Curriculum Development and Instructional Design
Curriculum questions test whether you can move between a definition, a model, and a procedural step. Keep the models distinct and know which foundation each rests on.
Curriculum: definitions and types
Curriculum is the total planned learning experience. Know subject-centred, learner-centred, integrated, core (common) curriculum, co-curricular, hidden (unwritten messages of school culture) and null curriculum (what is deliberately omitted). Foundations: philosophical, psychological, sociological and historical.
Models
Tyler's rationale has four questions - purposes, selection of experiences, organisation, evaluation - and is deductive/ends-means. Taba's seven-step model is inductive and grass-roots, starting with diagnosis of needs. Wheeler's model is cyclic; Nicholls is cyclical and situational; Stenhouse's process model values worthwhile activity over prespecified outcomes; Bruner's spiral revisits concepts with rising complexity. Know curriculum alignment (objectives-instruction-assessment) and DACUM as an occupational task-analysis approach. Understand needs assessment, content selection and sequencing, integration, and curriculum evaluation (formative/summative; Stufflebeam's CIPP - context, input, process, product).
Instructional design
ADDIE (analysis, design, development, implementation, evaluation) is generic; ASSURE is classroom-oriented (analyse learners, state objectives, select media, utilise, require participation, evaluate); Dick and Carey is systems-based with front-end analysis. Objectives should follow ABCD (audience, behaviour, condition, degree) or SMART criteria. In Nepal, the Curriculum Development Centre (CDC), Sanothimi drafts the national curriculum framework and textbooks; the National Curriculum Framework 2076 set the basic (grades 1-8) and secondary (9-12) structure.
Traps
- Saying Taba's model is deductive; it is inductive, classroom-up.
- Confusing ADDIE with ASSURE.
- Writing objectives that describe teacher activity ('to teach fractions') rather than learner behaviour.
Worked example
The teacher-activity statement 'explain the water cycle with a chart' becomes: 'By the end of the lesson, grade 5 pupils will label the four stages of the water cycle on an unlabelled diagram with at least three of four stages correct.' Audience, behaviour, condition, degree - all present.