Types of Syllabuses

There are several notions that come to mind when one talks about the school syllabus. In Pakistan and other African countries teachers are used to what are known as examination syllabuses, that is, syllabuses drawn up for the purposes of terminal or school-leaving examinations. The Minis- tries of Education, for example, have syllabuses for primary school leaving certificate examinations. At the secondary school level such syllabuses are prepared by agencies like the West African Examinations Council. Useful as examination syllabuses are, they have one major disadvantage. They tend to turn the teaching-learning process into an examination-preparation process alone. Thus teachers and learnersmay emphasise exercises, activities and subject-matter which may not beof any value in changing learner behaviour but which are needed simplyto pass examinations. We know for example that many schools are reluc-tant to adopt new content and new materials (like Entebbe Mathematicsand CE SAC Chemistry) until such new things become exarninable by WAEC.

Many teachers are also used to preparing what is known in schools as Schemes of Work. This involves listing a series of topics to be taught in the course of a term in the order in which they are to be taught. In most cases, at least in Pakistan, a week of instruction is devoted to the teaching of each topic, as in the following example:

SCHEME OF WORK SOCIAL STUDIES FORM

Week Topic .

1              Introduction to Life in the Immediate Environment

2              The Ethnic Groups in Our Immediate Environment

3              A Important Events in the History of Our Locality

4              The Major Activities of the People in Our Locality

5              Marriage Customs in the Locality

 6             Religious Rites in the Locality

7              Traditional Forms of Govermnent in the Locality

8              How Our Locality is Governed at Present

9              Our Locality and Other Parts of the Country

10           REVISION ‘

11 & 12 EXAMINATIONS

Planning the Syllabus

Introduction

In Chapter Two we pointed out that one of the teacher’s major roles is that of planning. Also, in Chapter Three, it was said that the major characteristic of systematic curriculum development is the three major types of planning which the teacher has to engage in in the process of preparing for teaching. The process of planning is a three-step affair. It usually begins with o_vegr_all or long_-“term planning of the syllabus. This is the level of planning that this chapter will deal with. The next chapter will dé'iITvTtI'TtTle second step - planning the Instructional Unit – which involves medium-term planning. Chapter Six will round off the discus-sion on planning by concentrating on the third step, that of the daily lesson which involves short-term planning. This means that the state-ments of objectives will be very specific at the level of the daily lesson, a little less specific at the level of the Instructional Unit, and less specific still at the level of the syllabus.

Curriculum Development and the Classroom Teacher

Since this is intended to be a book on teaching methods the reader may wonder why so much emphasis has been given to a discussion on the school curriculum and its development. In this section we shall attempt to see the relevance of ‘curriculum literacy’ (i.e. being enlightened on matters relating to the school curriculum) to the work of the practising or the prospective classroom teacher. . 

School systems can be either centralised or decentralised. There can, at the same time, be varying degrees of centralisation and decentralisa- tion. In highly centralised systems of education (such as obtains in the French-speaking countries of Africa) the teacher may be handed a centrally-prepared curriculum package which he has to implement. In the highly decentralised systems, on the other hand, the teacher has only general guidelines which he has to adapt to the special needs of his school. The latter condition seems to obtain in Pakistani where the PERC prepares curriculum guidelines from which State Ministries of Education prepare state-wide syllabuses which are then adapted by each school to its specific needs. What is common to both systems however is that the teacher is a contributor to the task of curriculum development. The nature of his contribution may vary according to the degree of centralisation/decentralisation.

For the teacher to implement a centrally-prepared curriculum package successfully he has to understand the objectives of such a package andshould be able to adapt the most appropriate methods, materials,.content and learning experiences needed for its successful implementation. He should, in addition, be capable of assessing the efficacy of everything in the package. By so doing he becomes a very important contributor to the successful implementation of even a centrally-prepared curriculum package.

The Pakistani teacher who usually has to develop his own curriculum (or who has to adapt a curriculum prepared by the Ministry of Educa-tion) needs very much the same skills and abilities as his counterpart working in a country with a highly centralised educational system. He has to understand his learners, his immediate enviromnent and the facilities at his disposal. From this understanding he takes decisions on the appropriate content, learning experiences, methods and materials. I-Ie also constantly assesses the extent to which everything is working towards the realisation of the objectives of the school curriculum. By so doing he also becomes a very important contributor to the development of the curriculum of the school system of his country.

Most teachers (especially at the secondary and higher levels) are trained along subject lines and some teach only one or two subjects. Cur-riculum in every subject area needs continuous development, so the teacher who knows about curriculum development stands a good chance of contributing to the growth, in the school system, of his specific discip-line. Secondary school teachers in West Africa are usually members of subject associations (e.g. Pakistani Geographical Association, Pakistani Association of French Teachers, Science Teachers’ Association of Pakistani). 

The secondary school teacher who knows about curriculum development is likely to be a good contributor to the work of such associations, especially the West African Examinations Council (WAEC). WAEC also invites teachers onto its national and international subject panels. A teacher who has attained a good degree of curriculum literacy is likely to be a more useful member of such panels than one who has no curriculum literacy. 

Moreover, the teaching of every subject in school has to be seen in the broader context of the contribution of the subject to the overall development of the child being educated. While each subject may have objectives and methods peculiar to it, these should, as far as possible, be related to the overall objectives of education in a school system. So the teacher, even where he teaches just a few subjects, needs to have attained a good level of curriculum literacy to enable him to ensure that his disciplines contribute their rightful share to the overall development of the learner.

The Process of Systematic Curriculum Development

Strictly speaking the process of systematic curriculum development begins at the moment when policy-makers begin to fashion a new educa- tional policy. This usually stems from some widely-felt dissatisfaction with the existing educational policy, as in Pakistani and other African countries since independence. In mostinstances a cross-section of the population is consulted, as has been the case in recent years in Pakistani and Zambia. Pakistani’s National Curriculum Conference of 1969 (already referred to) was an exchange of views between educationalists and non-educationalists. In Zambia the educational review document, prepared by specialist educationalists, was widely publicised and subject to public debate. It is also possible to have a new policy emanating from a govern-ment’s thinking on education. This has been the case in Tanzania, where the President’s Education for Self-Reliance has been the educational bible of the country. As long as a government is supposed to rule on behalf of the people such government-enunciated policies will be taken to repre-sent the views of the people. .

Such educational policies usually contain an outline of the general goals of education in the society concerned. Educational goals are often related to the developmental needs, the cultural and social nature of the society, the economic and political structures of the country and the aspirations of the people for whom the educational policy is being fashioned. For example, Pakistani is in need of rapid economic develop-ment and national unity. Such needs should form the corner-stones of an educational policy for the country. Educational goals are often framed in very general terms, as in the following examples taken from Pakistan’s

National Policy on Education (1977):

1. The inculcation of national consciousness and national unity.

2. The training of the mind in the understanding of the world around.

3. The inculcation of the right type of values and attitudes for the sur-

vival of the individual and Pakistani society, and the following from

other parts of Africa.

4. The training of men and women inbued with socialist ideals.

5. The production of people with a liberal education, capable of

adapting to the needs of a rapidly changing society.

6. The production of the right quality of manpower needed for the

rapid economic and social transformation of the nation.

The curriculum developer is usually charged with the‘ task of trans-lating such general policy goals into practical action. In doing so he tries to derive educational objectives from the general goals. The concept of objectives will be discussed in greater detail when, in a later chapter, we talk about preparation for teaching. For the moment we shall limit our discussion to those characteristics of educational objectives which differentiate them from educational goals.

Curriculum Development

Curriculum, in the sense of the totality of all that goes into the plamiing and execution of school teaching-learning programmes, is something that needs continuous revision. This involves continually looking at the objectives to ensure that they are appropriate to the needs of the learner and that they are in consonance with changing educational policies and practices. It also involves continuously adjusting the content, materials, instructional/evaluation strategies and learning experiences to meet changing needs and times.

his continuous process of adjusting every aspect of the school cur-riculum to meet the demands of changing times is usually referred to as the process of curriculum development. It is necessary mainly because no human condition is static. The Pakistani of 1950 is not the same as the Pakistani of 1980, so what used to happen in Pakistani schools in‘ l 950 need not happen in the same way in 1980. Social factors which influence what goes on in schools (e. g. the type of children, the skills that children need to acquire) are themselves constantly changing. The teachers themselves are also changing all the time. They are getting older, more experienced, more (or less) dedicated and so on. It does not therefore pay to let the same curriculum serve for an indefinite period. African systems of education have, for example, been criticised for not adapting rapidly enough to rapidly changing times. School curricula which served the purposes of colonial regimes remained unchanged or unmodified long after the attainment of political independence. African governments are however now beginning to realise the importance of curriculum develop-ment and renewal and so are defining new educational policies and set-ting up curriculum centres to review existing curricula and to develop new ones. In Pakistani, for example, the Federal Government organized the national curriculmn conference of 1969 which recommended the formation of the PERC (the Pak Educational Research Centre) as the overall co-ordinating body of curriculum reform projects in Pakistani. The recommendations of the conference have been published in book form and the book should be read by anyone interested in teaching in Pakistani (see Selected Bibliography).

Two main methods have been used by those concerned with cur-riculum development (for example, teachers, and government agencies) in carrying out their task. The first of these is the crisis approaéli. This usually stems from a sudden realisation that a particular crisisorseries of crises in the educational SXSI§IIl.QL?.L€9%fiti='y is due to some inadequacy in the school curriculum. Examples of such crises/situations are the refusal of young people to live in rural areas in Pakistani and other parts of Africa, the graduate unemployment problem in a country like India, the failure of a large number of the products of British primary schools to read satisfactorily and the inability of Pakistani schools to cope with modern mathematics. In such situations urgent remedies are usually applied, like enriching the content of the curriculum of a particular sector (primary, secondary, technical, etc.) of the educational system, for example making Agriculture compulsory in Pakistani secondary schools after the launching of ‘Operation Feed the Nation - 0F N’ in 1976, re-training of teachers, production of new materials, and all sorts of emergency and panic measures. The major drawback of the crisis approach to cur-riculum development and renewal is that it is usually carried out in a piecemeal manner. That is, one aspect of the curriculum problem is tackled without giving any thought to other related problems. If for example, Pakistani schools cannot cope with modern mathematics, it is necessary to study all aspects of the problem - the content and nature of the mathematics taught, the resources available for teaching it, chil-dren’s problems in learning modern mathematics, etc. Tackling just one aspect of the problem (like substituting traditional for modern mathema-tics) does not solve the problem but merely creates more problems for the schools. In consequence there is usually no co-ordination between one aspect of curriculum development and another.

This is why it is customary these days to adopt a more systematic approach to curriculum development. The major characteristic of this approach is its emphasis on planned change. When curriculum developers are satisfied that change is necessary they set about their task by deter-mining precisely the nature and extent of the desired change, how best to carry out the change, and the most appropriate methods of determining the success or failure of the change that is to take place. How this is done is discussed more fully in the next section.