CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
A curriculum is a structured document that describes the philosophy, objectives and learning experiences of a particular educational system. It also outlines the instructional materials to be used and the assessments that the students will go through in that educational system. It clearly articulates what a student should know at different levels of the learning process and also provides guidelines to the teachers on how to support the learners to achieve these goals. Curriculum should be organized so as to give a clear guideline to the education process at any level. The learning processes at each level aims to achieve certain set objectives, and these can only be reached only if there is a set curriculum to guide the educational process.
Organization of the curriculum follows some basic outlines irrespective of the educational system. The organization of the curriculum should be such that it captures core aims of education. First the curriculum should establish a clear philosophy and goals for the entire educational program. It must give a clear progression from one learning level to another, must be clear on the learning experiences that the learners will be exposed to and how they will be exposed to them. It must be interdisciplinary developing not only the academic, but also other talents that the learners may have such as in sports, music or creative arts. The curriculum should also give room for experimentation and innovation by the learners. A good curriculum should also have methods of assessing its achievements at each level, and it should be open to continuous review as the situation demand.
The educational goals that a curriculum should provide to learners that go through it include attainment learning achievements in key subjects such as mathematics, English and science; the curriculum should also provide continuity from one level to another. The curriculum should also address social aspects of the learner such as train them on dangers of drug abuse and how to avoid being a drug abuser. The curriculum should be geared towards meeting the emotional, social and academic growth of the learners. The teachers should receive proper training to help the learners meet these objectives of the curriculum.
