Curriculum: Higher Education

Programme Design
Overview of curriculum models

Author: Geraldine O’Neill Email: [e-mail] Date: 13th January 2010

Overview of curriculum models
Ornstein and Hunkins (2009, p15) contend that curriculum development encompasses how a ‘curriculum is planned, implemented and evaluated, as well as what people, processes and procedures are involved..’. Curriculum models help designers to systematically and transparently map out the rationale for the use of particular teaching, learning and assessment approaches. Ornstein and Hunkins (2009) suggest that although curriculum development models are technically useful, they often overlook the human aspect such as the personal attitudes, feelings, values involved in curriculum making. Therefore they are not a recipe and should not be a substitute for using your professional and personal judgement on what is a good approach to enhancing student learning. A commonly described, maybe slight simplistic version of two polarised curriculum models are those referred to by many authors as the ‘Product Model’ and the ‘Process Model’. Neary (2003a, p39) describes these as one which emphasises ‘plans and intentions (The Product Model) and one which emphasises activities and effects’ (The Process Model) (See Table 1 below). Table 1: The Product and Process Models of Curriculum Development.

The product model can be traced to the work of the writings of Tyler (1949) who greatly influenced curriculum development in America (O’Neill, 2010). ‘Models that developed out of Tyler’s work, such as Popham and Baker (1970), were criticised for their over emphasis on learning objectives and were viewed as employing very technical, means-to-end reasoning. The higher education context in Europe, which has been strongly influenced by the 1999 Bologna Declaration (European Commission, 2009), uses a model not dissimilar to Tyler’s work’ (O’Neill, 2010, In Press). The product model, however, has been valuable in developing and

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