Psychological Foundation Of Curriculum Development

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Psychological Foundation Of CurriculumDevelopme
nt

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• Psychological consideration constitutes one of
  the most important aspects in curriculum
  development. The whole area of educational relies
  on its model. Psychology presents the frame of
  education.

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• The bulk of the concepts, the principles,
  theories and so on. Therefore we cannot talk
  about curriculum without educational psychology.
  It is the vehicle upon which curriculum sits and
  rides.

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Jean Piaget And Curriculum Development

• According to the Piagetian model, the development
  of the human intellect progresses through four
  qualitatively different stages, namely

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• Sensory motor stage 0 - 2 years
• Preoperational stage 2 7 years
• Concrete operational stage 7 11 years and
• Formal operational stage 11 years

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• In the first stage children are at home with
  parents the second they are in early primary,
  the third they are in the late primary in the
  fourth they are in late primary and secondary
  school in Nigerian educational system.

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• Implications of Piagets theory to Curriculum
  Development
• Piaget asserted that it is not possible to jump
  one stage to another, but it is possible to reach
  adulthood without ever reaching the forth
  stage-the formal operation stage. The implication
  of this is concerned with the possibility of
  accelerating the pupils through the four stages
  of mental development.

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• The role of teachers and the school therefore is
  to accelerate the pupils through the stages as
  quickly as possible.
• The theory provides basis for streaming, that is
  why you were not given all your undergraduate
  courses the first year you got the university

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• Several cross-cultural studies revealed that
  Nigerian and African children from big cities-
  the so called opportune children appear to be two
  years lagging behind their European and American
  counterparts. In effect, the kind of materials we
  develop for teaching say primary six children in
  British schools can only be useful to Junior
  Secondary Two pupils in Nigeria. We cannot adopt
  these nations curriculum enblock, but we can
  adapt.

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• The pre-operation and concrete operation children
  by design will find themselves in the Nursery and
  Primary Schools levels of our educational system.
  Piaget affirms that children at these levels are
  not capable of abstract reasoning. Learning at
  these levels can be enhanced by the use of
  concrete materials.

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• The best method of teaching therefore in not only
  that that employs the use of teaching facilities
  but also affords the exploration of the child
  natural environment Their learning must be
  through hands-on investigattion Learning by
  doing constrructing, dismantling and
  re-constructing, playing, planning using concrete
  etc

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Jerome Bruner

• Like Piaget, Bruner believes that people pass
  through different stages in their cognitive
  development. But Bruner places a much greater
  emphasis than Piaget does on, the role played by
  both language and the environment.

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• Bruner asserted that the major purpose of
  cognitive developments is to provide people with
  a model of the world and a reality, a model that
  can be used to solve the problems of living. This
  model of the world include internal system for
  storing information that people gain from
  experiences they have interacting with objects,
  people, words, and ideas.
• There are three stages in Bruner system
  Enactive, Iconic and Symbolic.

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• Implication for Teaching Learning
• Bruner advocates learning through discovery and
  therefore believes that teachers should provide
  problem situations that stimulate students to
  discover for themselves the structure of the
  subject matter.

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• Bruner equally believes that classroom learning
  should take place inductively moving from
  specific examples presented by the teacher to
  generalizations about the structure of the
  subject that are discovered by the students. The
  teacher organizes the class in such a way that
  the students learn through their own active
  involvements.

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• Students are presented with intriguing questions,
  baffling situations or interesting problems.
  Instead of explaining how to solve the problem,
  the teacher provides the appropriate materials
  and encourages students to make observation, form
  hypothesis and test solution.

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• Bruner equally suggested integrated curriculum-an
  inter-disciplinary pattern organized around a
  particular concept or topic such as energy,
  population etc. Energy as a concept can be
  approached in a unified whole without undue
  emphasis on compartmentalization into several
  science disciplines. Integrated curriculum is
  recent and important in view of the fact that
  education itself as a process is tending towards
  integration producing integrated and balanced
  personalities.

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• Spiral curriculum-a radical organization of
  curriculum across all grade levels is included in
  Bruner pattern of curriculum. He believes that
  any topic or subject can be taught effectively in
  an intellectually honest form to any child at any
  level provided the topic is adequately
  simplified. By implication many topics or
  subjects that were in the past, exclusive
  preserve of the senior classes, are now being
  taught at lower levels.

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Robert Gagne

• Gagne put forward the theories of Learning
  Prerequisite and Learning Hierarchy.
• In these theories, Gagne believes that the
  learning of a concept or a skill depends upon the
  learning of prerequisite concepts or skills.
• In addition to the theory of learning
  prerequisite and learning hierarchy, Gagne
  developed five-category system for examining the
  different types of learning outcomes.

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• These are
• intellectual skills
• verbal information
• Attitudes
• motor skills
• and cognitive strategies.
• Each type of learning is encouraged by a
  different set of learning conditions. Therefore
  one aspect of instruction is to create conditions
  that are favourable for the type of learning
  expected of students in a particular situation.

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David Ausubel

• Ausubels view of learning offers an interesting
  contrast to those of Bruner. His view is that
  learning should occur through reception, not
  discovery. Teachers should present materials to
  students in a carefully organized, sequenced, and
  somewhat finished form.

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• Students will then receive the most usable
  material. He called this method expository
  learning. The use of this method is, for the
  most part, confined to what Ausubel refers to as
  meaningful verbal learning, or the learning of
  verbal information, ideas, and relationships
  among verbal concepts.

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• There are four characteristics to Ausubels
  expository approach to teaching.
• First, it calls for a great deal of interaction
  between the teacher and the students. Although
  the teacher may do the initial presentation, the
  students ideals and responses are solicited
  throughout each lesson.

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• Second, it makes great use of examples.
• Third, it is deduced and
• Finally, it is sequential.
• Certain steps must be followed in the
  presentation of the material. Essentially these
  are the initial presentation of an advance
  organizer followed by subordinate content.

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• Advance Organizer A lesson following Ausubels
  suggested strategy always begins with an advance
  organizer. Meaningful learning is most likely to
  occur when there is a potential fit between the
  students cognitive structure and the material to
  be learned. The use of advanced is meant to make
  this fit more likely.

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• The purpose of advance organizers is either to
  give student the information they will need to
  make sense of the in coming lesson or to help
  them remember and use information they already
  have but which they may not realize is relevant
  to the lesson. The organizer thus acts as a kind
  of conceptual bridge between new material and
  old.