Process Essay: Curriculum Development

Final Exam Summer 2013

There are several phases one must complete in order to develop a curriculum for any program. The first is the development or retooling of a mission statement (if necessary)—what does the school hope to accomplish and who are the students? In this scenario, the school is a 6-12 grade cram school whose mission is to facilitate the learning of the English language so that students will be prepared to have a successful exchange experience in the future; students will take reading, writing, listening, speaking and grammar classes. The school is located in Seoul, South Korea. This imagined cram school has a strong partnership with many magnet and private schools across the United States. Upon completion of the program (generally 3-6 months depending on placement exam results and ability) students will be assigned to an experienced host family in the states who have children of the same age as the traveling student. Students will have the option to enroll overseas for 1-3 months. This school is 7 years old and has some time to see the results, both impressive and disappointing, of the different areas of study, teaching methods and materials. From here, the school must conduct a needs analysis in which teachers and administrators work together in order to pinpoint the weaknesses in the curriculum, which may be due to any number of causes, and repair them. During the needs analysis, stakeholders should examine each area that affects the overall success or failure of students; these include items such as materials, curriculum, facilities and teaching style. A list of questions should be made to help instructors and administrators pinpoint problem areas. This can be done through discussion as well as placement tests and student questionnaires. After examining the findings, they should create a set of new goals and objectives to address the shortcomings. Development of a test(s) to understand where students are is important; these should be pretests and posttests. Next, new materials, activities and resources that are meant to bridge the gaps or strengthen the weaknesses should be introduced. An evaluation checklist should be made so that administrators and teachers can be sure that the new items fulfill the requirements necessary to improve the curriculum. It may also be beneficial for stakeholders to evaluate the checklist itself. Posttests will yield the results of the curriculum retooling and exit interviews may help teachers and administrators to fully understand what it is that students love, hate, are getting and still may need. Although curriculum development and redevelopment may be time-consuming, it is certainly one of the most valuable uses of time of an educator or school owner. Successful programs yield not only happy students and parents, but happy teachers as well.