Curriculum Inception Pt. 2 BRAINSTORM

Curriculum Inception Pt. 2 BRAINSTORM

Curriculum Inception

Strayer University

EDU 555: K-12 Curriculum Design & Development

Dr. Joe Canada

January 16, 2022

Curriculum Inception

The proposed curriculum will be a comprehensive program focusing on the teaching and learning of technology in Orange County Public Schools (OCPS) elementary schools. The core

instructional goals of the proposed curriculum aimed at empowering learners with primary

computer and internet skills such as; basic use of computer applications including google apps,

keynote, garage band. In this grade, students will be introduced to know how to use the google

apps and the Chromebook. They will develop multimedia presentations like publishing media

content and developing digital media and art. Through this, the student will be able to acquire the

ability to constructible skills that will help him/her derive meaning by critically questioning

resources using digital tools. In this grade, students are expected to major in learning how to use

book creators to explain their understanding in their own words.

The main learning activities students will undertake include: Storing, sharing, accessing,

and manipulating files in google drive; organizing and reflecting on content in google sites as

well as campus press blogs, implementation of apps like book creator to explain their

understanding Learn the various purposes of different media. Impart innovation skills on learners

through the use of various technologies in a design process for problem-solving by creating new,

useful and /or innovative solutions. At the same time, Students will be expected to learn how to

apply technology and non-technology tools to aid in understanding a design process of which

there will be an integration with STEAM subjects. Still, this will make space activities where

students will apply the design process to identify or solve problems by combining digital tools

with non-tech tools to develop strategies for designing systems. Impart collaboration skills on

students through digital tools to widen their views, increase empathy, and the importance of

teamwork skills in applications.

Approach to curriculum development

The proposal’s design is based on the system’s approach to curriculum development. The

systems approach can be seen as a methodical scheme applied to plan, propose, advance,

evaluate curriculums that consist of the following components: Analysis of needs, analysis of the

task, declaration of projected learning objectives, assessment plan, a pilot study proposal,

development of learning resources and implementation of the final curriculum. The first five

components of the systems approach have already been included in the proposed curriculum

design. Furthermore, one of the main features of the Systems approach’s core instructional goals

is its high interconnectedness among content areas and programs. Similarly, in the core

instructional goals of the proposed curriculum, there is high interconnection, especially among

content areas. For example, in the first core instructional goal presented in the previous section,

students are not just expected to learn the primary computer and internet skills. Instead, they are

expected to learn and then combine the skills to do something productive in the digital world.

In shaping the design of the curriculum, a pragmatic approach will be employed. This is because

the pragmatic approach offers the most consistent vital goals of the curriculum. For example,

pragmatism is a philosophy that inspires us to look out for the processes and engage in activities

that offer the best results to help us attain desirable results. This definition forms the

philosophical basis of the second core instructional goal of the proposed curriculum. The second

goal is to encourage students to critically question learning resources to find out the processes

that best work for their purposes. It can be seen as a matter-of-fact technique used to approach or

assess situations and solve problems (Hacohen and Weinshall, 1). By questioning the learning

resources, students will look for facts to use in approaching situations or solving problems.

Philosophical / theoretical approach to curriculum development

The psychological, motivational approach to be employed in developing this curriculum

is the cognitive theories of learning (Wang and Breckon, 2). Cognitive theories of learning focus

on cognition, or knowing, giving particular attention to how human beings process information

and monitor and manage their thinking. In cognitive theories, learning entails a logical process

for organizing and interpreting information and is usually characterized by such practices as

critical thinking, reflective thinking, and intuitive thinking. This logical structure has been

applied in all four core instructional goals. The logical structure of the proposed curriculum also

complements Piaget’s theory which sought to explain that the learning process is interactive in

that newer/more advanced information is designed to complement the student’s existing

knowledge. Furthermore, the practices of critical thinking, reflective thinking and intuitive

thinking are also quite important.

Cultural influence on Curriculum

Orange County Public Schools school district is one of the most culturally diverse school

districts in the US. Specifically, 42% of the students in the school district are of Hispanic

descent, 26% are white, 25% Black, 5% Asian, and 2% are of mixed ethnicity. The most

significant cultural influence that has resulted from this high level of diversity has been cultural

bias (Hacohen and Weinshall, 1). Consequently, the influence of culture is a key issue that the

school district has considered. Particularly, the school district has already embarked on a strategy

to emphasize responsive culture to narrow the gap among learners. To achieve this, OCPS has

developed both professional learnings and a support system for its instructional staff to use.In

most cases, the instructional staff is offered an opportunity to participate in the professional

development processes, as this helps increase diversity understanding among the student

population. The strategy also helps in honoring personal and cultural experience, which supports

the overall process of learning within the institution. The culture instilled by the school district

enables the instructors to look at the students at the individual level and, thus, help them where

appropriate.

Benefits for Curriculum

Although OCPS has already made significant strides towards integrating cultural

influences in its schools, it is still necessary to include the pertinent knowledge, skills, morals,

and attitudes in the proposed curriculum. In this regard, the inclusion of teamwork sessions, field

trips, and games as some interactive modes of delivering the instructional goals to students while

also reducing the cultural gap among students from various cultures (Pountney, 3). In so doing,

students will have an easier time relating the contents of the curriculum with the happenings in

their daily lives. Ultimately, they will be able to understand the worthwhileness of curriculums.

Goals for Curriculum

By applying the Bloom Spiralling technique, learners will have the opportunity to

progressively learn the curriculum content. In practice, the instruction procedure could, for

example, involve: defining a phenomenon, outlining its characteristics, comparing it to similar or

related phenomena Analyzing an idea related to the phenomenon and designing a novel use of

the phenomenon. In the above example of bloom’s spiraling, all students begin at the same point

of bloom’s taxonomy; they then progressively move up the taxonomy with the final create level

offering a flexible ceiling for the fastest learners while simultaneously acting as an objective for

the slower ones. With such a process, students’ understanding is trained to be progressive while

also enhancing their ability to think critically.

References

1. Hacohen, G., & Weinshall, D. (2019, May). On the power of curriculum learning in

training deep networks. International Conference on Machine Learning (pp. 2535-2544).

PMLR.

2. Wang, Q., & Breckon, T. P. (2022). Crowd Counting via Segmentation Guided Attention

Networks and Curriculum Loss. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation

Systems.

3. Pountney, R. (2020, March). The curriculum design coherence model. BERA, British

Curriculum Forum.