Factors Influencing Curriculum Change

Factors influencing curriculum change

1. Factors Influencing Curriculum Change Dr.M.Deivam Assistant Professor Department of Education The Gandhigram Rural Institute (Deemed to be University), Gandhigram , Dindigul District, Tamil Nadu – 624 302

2. Vision Vision: the vision that people have of a deduction system and what it should accomplish must change in order for the system of change.

3. An Individual An Individual: strong leadership is the key factor for change. The characteristic of such leadership is to have the capacity to attract academic staff to rally behind principled educational objectives that are supported within the accept need for change.

4. Financial pressure Clearly there are powerful budgetary forces that influence changes. Class sizes are a consequence of the financial stringencies we operate under. Cost pressures can influence issues other than staff ratios.

5. Staffing Issues, including Workload Even if funding for staff positions is available, it is always possible to fill them. It is likely that most academics are not ready to adopt any innovative method. Moreover, many of our curriculum decisions are based open the zero sum policy , and if new material is to be included, then soothing else must be removed.

6. Teaching and Learning Change Teaching and learning based on the best available research on how people learn is at the core of the new system. Closely related is the perspective that all students need and can learn the higher level skills of understanding, communication, problem solving, decision making and teamwork. It changes do not occur in teaching and learning all the other changes have little value.

7. Administrative role and responsibilities To achieve change in the classroom, administrative roles and responsibilities need to shift at the school, district, and state levels from a hierarchical structure of control to one of support and shared decision making.

8. Employed and Industry Viewpoint Employer have strong opinion about the curriculum, usually requesting more emphasis on transferable skills (such as communication, social, analytical, and critical- thinking skills) in students. They are complaining that change is not happening fast enough in critical areas such as communication skills. Schools concentrate curricula on more theoretical work. The scarcity of resources in schools contributes to the slow progress in implementing changes .

9. Student Viewpoint Students expect a good range of elective subjects to be offered. However, on the whole, their demands appear to have a limited influence on curricula. British cross disciplinary surveys suggest that “student preferences do not tent to push the curriculum either to mire academic or to more vocational treatments” ( Jenkel & Kogan , 1999) and the student choice continues to be determined primary by personal interest.

10. Student Abilities In an ideal world, our curricula would be dictated by our desired to create students of the highest possible caliber. Unfortunately, the weaker students sometimes do not meet extended level in term of Maths or English skills, or in breath of knowledge in other ways. Sometimes we take the path of least resistance, and design our curricula not for the excellent students but instead for the mediocre ones. Of course, many of the mediocre students go on to make great successes of their lives, and generate innovation that is valued by the community. But consideration of their needs, and application of those considerations across the gamut of student abilities, also means that we do a disservice to the truly excellent students.

11. Public and Political Support As the vision develops translated into practice, the support of the public and of the political leadership at all levels of the system must grow. Such support involves a deepening understanding of what and why of the changes need. The inclusion of diverse populations appears to be critical in building support.

12. Education department and government regulation The subjects offered in our schools have been growing for a long term, and the closing down of programmes is uncommon ; there is usually considerable pressure to discontinue low-enrolment subjects. Such pressures can have impact on teaching methodologies in general. Another source of pressure is school administration’s insistence on internal, national, and international benchmarking . We compete for students with international institutions, and those same students then compete for job with them.

13. Policy Alignment State and local policy need to be aligned around the beliefs and practices of the new system, particularly in areas related to curriculum frameworks, instructional methods and materials, student assessment practice, resource allocation and the inclusion of all types of students.

14. Networking Building networks that study and support the new vision of the education system is essential in establishing lasting systemic change. These networks typically do not rely on computers, newsletters, structure. They frequently use communications to link people of similar roles across existing organizational lines.

15. Academic Fashion Our curriculum should be attractive to students. Curriculum should be chosen on reputation: academically strongest, most up-to-date, greatest industry relevance, and best teaching. In practice, we all know that students also consider a great many other factors: how easy subjects are to pass, flexibility in delivery. This pressure also sometimes works the other way and an innovation that appears to be successful.