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What is the Curriculum Development Process?

Contributed by : Nancy A. Clarke and Shirley B. Stow June 2006 Charter School Monthly

Plan the Work...Work the Plan! In the April issue of the Charter School Monthly we sought to answer the question What is curriculum? In that article we defined curriculum as a written plan which drives instruction. It delineates the skills and concepts taught and evaluated to enhance student achievement. Composed of a content area philosophy, strands with definitions, program goals, aligned scope and sequence, learner outcomes, and assessment tools, it is intentionally designed to meet district, state, and national standards. Now, we will describe briefly how it is developed. We label this procedure as Process = Products. You will recall that the written curriculum is only part of the widely published concept displayed as a triangle, as it relates to student learning. Teachers and instructional leaders meet to work on this process, using a curriculum development framework. This leads to the products in a given content area, for example, Reading, Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, or Social Studies. Writing Curriculum When writing curriculum consider (a) principles of curriculum development, (b) stages of the writing process, (c) characteristics of technical writing, and (d) premises on which the process has been built. The principles of curriculum development that need to be followed as the work progresses include these: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. A consensus-seeking approach = working to reach agreement among the curriculum writers, or at least a commitment that everyone will support the ideas discussed. Balance = includes a mixture of simple and more complex skills/concepts. Teamwork = working in a collaborative manner. Less is more = focusing on the essential skills/concepts and not including the whole universe of learning. Alignment = matching the skills/concepts to an external set of standards (e.g., the Arizona Academic Standards) for a content area. Articulation = expressing coherence as one moves from one grade level to the next. Diversity = incorporating ideas from both sides of an issue.

Stages of the Curriculum Writing Process Stages of the writing process also play a major role as the curriculum is written. 1. Pre-writing is the preparation time when a review of the educational environment is conducted (what the test data look like; what the research says should be considered). When this stage is complete, several components of a framework will have been written. (These are described later.) Drafting is authoring a section of the framework. Early attempts are very tentative. Revising is deliberately reworking what has been written to improve the quality. Editing is the refining process. Publishing is the dissemination of the products.

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Characteristics of Technical Writing Characteristics of technical writing are used so the materials are user-friendly. These include format so that everyone has a common language to use with the guide; rules, which include how to write a given component; consistency, which allows the writers/users to move from one content area to another and know the expectations; and repetition, which is very important to users when more than one content area guide is used by the teachers.

Premises on Which the Process Has Been Built


The curriculum writers work from these premises: this is a teacher-driven, grassroots approach; it stresses what ought to be taught, not what is taught; the curriculum is organized to display what is to be taught; not everything that is taught at a grade level is included in the guide (only about 80 percent) but what is there is expected to be taught; the guide will be approved by the board of directors once it is ready for publication; and the writers need to communicate the contents of the guide to all teachers, students, parents, and community members. Components of a Pre-K-12 Framework Components of a pre-K12 framework that is used by the committee to structure its work include: 1. Philosophy is a set of beliefs about the content area. This statement serves as a communication tool. Questions that help define philosophy include What beliefs about this content area should be considered as a basis for curriculum development? and Why is this body of knowledge worthwhile? The second component is strands, which are themes or natural classifications that flow through the pre-K-12 content area. Each theme needs a definition so everyone who uses the curriculum will have the same understanding about it. Strand labels are found in the Arizona Academic Standards. The third component is program goals; these are general intents within a strand toward which students work. There are typically two or three program goals for each strand. These are not measurable but are visionary/guiding stars that are nonspecific. Each of these program goals begins with the word to, followed by one action verb. These are also found in the Arizona Academic Standards. The scope and sequence grids are the part of the structure that drives the process and makes up the next component to be written. It provides a map that shows how the learning builds from grade level to grade level. The list of skills is the scope within a program goal; these skills can be found in the performance objectives of the Arizona Academic Standards. The sequence is established when decisions are made relating to Who teaches what and to what extent? A list of subskills/subconcepts, or pieces of learning that belong to each skill/concept, is developed. These provide focus points when discussing the building of the learning (the articulation), serve as the subsets of the learning, and are used in the learner outcome statements. (Components one through four are labeled as the pre-writing stage in the writing process for curriculum development.) Learner outcomes, or statements describing exiting behavior, are written after the scope and sequence has been defined. They are the nuts and bolts of the curriculum development framework. They clarify the intent, provide for assessment, present a focus, serve as an advance organizer, and allow for communication. The committee members need to think SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, trackable). These statements are a description of what you want the learner to exhibit to consider himself or herself competent. Assessment techniques are used to determine what the student has achieved. An assessment technique is based on the learner outcome that has been taught. There are several criterionreferenced techniques that can be used (e.g., multiple choice, matching, essay, performance, product, process, and personal communication). Quality techniques are planned in terms of specific, measurable outcomes that have a designated mastery, describe a students performance relative to a standard, and diagnose student deficiencies. The assessment results can be used for diagnosis, placement, and remediation.

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Curriculum Development as the Big Picture Curriculum development must be systemwide. It helps teachers see connections among the skills/concepts and find resources. When teachers examine their own teaching/learning environment in the context of the whole school, they can make decisions about what to teach based on the content of the curriculum guide. When we facilitate the development process with charter schools, we provide draft copies of all components of the framework. As we work through the process, the curriculum documents become the committees product because they are personalized for the school, yet are aligned with the Arizona Academic Standards. Funding for this endeavor comes from various sources, depending how the schools financial resources are managed. Some sources for funding are grant awards, title monies, start-up funds, and general funds within

the school. In the work that Phil Schlechty has done it can be noted that the demands of modern society are such that Americas schools must now provide what they may never have provided before: a first-rate academic education for all students. This can happen only when everyone who works in the school understands the definition of curriculum and when a procedure, such as Process = Products, is used so that everyone can answer the question, What is the curriculum development process? that this school follows. Nancy A. Clarke is an educational consultant who facilitates this process. Her experiences include 25 years as a classroom teacher, an elementary principal, and a director of curriculum in Arizona schools. Over the past 10 years she has served as a professional development trainer in schools for curriculum/assessment development and educational leadership, working with public, private, and charter schools nationwide. Contact her at rnclarke37@dancris.com. Shirley B. Stow is an educational consultant working with schools to improve the teaching/learning environment in public, private, and charter schools nationwide. She has been a classroom teacher, an elementary principal, a curriculum director, and the director of a research-based school improvement model center at Iowa State University. Over the last 25 years she has served as a professional development trainer in schools for curriculum/assessment development and educational leadership across the United States, in the Department of Defense Dependents School in the Panama Canal, in Western Europe, and in the Taipai American School in Taiwan. Contact her at sbstow@qwest.net.

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