Models of Curriculum Development

Ralph W. Tyler (1902–1994) was an American educator who worked in the field of assessment and evaluation. He served on or advised a number of bodies that set guidelines for the expenditure of federal funds and influenced the underlying policy of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. Tyler chaired the committee that eventually developed the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

Models of Curriculum Development
Ralph Tyler’s Model/Rationale
Ralph Tyler considered four considerations in curriculum development: 1. purposes of the school
2. educational experiences related to the purposes
3. organization of the experiences
4. evaluation of the experiences
Tyler’s Objective Model

Tyler’s Objective Model for Curriculum Evaluation

Overview
Tyler came up with a book in 1949, Basic Theory of Basic principle of Curriculum & Instruction This model takes curriculum as a means of aiming toward an educational objective. Therefore, this model is also called means–objective model. Underlining questions that he asks:

1. What is the object of education?
2. What teaching experience that we have to provide in order to achieve educational object? 3. How to effectively organize the educational experience? 4. How can we know whether these objects have achieved? (How to evaluate?)

Which curriculum does the model evaluate: Planned, Enacted, and / or Experience? Planned

How is data collected? What data is collected? Is there an organizer? Educational experience is organized

Where does student assessment fit in?
Basic overview: Objective-Choice-Organization-Evaluation
This model aimed student’s developing behavior as their target of teaching. The evaluation does not give much feedback on how to execute a better way of teaching.

What are the Pros and Cons to the Evaluation model?

Cons
* The objective under Tyler’s straight line model has a behavioral orientation. Behavioral objectives have many advantages if applied to curriculum design, but they have some limitations on execution. For example, they do not apply to all subjects or the design of a subject’s content. * Unacceptable verbs are as follow: to know, to understand, to really understand, to appreciate, to fully appreciate, to grasp the significance of, to enjoy, to believe and to have faith in. * Building behavioral objectives takes a very long time and a very tedious process. Besides, this model narrows the span of knowledge and skills which the students must actually be familiar with.

Pros
* Notable for being the 1st model of objectives for teaching. * Examples of the acceptable verbs are:
* (Students will be able) to write, to recite, to identify, to differentiate, to solve, to construct, to list, to compare and to contrast. Model of Curriculum Development10/10/2011

Among the three Model Curriculum Development presented during the lectures which is from Tyler, the Dynamic Model of Skillbeck and the Cyclical Model of Nicholls and Nicholls; I would prefer Nicholls and Nicholls Model. I think it is more systematic in terms of the implementation of the curriculum. More organized than the others and more learner-friendly/centered. For the reason that most problems will be analyzed thoroughly, nothing will be skipped (though sometimes it will be a waste of time to analyze the things that are already fine in its context).

It is progressive in a sense that we can find progression happening among students. Because as I have said on the first part of this paper, the Cyclical model focuses more on the learners. If they found failures in the evaluation part, they can still reconstruct the curriculum and check whether the selection of obj, or the other parts are not good for the learners. Unlike the Tyler’s model where he focuses more on the objectives rather that the learners need. J And not unlike Skillbeck’s Model where in, chances are, we can lose our focus on the things that needs more attention.

In Tyler’s model the nature of the learner, value and aims of society, and knowledge of content filtered through the philosophy of education and the psychology of education are considered in developing learning goals which then lead into the development of specific, appropriate objectives for instruction and learning. Ralph D. Simpson in his article on Tyler relates that at any level competent educators are ones that consider the nature of the learners entrusted to them, the nature of the society in which they work, and the nature of the subject or knowledge base in which the instruction is occurring. I agree with his statement. It is relevant today to take all of these into consideration when thinking about and planning how to help our students today succeed. In Tyler’s model the instructional objectives are aligned with the learning goals that are inherently connected.