Planning Goals ang Learning Outcomes

Planning Goals and Learning Outcomes

In this chapter we will consider another crucial dimension of decision making in curriculum planning: determining the goals and out-comes of a program.

Several key assumptions about goals characterize the curriculum approach to educatioanal planning. These can be summarized as follows:

·         People are generally motivated to pursue specifics goals.

·         The use of goals in teaching improves the effectiveness of teaching and learning.

·         A program will be effective to the extent that its goals are sound and clearly described.

A.    The Ideology of the curriculum

In developing goals for educational programs, curriculum planners draw on their understanding both of the present and long-term needs of learners and of society as well as the planners’ beliefs and ideologies about schools, learners, and teachers. These beliefs and values provide the philosophical underpinnings for educational programs and the justification for the kinds of aims they contain. At any given time, however, a number of competing or complementary perspectives are available concerning the focus of the curriculum.

1)      Academic rationalism

Academic rationalism stresses the intrinsic value of the subject matter and its role in developing the learner’s intellect, humanistic values, and rationality. 

Academic rationalism is sometimes used to justify the inclusion of certain foreign languages in school curricula, where they are taught not as tools for communication but as an aspect of social studies.

Academic rationalism is sometimes used as justification for including courses on literature, or American or British culture, in a language program.

Clark (1987, 6) points out that in the United Kingdom academic rationalism is concerned with:

·         The maintenance and transmission through education of the wisdom and culture of previous generations. This has led to the creation of a two-tier system of education-one to accord with the “higher” cultural traditions of an elite, and the other to cater for the more concrete and practical lifestyles of the messes.

·         The development for the elite of generalizable intellectual capacities and critical faculties.

·         The maintenance of stands through an inspectorate and external examination boards controlled by the universities.

2)      Social and Economic efficiency

Social and Economic efficiency emphasis the practical needs of learners and society and the role of an educational program in producing learners who are economically productive.

Critics of this view of the curriculum have argued such a view is reductionist and presupposes that learners’ needs can be identified with a predetermined set of skills and objectives.

3)      Learner-centeredness

Learner-centeredness stresses the individual needs of learners, the role of individual experience, and the need to develop awareness, self-reflection, critical thinking, learner strategies, and other qualities and skills.

Constructivists emphasize that learning involves active construction and testing of one’s own representation of the world and accommodation of it to one conceptual framework.

Marsh (1986.201) points out that the issue of child-centered or learner-centered curricula reappears every decade or so and refer to any of the following:

·         Individualized teaching

·         Learning through practical operation or doing

·         Laissez faire- no organized curricula at all but based on the momentary interest of child.

·         Creative self-expression by students

·         Practically oriented activities- needs of society

·         A collective term that refers to the rejecting of teaching-directed learning

4)      Social reconstructionism

This curriculum emphasizes the roles of schools and learners can and should play addressing social injustices and inequality. Curriculum development is not seen as a neutral process.

The most persuasive and currently popular representatives of this view-point are associated with the movement known as critical theory and critical pedagogy.

One of the best-known critical pedagogues is Freire (1972) who argued that:

·         Teachers and learners are a joint process of exploring and constructing knowledge.

·         In addition, students are not the objects of knowledge.

·         Therefore, they must find ways of recognizing and resisting. 

5)      Cultural pluralism

Cultural pluralism emphasizes school should prepare students to participate in several different cultures, not just the dominant one which means none culture group is superior to others. 

Cultural pluralism seeks to redress racism, to raise the self-esteem of minority groups, and to help children appreciate the viewpoints of other cultures and religions.

In the united state, the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages   ACTFL has recently identified three dimensions to intercultural competence in foreign language program:

·         The need to learn about cultures.

·         To compare them

·         To engage in intercultural exploration

B.     Stating Curriculum Outcomes

1)      Aims

In curriculum discussions, the terms goal and aim are used interchangeably to refer a description of the general purposes of a curriculum. We will use the term aim here. An aim refers to a statement of a general change that a program seeks to bring about in learners. The purpose of aim statements are:

• to provide a clear definition of the purposes of a program
• to provide guidelines for teachers, learners, and materials writers
• to help providing a focus for instruction
• to describe important and realizable changes in learning

Aim statements are generally derived from information gathered during a need analysis. For example, the following areas of difficulty were some of those identified for non English background students studying in English medium universities:

• Understanding lectures
• Participating in seminars
• Taking notes during lectures
• Reading at adequate speed to be able to complete reading assignments
• Presenting ideas and information in an organized way in a written assignment

In developing course aims and objectives from this information, each area of difficulty will have to be examined and researched in order to understand. In Developing aim statements, it is important to describe more than simply the activities that students will take part in.

2)      Objectives

Aims are very general statement of the goals of a program. They can be interpreted in many different ways. Statements of objectives have the following characteristics;

Objectives describe a learning outcome. In writing objectives, expressions like will study, will learn about, will prepare students for are avoided because they do not describe the result of learning but rather what students will do during a course.
Objectives should be consistent with the curriculum aim. Only objectives that clearly serve to realize an aim should be included.
Objectives should be precise. Objectives that are vague and ambiguous are not useful. This is seen in the following objectives for a conversation course.
Objectives should be feasible. Objectives should describe outcomes that are attainable in the time available during a course.

3)      Criticisms of The Use of Objectives

Although in many institutions the use of objectives in course planning is seen as a way of bringing rigor and structure to the process of course planning, the use of objectives either in general form or in the form behavioral objectives has also attracted some criticism. The major criticisms of their use are:
            Objectives turn teaching into a technology. It is argued that objectives are linked to an efficiency view of education.
            Comment. This criticism is more applicable to the form of objectives known as "behavioral objectives". Objectives should be included that address "meaningful and worthwhile learning experiences". One way to do this is including objectives that cover both language outcomes and non language outcomes: the latter will be discussed later in this chapter.

4)      Competency-Based Program Outcomes

An alternative to the use of objectives in program planning is to describe learning outcomes in terms of competencies, an approach associated with Competency Based Language Teaching (CBLT). CBLT seeks to make a focus on the outcomes of learning a central planning stage in the development of language programs. CBLT seeks to improve accountability in teaching through linking instruction to measurable outcomes and performance standards.

CBLT first emerged in the United States in 1970s and was widely adopted in vocationally oriented education and in adult ESL programs. Competency based education hard much in common with such approaches to learning as performance based instruction, mastery learning and individualized instruction. It is outcome based and is adaptive to the changing needs of students, teachers and the community.

THE NATURE OF COMPETENCIES

Competencies refer to observable behaviors that are necessary for the successful completion of real-world activities. These activities may be related to any domain of life, though they have typically been linked to the field of work and to social survival in a new environment.

The process for refugee program to develop language skills: Mrowicki, 1986

·         Reviewing existing curricula, resource materials, and textbooks. 

·         Needs analysis

·         Identifying topic for a survival curriculum. 

·         Identifying competencies for each of the topics

·         Identifying competencies into instructional units

C.    Non Language Outcomes and Process Objectives

A language curriculum typically includes other kinds of outcomes apart from language related objectives of the kind described above. If the curriculum seeks to reflect values related to learner centeredness, social reconstruction, or cultural pluralism, outcomes related to the values will also need to be included. Because such outcomes go beyond the content of a linguistically oriented syllabus, the are sometimes referred to as non language outcomes.

Non language represent more than desirable or optional by product of the learning language process. They are essential prerequisites for on going and meaningful involvement with the process of language learning and learning in general. Non language outcomes are thus teaching and learning issues strongly related to issues of access and equity for non English speaking background learners and workers. It is important that the development of knowledge and learning skills repre7ent a significant component of the adult ESL curriculum.

Stenhouse (1975) explains: The curriculum is not designed on a pre-specification of behavior objectives. Of course there are changes in students as a result of the course, but many of the most valued are not to be anticipated in detail. The power and the possibilities of the curriculum cannot be contained within objectives because it is founded on the idea that knowledge must be speculative and thus indeterminate as to student outcomes if it is to be worthwhile.

Language and Culture

At the end of the course, pupils should be able to:

§  Appreciate that there are varieties of English reflecting different cultures and use this knowledge appropriately and sensitively in communication.

§  Adopt in critical, but not negative, attitude towards ideas, thoughts, and values reflected in spoken and writer, texts of local and foreign origin.

The planning of learning outcomes for a language course is closely related to the course planning process.