EFL 504 Curriculum Development, Design and Implementation Claudia Acero
Instructor: Professor Sylvia Spence
December 14, 2001
________________________________________________________________________
CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT, DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION
What it meant to me.
REFLECTION PAPER
This course was called “Introduction to Curriculum Development, Design and
Implementation”. The question is what these words really imply. Let me start first
saying that the course was just a bite of the whole world of Curriculum Development
and its implications. But, what a delicious bite! The students learnt about it within the
class development; as a class, the students experienced the process of developing a
curriculum from the theoretical background to the practical application. What a
journey! with lots of ups and downs, but such a great learning experience with
incredible final products. Now, many questions need to be answered: “What does
Curriculum Development mean? What does Curriculum Design mean? What does
Curriculum Implementation mean?” important questions, though complex because
there is no a simple way to define each one. In this paper, I do not attempt to define
them formally; but using our learning experience as a mean to reflect on them.
Curriculum Development
“Development”, according to the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, is defined as
the process of growing gradually; becoming more mature, advanced or organized. I t
also means to cause something to become noticeable, visible or active.
Definitely, those dictionary meanings fit the process that we experienced in our
course. Within the class sessions, personal readings and team discussions, our
theoretical background was enriched and allowed us to identify “the construction
elements” of what was going to be our final product. The chapter readings and class
discussions led us matured our ideas of what Curriculum Development really was. By
organizing our own ideas, we concluded that Curriculum Development is not a single
matter, instead it is a whole unity where many aspects converge such as the
definition of a course (or courses), the approach (or approaches), the organization of
the syllabi, the selection of the most appropriate pedagogical techniques, and
instructional exercises and materials. By applying the theory and experiencing with it,
we certainly realized that Curriculum Development is also a whole which implies “a
series of activities that contribute to the growth consensus among the staff, faculty,
administration, and students” (Brown, 1995 p. 19). We, students of this course,
realized it when we started developing a series of tasks directed to help us encounter
other task and so on. We also recognized that it is not a process an individual can
achieve by himself; it is a process that implies working with others (administrators,
teachers staff, target group, etc). Therefore, I stated that the students of this course
grew gradually during the semester becoming more mature and organized in our
perceptions and actions facing the curriculum.
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EFL 504 Curriculum Development, Design and Implementation Claudia Acero
Instructor: Professor Sylvia Spence
December 14, 2001
________________________________________________________________________
Curriculum Design
Brown defines it as the process of making up and the paper-moving operations that
make the doing of teaching and learning possible (p. 19). The class guided us to face
that tough process, but at the same time satisfying process of Curriculum Design.
From one section to the other, we started having our curriculum (syllabus) noticeable,
visible and active. We planned our actions by thinking about and producing a needs
analysis questionnaire; trying to state our objectives, define the instructional
materials; and the teaching techniques. Much paper work was produced that
implied much reflection, discussions, analysis, agreements (and disagreements), but
above all learning. We definitely saw how our ideas became visible and active, visible
because our thinking operations were creating a full paper with very defined sections
and active because we realized that each word , each action mentioned on the paper
needed to be really purposeful and it had consequences in later stages of the
process. Consequently, designing a curriculum is a serious process that has very
significant implications in the teaching and learning process. Every word written in
the paper represents actions in the classroom process. So that we learnt that there
must be coherence between what is written and what is to be done.
We started with The Needs Analysis stage which made us define our target group by
thinking about who our potential students were going to be; also identify certain
linguistics and learning needs. In addition, It made us problematize our future
teaching experience what meant prioritizing needs, reflecting on possible solutions
and deciding what to do. Then, one of the hardest but crucial parts of the course, and
of course of any curriculum design process, the definition of goals and objectives.
This stage represented the logical outcome of the needs analysis. In defining the
goals (the general statements about what had to be accomplish in order to attain and
satisfy the students’ needs) and the objectives (the precise statements about what
content or skills the students must master in order to attain a goal), we spent much
of our time reading, writing, rewriting, discussing and even arguing. However, it was a
fruitful stage, tough but rich of learning experiences and empowerment.
I think that the next stages were not as hard as the first ones; even though, we
realized that every thing planned in the first stages had consequences on the
development of these stages such as how we were supposed to attain the goals we
had written before. What a great question! It implying revision and re-doing
processes.
However, theory really gave us a hand; for example, Graves’ book, “ Teachers as
Course Developers”, empowered us to assume the challenge of developing a
syllabus. We started the process with a lot of fears and concerns, but reading those
real teachers experiences gave us proof that it was not an impossible task, but a very
encouraging one. Reading the experiences of teachers who have experienced the
process opened our eyes to the huge amount of possibilities to design a curriculum.
What a great help was the theory we read!
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EFL 504 Curriculum Development, Design and Implementation Claudia Acero
Instructor: Professor Sylvia Spence
December 14, 2001
________________________________________________________________________
Curriculum Implementation
The last stage, but not the most important stage: implementation. I have to tell the
truth, it was hard, again. I could realize that every single decision in our process had
to be present in our class. Therefore, there were a lot of aspects to have into account
and having a short period of time to think about the class and perform the class was
a constraint, but I could re-read our syllabus and find points that needed
improvement. Consequently, I can affirm that the process of Curriculum
Development, Design and Implementation is an endless process, it keeps living and
it is growing and changing as we, teachers-students, grow and develop.
I t is a process of growing gradually becoming more mature , advanced and organized
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