will be taught and tested. Syllabus design is the process of developing a syllabus (Richards, 2001)

CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT

¨       Is a more comprehensive process than syllabus design. It includes the processes that are used to determine the needs of a group of learners, to develop aims or objectives for a program to address those needs, to determine an appropriate syllabus, course structure, teaching methods, and materials, and to carry out an evaluation of the language program that results from these processes (Richards, 2001)

Syllabi, which prescribes the content to be covered by a given course, forms only a small part of the total school program. Curriculum is a far broader concept. It is all those activities in which students engage under the auspices of the school. This includes not only what students learn, but how they learn it, how teachers help them learn, using what supporting materials, styles and methods of assessment, and in what kind of facilities (Rodgers, 1989).

 

The Ideology of the Curriculum

In developing goals for educational programs, curriculum planners draw on their understanding both of the present and long-term needs of learners and of society as well as the planners’ beliefs and values about schools, learners, and teachers. These beliefs and values are sometimes referred to as curriculum ideologies, and represent the philosophical underpinnings for educational programs and the justification for the kinds of aim they contain.

Each of the five curriculum perspectives or ideologies below emphasizes a different approach to the role of language in the curriculum (Richards, 2001).

1. Academic Rationalism

The justification for the aims of curriculum stresses the intrinsic value of the subject matter and its role in developing the learner’s intellect, humanistic values, and rationality. The content matter of different subjects is viewed as the basis for a curriculum. Mastery of content is an end in itself rather than a means to solving social problems or providing efficient means to achieve the goals of policy makers.

2. Social and Economic Efficiency

This educational philosophy emphasizes the practical needs of learners and society and the role of an educational program in producing learners who are economically productive. Bobbit (1918), one of the founders of curriculum theory, advocated this view of the curriculum. Curriculum development was seen as based on scientific principles, its practitioners were “educational engineers’ whose job was to “discover the total range of habits, skills, abilities, forms of thoughts…etc., that its members need for the effective performance of their vocational labors.” In language teaching, this philosophy leads to an emphasis on practical and functional skills in a foreign or second language.

3. Learner-centeredness

In language teaching, this educational philosophy is leading to an emphasis on process rather than product, a focus on learner differences, learner strategies and on learner self-direction and autonomy.

4. Social Reconstructionism

This curriculum perspective emphasizes the roles schools and learners can and should play in addressing social injustices and inequality.  Morris (1995) observes: The curriculum derived from this perspective focuses on developing knowledge, skills and attitudes which would create a world where people care about each other, the environment, and the distribution of wealth. Tolerance, the acceptance of diversity and peace would be encouraged. Social injustices and inequality would be central issues in the curriculum.

5. Cultural Pluralism

This philosophy argues that schools should prepare students to participate in several different cultures and not merely the culture of the dominant social and economic group. Cultural pluralism seeks to redress racism, to raise the self-esteem of minority groups, and to help children appreciate the viewpoints of other cultures and religions (Phillips and Terry , 1999)

GENERAL CURRICULUM PLANNING

Taba’s outline (1962) of the steps which a course designer must work through to develop subject matter courses has become the foundation for many other writers’ suggestions. Her list of ‘curriculum processes’ includes the following:

¨       Diagnosis of needs

¨       Formulation of objectives

¨       Selection of content

¨       Organization of content

¨       Selection of learning experiences

¨       Organization of learning experiences

¨       Determination of what to evaluate, and the means to evaluate

Decisions in Curriculum Construction

Curriculum development revolves around three major curricular elements (Garcia, 1976):

1.     decisions on what to teach which are educational ends generated at three levels of specificity and immediacy(educational aims, educational objectives, and instructional objectives)to the learner;

2.     decisions on how to teach, concerned with strategies in terms of selecting and organizing learning opportunities, and

3.     decisions concerning the extent to which educational ends are being attained through the strategies or means provided.

Key features of a curriculum:

Learning is planned and guided. What is sought to be achieved and how it is to be achieved should be specified in advance.

The definition refers to schooling. It should be recognized that current appreciation of curriculum theory and practice emerged in the school and in relation to other schooling ideas such as subject and lesson.

Four ways of approaching curriculum theory and practice:

1. Curriculum as a body of knowledge to be transmitted.

Curzon (1985) points out, those who compile a syllabus tend to follow the traditional textbook approach of an 'order of contents', or a pattern prescribed by a 'logical' approach to the subject, or  - consciously or unconsciously - a the shape of a university course in which they may have participated. Thus, an approach to curriculum theory and practice which focuses on syllabus is only really concerned with content. Curriculum is a body of knowledge-content and/or subjects. Education in this sense is the process by which these are transmitted or 'delivered' to students by the most effective methods that can be devised (Blenkin et al 1992).

2. Curriculum as an attempt to achieve certain ends in students - product.

The dominant modes of describing and managing education are today couched in the productive form.  Education is most often seen as a technical exercise.  Objectives are set, a plan drawn up, then applied, and the outcomes (products) measured.  In the late 1980s and the 1990s many of the debates about the National Curriculum for schools did not so much concern how the curriculum was thought about as to what its objectives and content might be. 

Curriculum as product model is heavily dependent on the setting of  behavioral objectives.

3. Curriculum as process.

Another way of looking at curriculum theory and practice is via process.  In this sense curriculum is not a physical thing, but rather the interaction of teachers, students and knowledge.  In other words, curriculum is what actually happens in the classroom and what people do to prepare and evaluate. 

4. Curriculum as praxis.

Curriculum as praxis is, in many respects, a development of the process model.  While the process model is driven by general principles and places an emphasis on judgment and meaning making, it does not make explicit statements about the interests it serves.   It may, for example, be used in such a way that does not make continual reference to collective human well-being and to the emancipation of the human spirit.  The praxis model of curriculum theory and practice brings these to the centre of the process and makes an explicit commitment to emancipation.   Thus action is not simply informed, it is also committed.  It is praxis.

In this approach the curriculum itself develops through the dynamic interaction of action and reflection. 'That is, the curriculum is not simply a set of plans to be implemented, but rather is constituted through an active process in which planning, acting and evaluating are all reciprocally related and integrated into the process' (Grundy 1987). At its centre is praxis: informed, committed action.

CURRICULUM APPROACH IN LANGUAGE TEACHING

Principles Underlying the language Curriculum

The language curriculum is based on the belief that literacy is critical to responsible and productive citizenship, and that all students can become literate. The curriculum is designed to provide students with the knowledge and skills that they need to achieve this goal. It aims to help students become successful language learners, who share the following characteristics. Successful language learners:

¨       understand that language learning is a necessary, life-enhancing, reflective process;

¨       communicate – that is, read, listen, view, speak, write, and represent – effectively and with confidence;

¨       make meaningful connections between themselves, what they encounter in texts, and the world around them;

¨       think critically;

¨       understand that all texts advance a particular point of view that must be recognized, questioned, assessed, and evaluated;

¨       appreciate the cultural impact and aesthetic power of texts;

¨       use language to interact and connect with individuals and communities, for personal growth, and for active participation as world citizens.

Four fundamental questions that must be answered in developing any curriculum and plan of instruction:

1.     What educational purposes should the school seek to attain?

2.     What educational experiences can be provided that are likely to attain these purposes?

3.     How can these educational experiences be effectively organized?

4.     How can we determine whether theses purposes are being attained?

                                 (Tyler, 1950)

Reduced to a simpler model:

                                                Aims and objectives

                                               

                                                         Content

                                               

              

                                                      Organization

                                                              

                                                       

        Evaluation  

Tyler’s model or variations of it soon penetrated wide areas of educational thought and practice and curriculum and training manuals were son full of models such as the following (Inglis 1975):

1. Need

Aims                 Objectives

      

2. Plan

Strategies         Tactics

3. Implementation

Methods           Techniques

4. Review

Evaluation         Consolidation

Nicholls and Nicholls (1972), for example, describe curriculum development as involving four stages;

1. The careful examination, drawing on all available sources of knowledge and informed judgment, of the objectives of teaching, whether in particular subject courses or over the curriculum as a whole.
2. The development and trial use in schools of those methods and materials which are judged most likely to achieve the objectives which teachers agreed upon.
3. The assessment of the extent to which the development work has in fact achieved its objectives. This part of the process may be expected to provoke new thought about the objectives themselves.
4. The final element is therefore feedback of all the experience gained, to provide a starting point for further study.

Stages, decision-making roles and products in curriculum development (from Johnson 1989)

Development stages	Decision-making roles	Products
1. curriculum planning	policy makers	policy document
2. specification:          ends          means	needs analyst	syllabus
	methodologists
3. programme     implementation	materials writers	teaching materials
	teacher trainers	teacher-training programme
4. classroom      implementation	teacher	teaching acts
	learner	learning acts

STATING CURRICULUM OUTCOMES

The terms goal and aim are used interchangeably to refer to a description of the general purposes of a curriculum and objective to refer to a more specific and concrete description of purposes.

AIMS

An aim refers to a statement of a general change that a program seeks to bring about in learners. The purposes of aim statements are:

¨       to provide a clear definition of the purposes of a program

¨       to provide guidelines for teachers, learners, and materials writers

¨       to help provide a focus for instruction

¨       to describe important and realizable changes in learning

Aims statements reflect the ideology of the curriculum and show how the curriculum will seek to realize it. (Renandya and Richards 2002)

The following are examples of aim statements from different kinds of language programs (Renandya and Richards, 2002).

A Business English Course:

¨       to develop basic communication skills for use in business contexts.

¨       to learn how to participate in casual conversation with other employees in a workplace

¨       to learn how to write effective business letters

A Course for Hotel Employees:

¨       to develop the communication skills needed to answer telephone calls in a hotel

¨       to deal with guest inquiries and complains

¨       to explain and clarify charges on a guest’s bill

Aim statements are generally derived from information gathered during a needs analysis. For example, the following areas of difficulty were some of those identified for non-English background students studying in the English-medium universities:

¨       understanding lectures

¨       participating in seminars

¨       taking notes during lectures

¨       reading at adequate speed to be able to complete reading assignments

¨       presenting ideas and information in an organized way in a written assignment

In developing aim statements, it is important to describe more than simply the activities that students will take part in. For example the following are not aims:

¨       Students will learn about business letter writing in English.

¨       Students will study listening skills.

¨       Students will practice composition skills in English.

For these to become aims they need to focus on the changes that will result in the learners. For example:

¨       Students will learn how to write effective business letters for use in the hotel and tourism industries.

¨       Students will learn how to listen effectively in conversational interactions and how to develop better listening strategies.

¨       Students will learn how to communicate information and ideas creatively and effectively through writing.

OBJECTIVES

In order to give a more precise focus to program goals, aims are often accompanied by statements of more specific purposes. These statements are known as objectives or also referred to as instructional objectives or teaching objectives.

An objective refers to a statement of specific changes a program seeks to bring about and results from an analysis of the aim into its different components.

Objectives generally have the following characteristics (Renandya and Richards, 2002):

¨       They describe what the aims seek to achieve in terms of smaller units of learning

¨       They provide a basis for the organization of teaching activities

¨       They describe learning in terms of observable behaviour or performance

The advantages of describing the aims of a course in terms of objectives are:

¨       They facilitate planning: once objectives have been agreed on, course planning, materials preparation, textbook selection and related processes can begin.

¨       They provide measurable outcomes and thus provide accountability: given a set of objectives, the success or failure of a program to teach the objectives can be measured.

¨       They are prescriptive: they describe how planning should proceed and do away with subjective interpretations and personal opinions.

For example in relation to the activity of “understanding lectures” referred to above, aims and objectives such as the following can be described:

Statements of objectives have the following characteristics (Renandya and Richards, 2002):

1. Objectives describe a learning outcome

In writing objectives, expressions like will study, will learn about, will prepare students for are avoided since they do not describe the result of learning but rather what students will do during a course. Objectives can generally be described with phrases like will have, will learn how to, will be able to.

2. Objectives should be consistent with the curriculum aim

Only objectives that clearly serve to realize an aim should be included. For example, the objective below is unrelated to the curriculum aim

Since the aim relates to writing business letters, an objective in the domain of telephone skills is not consistent with this aim. Either the aim statement should be revised to allow for this objective or the objective should not be included.

     

3. Objectives should be precise

Objectives which are vague and ambiguous are not useful. This is seen in the following objective for a conversation course.

            Students will know how to use useful conversation expressions.

A more precise objective would be:

            Students will use conversation expressions for greeting people, opening and closing conversations.

4. Objectives should be feasible

Objectives should describe outcomes that are attainable in the time available during a course. The following objective is probably not attainable in a 60 hour English course:

            Students will be able to follow conversations spoken by native speakers.

The following is a more feasible objective:

            Students will be able to get the gist of short conversations in simple English on topics related to daily life and leisure.

The separate purpose of a curriculum and a syllabus

The course designers’ full responsibility is that of setting not only broad, general goals but also specifying objectives which are made accessible to all those involved with the program.

1. A curriculum contains a broad description of general goals by indicating an overall educational-cultural philosophy which applies across subjects together with a theoretical orientation to language and language learning with respect to the subject matter at hand. A curriculum is often reflective of national and political trends as well.

Diagram 1 The relationship of a curriculum to the syllabuses which draw from it

2. A syllabus is more detailed and operational statement of teaching and learning elements which translates the philosophy of the curriculum into a series of planned steps leading towards more narrowly defined objectives at each level.

An important reason for differentiating between the two is to stress that a single curriculum can be the basis for developing a variety of specific syllabuses which are concerned with locally defined audiences, particular needs, and intermediate objectives.

                                                                                                (Dubin and Olshtain 1986)

The components of a curriculum

Since the curriculum is concerned with a general rationale for formulating policy decisions, it combines educational-cultural goals with language goals. For example, an overall educational approach could focus on one of the following major goals:

1. a behavioristic orientation considers the human species to be a passive organism, reacting to external, environmental stimuli;
2. a rational-cognitive orientation considers the human species to be the source and initiator of all acts;
3. a humanistic orientation is concerned with each individual’s growth and development, while emphasizing affective factors as well.

¨       The behavioristic view is an educational-psychological philosophy which is compatible with a structuralist view of language and a stimulus response view about human language learning.

                         

Diagram 2 The components of an audiolingual curriculum

¨       The rational-cognitive orientation became strongly reflected in the views of human language proposed by transformational-generative linguistics in the 1960s and was associated with the cognitive-code approach to language learning.

Contemporary approaches which link a rational-cognitive view with a communicative orientation towards language use:

a.     Silent Way approach. Developed by Gattegno (1972) have distinct affinities with a rational-cognitive orientation in the way in which they both emphasize the learning of language forms

b.    Natural Approach. Developed by Krashen and Terrel (1983). This approach has much in common with other contemporary views which emphasize the importance of listening and comprehension at the onset of learning – among them Silent way.

¨       The humanistic orientation has been closely associated with the communicative view of language

Types of Syllabus (Reilley)

Although six different types of language teaching syllabi are treated here as though each occurred “purely,” in practice, these types rarely occur independently of each other. Almost all actual language-teaching syllabi are combination of two or more of the types. The characteristics, differences, strengths, and weaknesses of individual syllabi are defined as follows:

1. Structural (formal) Syllabus

v  The content of language teaching is a collection of the forms and structures, usually grammatical, of the language being taught.

v  Examples include nouns, verbs, adjectives, statements, questions, subordinate clauses, and so on.

2. A notional/ functional syllabus

v  The content of the language teaching is a collection of the functions that are  performed when language is used, or of the notions that a language is used to express

v  Examples of the functions includes: informing, agreeing, apologizing, requesting; examples of notions includes age, size, color, comparison, time, and so on.

3. Situational syllabus

v  The content of the language teaching is a collection of real or imaginary situations in which language occurs or is used. A situation usually involves several participants who are engaged in some activity in a specific meeting.

v  The language occurring in the situation involves a number of functions, combined into plausible segment of discourse.

v  The primary purpose of a situational language-teaching syllabus is to teach the language that occurs in the situations.

v  Examples of the situations include: seeing the dentist, complaining to the landlord, buying a book at the bookstore, meeting a new student, and so on.

4.  A skill-based syllabus

v  The content of the language teaching is a collection of specific abilities that may play a part using language.

v  Skills are things that people must be able to do to be competent in a language, relatively independently of the situation or setting in which the language use can occur. While the situational syllabi group functions together into specific settings of the language use, skill-based syllabi group linguistic competencies (pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, and discourse) together into generalized types of behavior, such as listening to spoken language for the main idea, writing well-formed paragraphs, giving effective oral presentations, and so on.

v  The primary purpose of the skill-based instructions is to learn the specific language skill.

v  A possible secondary purpose is to develop more general competence in the language, learning only incidentally any information that may be available while applying the language skills.

5. A task-based syllabus

v  The content of the teaching is a series of complex and purposeful tasks that the student wants or need to perform with the language they are learning.

v  The tasks are defined as activities with a purpose other than language learning, but, as in the content-based syllabus, the performance of the tasks is approached in a way intended to develop second language ability.

v  Tasks integrate language (and other) skills in specific settings of the language.

v  Task-based teaching differs from situation-based teaching in that while situational teaching has the goal of teaching the specific language content that occurs in the situation (pre-defined products), task-based teaching has the goal of teaching students to draw on resources to complete some piece of work (a process). The students draw on a variety of language forms, functions, and skills often in an individual and unpredictable way, in completing the tasks.

v  Tasks can be used for language learning are, generally, tasks that the learners actually have to perform in any case. Examples include: Applying for a job, talking with a social worker, getting housing information over the telephone, and so on.

6. A content-based syllabus

v  The primary purpose of the instruction is to teach some content or information using the language that the students are also learning.

v  The students are simultaneously language students and students of whatever content is being taught.

v  The subject matter is primary, and the language learning occurs incidentally to the content learning. The content teaching is not organized around the language teaching, but vice-versa.

v  Content-based language teaching is concerned with information, while task-based language teaching is concerned with communicative and cognitive processes.

v  An example of content-based language teaching is a science class taught in the language the students need or want to learn, possibly with linguistic adjustment to make the science more comprehensible.

COURSE PLANNING AND SYLLABUS DESIGN

Dimensions of course development (Richards 2001):

1. developing a course rationale
2. describing entry and exit levels
3. choosing course content
4. sequencing course content
5. planning the course content (syllabus and instructional blocks)

A. The course rationale

A starting point in course development is a description of the course rationale. This is a brief written description of the reasons for the course and the nature of it. The course rationale seeks to answer the following questions:

¨       Who is this course for?

¨       What is the course about?

¨       What kind of teaching and learning will take place in the course?

The course rationale answers these questions by describing the beliefs, values and goals that underlie the course. It would be normally be a two- or three- paragraph statement that has been developed by those planning and teaching a course and that serves to provide the justification for the type of teaching and learning that will take place in the course.

Developing a rationale also helps provide focus and direction to some of the deliberations involved in course planning. The rationale thus serves the purposes of:

¨       guiding the planning of the various components of the course

¨       emphasizing the kinds of teaching and learning the course should exemplify

¨       providing a check on the consistency of the various course components in terms of the course values and goals

(Posner and Rudnitsky 1986)

B. Describing entry and exit levels

In order to plan a language course, it is necessary to know the level at which the program will start and the level learners may be expected to reach at the end of the course. Language programs and commercial materials typically distinguish between elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels, but these categories are too broad for the kind of detailed planning that program and materials development involves. For these purposes, more detailed descriptions are needed of students’ proficiency levels before they enter a program and targeted proficiency levels at the end of it.

Information may be available on students’ entry level from their results on international proficiency tests such as TOEFL or IELTS. Or specially designed tests may be needed to determine the level of the students’ language skills.

C. Choosing course content

The question of course content is probably the most basic issue in course design. Given that a course has to be developed to address a specific set of needs to cover a given set of objectives, what will the content of the course look like? Decisions

The link between goals and objectives

The connection between general goals at the curriculum level and specific objectives  at the syllabus level is evident in the effect which goals have on the three concerns of a syllabus:

1. the dimension of language content
2. processes or means
3. product or outcomes

In general, curriculum goals tend to place emphasis on one or another of these dimensions.

Key questions about language content (based on a particular theory of language that has been adopted as the foundation upon which to write a curriculum):

1. What elements, items, units, or themes of language content should be selected for inclusion in the syllabus?
2. In what order or sequence should the elements be presented in the syllabus?
3. What are the criteria for deciding on the order of elements in the syllabus?

Questions about Process dimension:

1. How should language be presented to facilitate the acquisition process?
2. What should be the roles of teachers and learners in the learning process?
3. How should the materials contribute to the process of language learning in the classroom?

Product/outcome questions:

1. What knowledge is the learner expected to attain by the end of the course? What understandings based on analyses of structures and lexis will learners have as an outcome of the course?
2. What specific language skills do learners need in their immediate future, or in their professional lives? How will these skills be presented in the syllabus?
3. What techniques of evaluation or examination in the target language will be used to assess course outcomes?

Diagram 3 How goals become instructional objectives

The BASIC EDUCATION CURRICULUM

Curriculum policies are usually set forth by the Department of Education through various orders, circulars, memoranda and bulletins. They are aligned with national priorities and contribute to the achievement of development goals. However, several laws passed by the national legislature specifically relate to the school curriculum.

The Basic Education Curriculum (BEC) aims to produce more functionally literate students by empowering them with life skills and promote more ideal teachers that will perform collaborative teaching and transcending knowledge in a non-authoritative way of instructing. It has reduced the number of subjects from an average of eight to five, focusing on Filipino, English, Science and Math, which is seen to prepare students for global competitiveness. A fifth subject, Makabayan, also called as the "laboratory of life," instructs complete learning to students. Makabayan intends to develop personal and national identity through adequate knowledge of Philippine history and its politico-economic system, local cultures, crafts, arts, music and games. It covers a wide range of values system that stresses the development of social awareness, understanding and commitment to the common good.

The subjects in the new curriculum respond to the individual needs of the students, and are contextualized in their present conditions. Reciprocal interaction between student-teacher, among students, students-instructional materials, students-multi-media sources, students-teachers of different disciplines is also reinforced. The approach to the subjects is “integrated,”. Thus, Filipino and English would, in addition to reading, writing and grammar, include literature and current affairs. The school principal is authorized to make adjustments, but not modification, to the content of the subjects.

                                                                                               (Guzman and Sevilleno 2003)

Development of the basic education curriculum (SEAMEO INNOTECH 2002)

¨       is the responsibility of the Central Office Bureau of Elementary and Secondary Education, Curriculum Development Divisions. This bureau defines the learning competencies for the different subject areas; conceptualizes the structure of the curriculum; and formulates national curricular policies. These functions are exercised in consultation with other agencies and sectors of society (e.g. industry, social and civic groups, teacher-training institutions, professional organizations, school administrators, parents, students, etc.).

¨       the subject offerings, credit points and time allotments for the different subject areas are also determined at the national level. In this sense, a national curriculum exists in the Philippines. However, while curriculum implementation guidelines are issued at the national level, the actual implementation is left to school-teachers. They determine the resources to be used; teaching and assessment strategies and other processes. Furthermore, schools have the option to modify the national curriculum (e.g. content, sequence and teaching strategies) in order to ensure that the curriculum responds to local concerns.

The approach to curriculum design in the country is based on content topic and competency. The Department of Education prescribes competencies for the subject areas in all the grade/year levels. The Bureau of Elementary and Secondary Education develops, publishes and disseminates these learning competencies to the field.

Most of the subject/learning areas have a list of learning competencies expected to be mastered by the children at the end of each grade/year level and also at the end of elementary/secondary schooling. Some subject/learning areas have a combination of both (i.e. learning competencies under each content/topic).

The curriculum is designed to be interpreted by teachers and implemented with variations. Schools are encouraged to innovate and enrich or adapt, as along as they have met the basic requirements of the curriculum.

The curriculum plan (learning competencies) does not present teaching methods and learning activities that teachers must follow in implementing the curriculum. The guiding philosophy is that the creativity of teachers is stimulated by the option to plan and use the appropriate teaching/learning activities independently. However, teacher’s manuals or guides do incorporate higher-level content areas and suggestions for teaching and assessing.” (Mariñas and Ditapat, 2000).

Features of the 2002 Basic Education Curriculum for Elementary and Secondary Education:

¨       restructuring of the learning areas, reducing them to five (Filipino, English, science, mathematics and Makabayan);

¨       stronger integration of competencies and values within and across learning areas;

¨       greater emphasis on the learning process and integrative modes of teaching; and

¨       increased time for tasks to gain mastery of competencies of the basic tool subjects.

¨       The objectives are expressed in terms of competencies, which are knowledge, skills and attitudes that the learner is expected to acquire at the end of the programme.

¨       A significant feature of the competencies is the inclusion of the use of ICTs, articulated in terms of skills in accessing, processing, and applying information, and using educational software in solving mathematical problems and conducting experiments.

¨       Content is delivered using a variety of media and resources.

¨       The teaching-learning process considers the learner an active partner rather than an object of pedagogy.

¨       The learner takes on the role of constructor of meaning, while the teacher serves as facilitator, enabler and manager of learning.

      (Department of Education, 2002)

REVIEWING THE OLD CURRICULUM
The main objectives of Secondary Education Development Program (SEDP) are to strengthen the Ministry of Science, Technology, Education and Culture (MOSTEC), develop the quality and coverage of basic, non-formal and secondary education, create a market-driven Technical Education and Vocational Training (TEVT) program and fortify the Science and Technology (S & T) capacity at the tertiary level. SEDP will also direct the Government's poverty alleviation strategy in the education sector.
The SEDP contains the New Secondary Education Curriculum (NSEC) implemented in 1989, which changed the 1973 Revised Education Program (RSEP). The program was applied in response to the following needs: continuation of the Program for Decentralized Education (PRODED) giving emphasis on science and technology, mathematics, reading, and writing; improve the value of high school graduates; and develop access to quality secondary education.

BEC vs SEDP

SEDP is said to be overcrowded, putting together too many competencies and topics. This results to the loss of mastery of basic skills, narrow opportunity to process and contextualize major concepts and weak interconnections of competencies.

On the other hand, BEC had encountered various criticisms.

Tessie Aquino Oreta, the main author of Republic Act No. 9155 or the Governance of Basic Education Act, said the "outcome of learning" among students in public schools nationwide will be sacrificed and eventually suffer because a number of teachers in the country are not prepared to teach the new curriculum.

The research agency, IBON Foundation, also criticized the design of the BEC, claiming it caters to the needs of multinational corporations for highly skilled and technically proficient workers at the expense of nationalism.

Antonio Tinio, national coordinator of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT), said the new curriculum will have a strategically adverse impact on the promotion of a scientific and nationalist education program which are critical components in the holistic development and progress of a nation. He said the BEC is a scheme crafted to produce lowly paid labor force that will support the niche marketing schemes of the government and corporations in the era of globalization. He added that the DepEd rushed the implementation of the program to catch up with the full implementation of World Trade Organization agreements in 2004. According to ACT, BEC will be producing cheap skilled laborers for the world market instead of Filipinos with a strong sense of history, culture, arts and life skills.

In spite of the negative impressions, the restructured curriculum allows teachers to address important issues promoting social awareness to the students. It develops wider views of each subject matter while reducing redundancy of content. It also helps to keep pace with the changes in the global context of our educational system and to attain functional literacy. It aims to provide more attention on the means of learning and at the same time promote values development to all the students. It features greater importance on helping every learner particularly in Grades 1-3 to become successful reader. Mathematics on the other hand is the focus in the secondary level. It emphasizes interactive teaching approaches and values formation in all subject areas.

                                                                                         (Guzman and Sevilleno 2003)

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