QUIRINO STATE UNIVERSITY

DIFFUN CAMPUS
Diffun 3401, Quirino

COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION

Module 1 CURRICULUM IN SCHOOLS

Competencies At the end of the module, the students should be able to:

1. discuss the different curricula that exist in schools

2. enhance understanding of the role of the teacher as a
curricularist
3. analyze the significance of curriculum and curriculum
development in the teacher’s classroom

Discussion
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-First 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-First got to the point where he became strongly
dissatisfied with the accustomed ways of his tribe. He begun 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-First 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 woolly horses,
and chasing away sabre-toothed tigers with fire. These then became the
curriculum and the 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 woolly 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
found 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
QUIRINO STATE UNIVERSITY
DIFFUN CAMPUS
Diffun 3401, Quirino

COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION

snare the bears. Attempts to change education system to include these
new techniques however encountered “stern opposition.”

These are also activities we used to know. Why can’t the schools 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.

“If you had any education yourself, you would know that the essence
of true education is timelessness. It is something that endures drought
changing conditions like a solid rock standing squarely and firmly in the
middle of a raging torent.”

The story was written in 1939. Curriculum then, was seen as a

tradition of organized knowledge taught in schools of the 19th century. Two
centuries later, the concept of a curriculum has broadened to include
several modes of thoughts or experiences.

No formal, non-formal or informal education exists 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 education and training taken cared of by
Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA).
For the TechVoc Track in SHS of the Department of Education
(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).
QUIRINO STATE UNIVERSITY
DIFFUN CAMPUS
Diffun 3401, Quirino

COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION

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 in Schools:

Have you realized that in every classroom there are several types of
curricula operating? Let us look into 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. It comes 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 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 learner.

4. Supported Curriculum. This is described as support materials

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 include
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
 QUIRINO STATE UNIVERSITY
DIFFUN CAMPUS
Diffun 3401, Quirino

COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION

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 behaviour,
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. This is measured by tools in assessment, which 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 behaviour of
the learner. Peer influence, school environment, media, parental
pressures, societal changes, cultural practices, natural
calamities, are some 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 order to bring to the surface what
are hidden.

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 a significant implication
to the life of the learners.

Now that you are fully aware that there are seven types of curricula
operating in every teacher’s classroom, it is then very necessary to learn
deeper and broader about the role of the teacher in relation to the school
curriculum.

Reference Bilbao, Purita P. Dayagbil, Filomena, and Brenda Corpuz. (2015).

Curriculum Development for Teachers. Lorimar Publishing, Inc.
Philippines