Foundations of Teaching for Learning: Curriculum

This week introduces the course's emphasis on the relationship between the teacher and the curriculum. The sessions this week deal with three basic topics: the concept of curriculum, the teacher’s curriculum, and adapting to curriculum. These topics will help to broaden your understanding of curriculum and the ways in which it effects students’ experience.

In this week we explore the fundamental issues of curriculum in greater depth, examining mechanisms that underpin the entire system of education in a country. The topics covered are: curriculum formulation, the need for curriculum, curriculum process, and administration of curriculum.

The focus of this week is learning before teaching – putting students first. You will learn about the three-way relationship of the teacher, the curriculum, and the students. As a teacher, you have to be able to contextualize a curriculum that has been made available to you. The curriculum is a general set of content and pedagogic strategies which have to be made real, relevant, and as contextualized as possible for each and every one of the students. The topics to be covered this week are: the three-way relationship, learning as student-specific, theories of student learning, and student-centered teaching.

This week we will bring together some important aspects of teaching and learning that were discussed in the previous weeks. The sessions cover issues of interpretation, designing learning activities, planning lessons, and bringing lessons to life.