Curriculum Development Team Research Articles

Evaluating enquiry-based learning in a new pre-registration programme

In accordance with the need to provide contemporary midwifery education which meets the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) (2009) standards, the pre-registration midwifery education programme at the University of Hertfordshire underwent a major curriculum development in 2008, which afforded the opportunity to review the existing learning and teaching strategies. The curriculum development team were keen to develop an education programme which would enable student midwives to develop the necessary skills associated with adult learning and encourage individual responsibility for life-long learning ( NMC, 2010 ) in the belief that such skills would help prepare student midwives to be better equipped to cope with both the demands of the programme and the challenges of contemporary midwifery practice. The learning and teaching strategy of enquiry-based learning (EBL) was introduced as a key feature throughout the 3-year midwifery programme. This article presents an evaluation of the introduction of EBL for a group of first-year students as they progressed through the first year of their midwifery training. It reports on some of the emerging themes from the students' perspectives from their experience of EBL and on the resulting changes which occurred in response to the findings from a series of facilitated student focus group meetings.

Exploring the role of leadership in facilitating teacher learning in Hong Kong

In recent years international trends towards teacher empowerment and leadership have gained increased attraction in East Asia's education policy and practice. Yet, as scholars have noted, the values underlying these practices often conflict with traditional cultural norms of East Asian societies which stress hierarchical and status differences. This study explored the efficacy of an approach to developing distributed curriculum leadership among school teachers. The research employs discourse analysis of video-taped meetings of teachers in a mathematics curriculum development team in order to explore the leadership and teacher learning. The results provide initial support for strengthening school-level capacity for teacher leadership as a means of fostering teacher learning in East Asian schools. Implications include the need for incorporating programmes that build leadership and team development into more general staff development for teachers.

Rush Medical College

Rush Medical College

Managing school‐based curriculum innovations: a Hong Kong case study

This study was originally designed to explore the impact of a distributed approach to developing curriculum leadership among schoolteachers. Previous papers have focused on reporting evidence of teacher learning in the process of engaging teachers in various types of curriculum decision‐making in an innovation project based on interview data. This article reports a discourse analysis of the interactions based on the visual data in videotaped meetings between teachers in a Chinese curriculum development team and shows that teacher participation is constrained by the leadership styles of the positional leaders in the team in the second action cycle in the project. The mediational effects of the leadership styles invite policy‐makers and school management to rethink the effectiveness of school‐based approaches to curriculum development in enhancing teacher learning and development.

Bringing the social into pedagogy: unsafe learning in an uncertain world

The paper describes a collaborative curriculum development project implemented over 3 years at 2 universities in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. The project involved a short module in which students in their fourth year of study interacted and learnt collaboratively across the boundaries of institution, discipline, race and social class, about the concepts of community, self and identity. The pedagogic approach adopted is described, as well as the responses of the students, and a brief reflection on some of the learning outcomes attained. The paper considers the learning processes which the curriculum development team experienced, and suggests that in order to facilitate learning for an ‘uncertain world’, the curriculum designers, too, need to engage in learning processes in which they make themselves vulnerable, mirroring some of the learning processes they expect the students to undergo.

Preparing the twenty‐first century workforce: the case of curriculum change in radiation protection education in the United States

The advent of the global information society and a myriad of other rapidly changing variables are presenting many new and unique challenges for the twenty‐first century workforce, and perhaps the most pressing of these challenges is actually meeting the needs for qualified workers to fill the positions in emerging and growing fields. One such field is the nuclear industry. In fact, the nuclear industry is on the verge of a workforce crisis with a need for more than 57% of current radiation protection technicians (RPTs) in the United States to be replaced in the next ten years. The University of Missouri was awarded a Department of Labor grant to build an associates of applied science curriculum for the next generation of RPTs. After determining that the dominant approach to RPT training in the industry is via memorisation and recall, the question for the development team became how to best advance a vocational curriculum that provides innovative approaches to knowledge acquisition in meaningful contexts in an enterprise that has a relatively narrow view of learning. In the current article the process the curriculum development team underwent to approach this question is provided, along with the theoretical framework used to guide development of the curriculum and the resulting curricular design. The impact that this curriculum may have on higher order cognition and knowledge generalisation is discussed. Of particular note is the design and development of an ASK system, an online learning support system, to bolster the practical and theoretical aims of the curriculum.

Take Time for Action: Students' Geometric Thinking about Rotations and Benchmark Angles

The Measurement Standard states that understanding angles and angle measurement is important in the middle grades (NCTM 2000). To minimize misconceptions that the measure of an angle is determined by the length of its rays (Keiser 2000) or by its interior “space,” our curriculum research and development team decided to introduce angles and angle measurement using transformational geometry, specifically, the motion of rotation. Our class included ten fifth-grade students who had introductory experience with transformational geometry in the fourth grade. Our goals were for students to understand that 360 degrees measured a full rotation and to use this information to determine benchmark angles of 90 degrees, 180 degrees, and 270 degrees. To help achieve these goals, clockwise and counterclockwise movements were also emphasized. We hope the description of our students' developing understandings of angles and angle measurements will help you explore your students' thinking about these concepts.

Collaborative Partnership in the higher education curriculum: a cross-sector study of foundation degree development

The emergence of Foundation Degree programmes in response to employer workforce development needs provides a rich environment for the study of undergraduate curriculum innovation in the context of cross-sector partnerships in postcompulsory education. This article presents the findings of a case study of foundation degree development by consortia involving employer groups in the private and public sectors, six further education colleges and a research-led University. All three sectors shared a common goal of widening participation and the development of skills, yet contrasts in the range of other aims that each sought generated significant challenges to the curriculum development team. This qualitative study draws on evidence from documentary analysis, participant observation and semi-structured interviews of the major stakeholders over a period of 2 years. It highlights the barriers to effective curriculum change within partnership contexts and the benefits that can accrue.

A case‐study of a curriculum development process in nutrition education using empowerment as organizational policy

While many nutrition education curricula have been developed, there is a dearth of published description of the process of development and the insights gained that might be useful to others. The purpose of this study was to provide such a description. The study used participant‐observation as a qualitative analytical method; empowerment as an organizational policy, and a UNESCO manual (Contento and Morin, 1988) as a guide to develop a nutrition education curriculum for a low‐income area of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The curriculum development team of ten members was representative of various stakeholders of the school community. Observation of the process yielded several important insights: Empowerment used as an organizational policy, with the involvement of the entire community during the planning process, can enhance people's ability to work together and develop a realistic sense of success, ownership and high commitment to curriculum implementation; professionals and lay people can design a curriculum together if a planning framework is provided to enhance mutual competence; all members of the team, regardless of educational level or background, should be involved in designing and pilot‐testing instruments, analyzing needs assessment data and designing lesson plans; and effective leadership is important, based on ability to facilitate group process, foster open communication, value and integrate the differing views and skills of team members and bring closure to tasks.

Attitudes to disability of Russian occupational therapy and nursing students.

Positive student attitudes toward disability are essential to client-centred rehabilitation. Instilling such attitudes in students enrolled in the first occupational therapy (OT) and post-diploma nursing management (NM) courses in Russia was a key objective of the curriculum development team. The team's aim was to combat the traditional Russian attitude of pity, dependence and marginalization. To this end, the introductory classes were developed and taught by teachers from the All Russia Society of Disabled (ARSD). This paper examines the attitudes to disability in Russia and compares the attitudes of three groups of students. Students in the OT and NM programmes (n = 18) in Volgograd were compared to other nursing students in the same college (n = 21) and to nursing students in a Moscow medical school (n = 20). All completed the Scale of Attitudes Toward Disabled Persons (SADP). The Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney U statistics revealed that students in the OT and NM programmes had significantly more positive scores (P = 0.01) than either of the other groups. This suggests that the strategies adopted by the curriculum team were successful in developing positive attitudes in students.

From Virtual Frog to Frog Island: Design studies in a development project

We describe the efforts of a curriculum development team to create computerized virtual creatures for biology education. The original purpose was to create a virtual frog that biology students could dissect on computer. As the project developed, the vision changed radically. Instead of a virtual creature, the team created a virtual world, Frog Island, that contained a wealth of resources in various media for learning about the biology of frogs. The impetus for the shift from Virtual Frog to Frog Island came from a series of design studies in which the team discovered that the original vision did not match the needs of students and teachers. On the basis of this experience, we make a case for the value of early design studies in the development of educational innovations.

Using concept maps and visual representations for collaborative curriculum development.

A picture is worth a thousand words, and in the development of collaborative curricula among colleges and universities, a concept map or visual representation may save thousands of hours of semantic wrangling. Using pictures in curriculum development allows participants with varying backgrounds to share their visions and values, and promotes work at the conceptual level before detailed planning proceeds. A curriculum development team found the use of concept mapping and visual representations to be one of their most valuable means of developing consensus among three faculty groups and practicing nurses. The authors examine concept mapping as a heuristic tool for curriculum development in the context of creating a joint collaborative nursing curriculum in two languages among a university and two community colleges. The use of other visual representations to compensate for some of the limitations of concept mapping are also described. Recommendations are made based on the authors' experience with these tools.

Curriculum change: the importance of team role.

This paper describes a study examining aspects of team role in the management of curriculum change. The Belbin Team Role Self-Perception Inventory was completed by 25 members (83%) of a faculty curriculum development team. Overall the group showed a preference for the implementer and shaper roles, whilst the completer-finisher role was relatively weakly represented, ranking fifth out of eight possible roles. Older and more senior team members favoured the co-ordinator role, whilst younger and more junior members favoured the team-worker and completer-finisher roles. Some implications of these findings are discussed in the light of the current trend for widespread change in undergraduate medical curricula and the challenges faced by medical schools in a resource constrained environment.

‘I Was Little Then’

Should pupils with severe learning difficulties be introduced to history in the National Curriculum? Views are divided. David Banes, teacher, Rainbow School, Bedford Education Authority, and a member of the National Curriculum Development Team (SLD), and Judy Sebba, coordinator, National Curriculum Development Team (SLD), Cambridge Institute of Education, are exploring access to history. They describe how the use of personal video material can help some pupils to become more aware of ‘the past’, an essential component of learnin g history.

A Jigsaw Approach to Group Work

Using group work as a way of meeting children's individual learning needs is becoming more widespread in a variety of schools. Richard Rose, head of Wren Spinney School, Kettering, Northamptonshire LEA, and a member of the National Curriculum Development Team (SLD) at Cambridge Institute of Education, describes a strategy for promoting group work in schools for pupils with severe learning difficulties.

Topics: From Muths to Objectives

The topic method and the objectives approach to learning have each come in for increasing criticism. Will a synthesis of the two work better for pupils with learning difficulties in the new context of the National Curriculum? Richard Byers, a teacher seconded from Riverwalk School, Suffolk Education Authority, to the National Curriculum Development Team (SLD), Cambridge Institute of Education, describes the experimental introduction of 'integrated schemes of work' in special schools.

A curriculum development team under the challenge of change

Educational software is characterized by the philosophy and the strategy which underlie its development and reflect concerns of hardware, software, curriculum and classroom. The philosophy behind the Computers in the Curriculum project and its development model are briefly described. The focus is on the learner and is traced through the emphasis given to screen design and the design of the user interface. The role of software tools is debated; these tools can be both an aid and a threat to the development process, because of the change in the role of teachers. One software unit, SCRIPTWRITER, is described as an example of combined use of tools and languages within a clear curriculum focus.

The teacher researcher and the management of change

A school has used a full‐time post as teacher researcher, supporting a curriculum development team, and herself being supported by a consultant from Higher Education. Issues and outcomes are discussed including the role of data collection in educational decision‐making, and ways in which both the teacher‐researcher, and her colleagues must rethink their planning approach. Finally, we consider how this model might be developed under grist to evaluate whole‐school effects on INSET.

Nominal Group Technique: A process for initiating curriculum development in higher education

ABSTRACT The article presents a short case-study in which the Nominal Group Technique (NGT) is used in the process of structuring a curriculum development team's preliminary course planning. Previous claims that NGT acts to support initial course development through modifying group dynamics, rapidly identifying central curriculum design issues and facilitating experience exchange seem warranted in the instance we present. We describe the use of the NGT procedure as we have employed it and discuss its strengths and limitations in the context of immediate and longer-term curriculum planning of a CNAA BEd degree.