CHAPTER 1 - Curriculum Essentials

CHAPTER 1 – Curriculum Essentials
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Module 1 – The Teacher and The School Curriculum
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Module Overview:
Module 1 is all about school curricula and the teacher. This introductory module
identifies the different types of curricula that exist in the teacher’s classroom and school. Further,
module 1 describes the important roles of the teacher as a curricularist who engages in the
different facets of curriculum development in any educational level.
Lesson 1.1 The Curricula in School
Desired Learning Outcomes
 Discuss the different curricula that exists in the schools

 Analyze the significance of curriculum and curriculum development in the teacher’s
classroom.
Take Off
Have you read “The Sabre-Tooth Curriculum by Harold Benjamin (1939)?” Take some
time to read it and find out what curriculum is all about during those times.
Start here and enjoy reading.
A man by the name of New-Fist-Hammer-Maker knew how to do things his

community needed to have done, and he had the energy and the will to go ahead and do
them. By virtue of these characteristics, he was an educated man. New-Fist was also a
thinker. Then as now there were few lengths to which men would not go to avoid the labour
and pain of thought … New-Fist got to the point where he became strongly dissatisfied with
the accustomed ways of his tribe. He began to catch glimpses of ways in which life might be
made better for himself, his family and his group. By virtue of this development, he became
a dangerous man …
New-Fist thought about how he could harness the children’s play to better the life of the
community. He considered what adults do for survival and introduced these activities to
children in a deliberate and formal way. These included catching fish with bare hands,
clubbing little wooly horses, and chasing away sabre-tooth-tigers-with-fire. These then
became the curriculum and community began to prosper with plenty of food, hides for attire
and protection from threat. “It is supposed that all would have gone well forever with this
good educational system, if conditions of life in that community remained forever the
same.” But conditions changed.
The glacier began to melt and the community could no longer see the fish to catch
with their bare hands, and only the most agile and clever fish remained which hid from the
people. The wooly horses were ambitious and decided to leave the region. The tigers got
pneumonia and most died. The few remaining tigers left. In their place, fierce bears arrived
who would not be chased by fire. The community was in trouble.
One day, in desperation, someone made a net from willow twigs and a new way to
catch fish and the supply was even more plentiful than before. The community also devised
a system of traps on the path to snare the bears. Attempts to change education system to
include these new techniques however encountered “stern opposition.”
These are also activities we need to know. Why can't the school teach them? But
most of the tribe particularly the wise old men who controlled the school, smiled
indulgently at this suggestion. "That wouldn’t be education... it would be mere training".
We don t teach fish grabbing to catch fish, we teach it to develop a generalized agility
which can never be duplicated by mere training... and so on.
You had any education yourself, you would know that the essence of true education
is timelessness. It is something that endures through changing conditions like a solid rock
standing squarely and firmly in the middle of a raging torrent
The story was written in 1939. Curriculum then was seen as a tradition of organized
knowledge taught in schools of the 19n century. Two centuries later, the concept of a curriculum
has broadened to include several modes of thoughts or experiences.
Formal, non-formal or informal education does not exist without a curriculum.
Classrooms will be empty with no curriculum. Teachers will have nothing to do, if there is no
curriculum. Curriculum is at the heart of the teaching profession. Every teacher is guided by
some sort of curriculum in the classroom and in schools.
In our current Philippine educational System, different schools are established in different
educational levels which have corresponding recommended curricula. The educational levels are:
1. Basic Education. This level includes Kindergarten, Grade 1 to Grade 6 for elementary;
and for secondary, Grade 7 to Grade 10, for the Junior High School and Grade 11 and 12
and for the Senior High School. Each of the levels has its specific recommended
curriculum. The new basic education levels are provided in the K to 12 Enhanced
Curriculum of 2013 of the Department of Education.
2. Technical Vocational Education. This is post-secondary technical vocational educational
and training taken care of Technical Education and Skills Development Authority
(TESDA). For the Tech Voc track in SHS of DepEd, DepEd and TESDA work in close
coordination.
3. Higher Education. This includes the Baccalaureate or Bachelor Degrees and the
Graduate Degrees (Master's and Doctorate which are under the regulation of the
Commission on Higher Education (CHED)
Content Focus
In whatever levels of schooling and in various types of learning environment, several

curricula exist. Let us find out how Allan Glatthorn (2000) as mentioned in Bilbao, et al (2008)
classified these:
Types of Curricula Simultaneously Operating in the Schools
Are you aware that in every classroom, there are several types of curricula operating at
the same time? Let us study each one.
1. Recommended Curriculum. Almost all curricula found in our schools are

recommended. For Basic Education, these are recommended by the Department of
Education (DepEd), for Higher Education, by the Commission on Higher Education
(CHED) and for vocational education by TESDA. These three government agencies
oversee and regulate Philippine education. The recommendations come in the form of
memoranda or policies, standards and guidelines. Other professional organizations or
international bodies like UNESCO also recommend curricula in schools.
2. Written Curriculum. This includes documents based on the recommended curriculum.
They come in the form of course of study, syllabi, modules, books or instructional guides
among others. A packet of this written curriculum is the teacher's lesson plan. The most
recent Written curriculum is the K to 12 for Philippine Basic Education.
3. Taught Curriculum. From what the curriculum has been written or planned, the
curriculum has to be implemented or taught. The teacher and the learners will put life to
the written curriculum. The skill of the teacher to facilitate learning based on the written
curriculum with the aid of instructional materials and facilities will be necessary. The
taught curriculum will depend largely on the teaching style of the teacher and the
learning style of the learners.
4. Supported Curriculum. This is described as support material that the teacher needs to
make learning and teaching meaningful. These include print materials like books, charts,
posters, worksheets, or non-print materials like Power Point presentation, movies, slides,
models, realias, mock-ups and other electronic illustrations. Supported curriculum also
includes facilities where learning occurs outside or inside the four-walled building.
These include the playground, science laboratory, audio-visual rooms, zoo, museum,
market or the plaza. These are the places where authentic learning through direct
experiences occur
5. Assessed Curriculum. Taught and supported curricula have to be evaluated to find out
if the teacher has succeeded or not in facilitating learning. In the process of teaching and
at the end of every lesson or teaching episode, an assessment is made. It can either be
assessment for learning, assessment as learning or assessment of learning. If the process
is to find the progress of learning, then the assessed curriculum is for learning, but if it is
to find out how much has been learned or mastered, then it is assessment of learning.
Either way, such curriculum is the assessed curriculum.
6. Learned Curriculum. How do we know if the student has learned? We always believe
that if a student changed behavior, he/she has learned. For example, from a non-reader to
a reader or from not knowing to knowing or from being disobedient to being obedient.
The positive outcome of teaching is an indicator of learning. These are measured by
tools in assessment, who can indicate the cognitive, affective and psychomotor
outcomes. Learned curriculum will also demonstrate higher order and critical thinking
and lifelong skills.
7. Hidden/Implicit Curriculum. This curriculum is not deliberately planned, but has a
great impact on the behavior of the learner. Peer influence, school environment, media,
parental pressure, societal changes, cultural practices, natural calamities, are factors that
create the hidden curriculum. Teachers should be sensitive and aware of this hidden
curriculum. Teachers must have good foresight to include these in the written
curriculum, in o to bring to the surface what are hidden.
However, in every teacher's classroom, not all these curricula may be present at one time.
Many of them are deliberately planned, like the recommended, written, taught, supported,
assessed, and learned curricula. However, a hidden curriculum is implied, and a teacher may or
may not be able to predict its influence on learning. All of these have significant role on the life
of the teacher as a facilitator of learning and have direct implication to the life of the learners.

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CHAPTER 1 – Curriculum Essentials

Lesson 1.1 The Curricula in School

Desired Learning Outcomes

 Discuss the different curricula that exists in the schools

Start here and enjoy reading.

A man by the name of New-Fist-Hammer-Maker knew how to do things his

In whatever levels of schooling and in various types of learning environment, several

Types of Curricula Simultaneously Operating in the Schools

1. Recommended Curriculum. Almost all curricula found in our schools are

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