SECCIÓN IV CONDICIONES ESPECÍFICAS 4.1 Presentación de la oferta
4.5 USO DEL GIRO DEL NEGOCIO
Content can be considered as that which is presented to students or that which is made available to students for possible use. Therefore, content may be described as the knowledge, skills, concepts, principles, attitudes
and values to be learned.
(a) Criteria for Selecting Content
Curriculum objectives operate s the final arbiters of content selection – in other words, the primary basis for content selection must always be
the stated objectives of the curriculum.
However, a number of other criteria has been identified for selecting
content – the criteria include: significance, validity, utility, human
development, feasibility.
(i) Significance: refers to the essentialness of the content to be learned. Content to be learned is significant only to the degree to
which it contributes to basic ideas, concept, principles, generalization etc. Significance also pertains to how the content
contributes to the development of particular learning abilities,
skills, processes and attitude formation.
(ii) Validity: refers to the authenticity of the content to be selected.
In this time of information explosion, the content selected can
quickly become obsolete, and even incorrect.
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There is another aspect of validity – the content – selected should
provide the learners with the experiences that would promote oreffect the desired change in behaviour – the content must be
related to objectives.
(iii) Utility: the criterion of utility attends to content usefulness. The content should be considered necessary for effective functioning
in the society.
(iv) Human Development: content selected should be appropriate for
the particular development level of the students; it should be within the capabilities of the students to process. In other words,
content must be available in forms which are appropriate to the
pupils’ development level because “it is unrealistic to specify content calling for a high degree of abstractions of ideas when
pupils are not developmentally ready for such cognitive
processes” (Lewy 1977, p.68).
(v) Feasibility: addresses the question can the content selected be taught in the time allowed, with the resources available, with the
expertise of the current staff?
(b) Criteria for Organisation of Content
Content should be organised in ways that will facilitate student learning
– thus, the prime reason for organizing content is to render it comprehensible. Therefore, after the content to be included in a curriculum has been selected, it has to be organized in such a way as to
produce major changes in the learners in the direction of stated
educational objectives.
Content may be organised in two major ways: Vertical Organization and
Horizontal Organization.
(i) Vertical Organisation
Vertical organization refers to arrangement of learning opportunities (or
content) within the subject area so that what follows is slightly deeperand more complex than the previous task – vertical organization is deepening of knowledge – it is an arrangement according to stages – it
deals with relationship of learning experiences in the subject area over
time.
Sequence: is another aspect of vertical relationship in curriculum organization. Sequence often is referred to as the “vertical” organization
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EDU 808 Mathematics Curriculum and Instructions in Secondary Schools
of content to distinguish it from the “horizontal” organization, which
concerns the arrangement of content at a given level of instruction (Zais 1976, p.340). Sequence is defined as ‘the order in which curriculum content is presented’. In other words, sequences refers to the placementof learning in subject matter and processes in such a way that
development can occur in a sensible order (Curhs and Bidmell 1977, p.
138). Four types of sequence have been identified:
(a) The simple-to-complex;
(b) Known to unknown;
(c) Concrete to abstract;
(d) Visible to invisible.
Here, sequence is defined as progression from simple subordinate components to complex structures.
(a) Prerequisite learning: This is common to subjects that depend for their exposition on laws and principles. In other words, one set of ideas or operations builds naturally upon preceding ones.
(b)
Whole-to-part: The rationale here is that understanding of thewhole, makes possible the understanding of partial phenomena.
(c) Chronology: Chronological sequence is utilized in a subject which has traditionally been perceived as a structure of chronologically recorded events. In other words, facts and ideas
are arranged in a time sequence so that things are studied as they are related to one another in terms of time.
Whatever organizing principle one chooses in order to sequence content, the main concern should be that the topics in the content be sequenced to maximize learning by pupils (Lewy 1977, p.68).
(ii)
Horizontal OrganisationHorizontal organization (sometimes referred to as scope and integration)
is concerned with the side-by-side arrangement of curriculum components. It is an attempt to develop interrelationships between various subjects at the same grade level. In other words, horizontal organization is concerned with showing how ideas and skills in one subject are related to ideas and skills in other subject – for example,when what is learned in geography is related to what is learned in
history in the same year, we say there is a horizontal relationship.
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