PLANNING GOALS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

PLANNING GOALS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

1. Academic Rationalism

            This justification for the aims of curriculum stresses the intrinsic value of the subject matter and its role in developing learner’s intellect, humanistic value, and rationality. The content matter of different subject is viewed as the basis for a curriculum and mastery of content is and and in itself rather than a means to solving social problems or providing efficient meant to achieve the goal of policy maker. The role of schools is to provide acces to major achievement of a particular cultural tradition and to know the insights gained from studying enduring fields of knowledge.

            Academic rationalism is sometimes used to justify the inclusion of certain foreign languages in school curricula, where they are taught not as tool for communication but as an aspect of social studies. Ozolin (1993) document the debate over foreign language teaching in Australian school and the reasons why French has Graudally replaced latin and other foreign languages. In discussing the role of foreign languages, the education minister for the state of victoria in 1964. Bloomfield. Argused that the issue wasn not one languages alone. Ozolin comment :

The intellectual justification for teaching French was, in Blommfield’s view,’’ the understanding of other nation, so that foreign language teaching in an intensive and specialized form of social studies ‘’. The purely linguistic and communicative aspects of languages were not the primary objectives, at least not for victorian school.(Ozolin 1993:83).

            In some parts of the world (eg. Hongkong, Singapore, Malaysia) under colonial rule the English curriculum was traditionally a literature – based one.’’ The basic educational aim was the assimilation of british culture through the medium of english literature. There was no provision for language work specially designed to help the non – native learner’’ ( Ho 1994, 223).  Clark (1987, 6) points out that in the United Kingdom academic rationalism is corcerned with :

§  The maintenance and transmission through education of the wisdom and culture of previous generation. This has led to the creation of a two – tier system of education – one to accord with ‘’higher’’ cultural traditions of an elite, and the other to cater for the more concrete and practical lifestyle of the masses.

§  The development for the elite of generalizable intellectual capacities nad critical faculties.

§  The maintenance of stand through an inspectorate and external eximination boards controlled by the universities.

In the United States, the debate over ‘’cultural literacy’’ that emerged wiyh the publication of hirsch book cultural literacy in 1987 indicated that this education ideology still has both influential proponent and critics.

2. Social and Economic Efficiency

This educational philosophty emphasizes the pracrical needs of learner and society nad the role fo an educational program in producing learner who are economically productive. People can improve themselves and their enmvironment through a process of rational planning. Social , economic, and other nedds of society can be identified and planned for ‘’ by task analysis, by forming objectives for each task, and by teaching skills as discrete units’’(Uhrmacher 1993, 4). socioeconomic ideology stresses the economic needs of society as a justification for the teaching of english. Succesful economies inthe twenty first century are increasingly knowledge – based, and the bulk of the world’s knowledge is in the english alnguage.

In foreign language teaching, the debate over skills based versus academically based instruction in language teaching has along history, as is seen in disscussion overe the relative merits of classical alnuages versus modern language.

3. Learner Centeredness

This term group together educational philosophies that stress the individual need of learner, the role of individual experience, and the need to develop awarness, self reflection , critical thinking, learner strategies, and other qualities and skill taht are believed to be important for learner to develop. Within this tradition, reconseptualist emphasize the role of experience in learning. Constructivist emphasize that learning involves active construction and testing of one’s own representation of the world and accomodation of it to one’s personal conceptual framework. All learning is seen to involve relearning and reorganization of one’s previous understanding and representation of knowledge (Robert 1998, 23).

Marsh (1986,201) poin out that the issue of child centered or learned curricula reappears every decade or so and can refer to any of the following :

§  Individualized teaching

§  Learning through practical operation or doing

§  Laissez faire – no organized curricula at all but based on the momentary interests of children

§  Creative self – expression by students

§  Practically oriented activities directed toward the needs of society

§  A collective term that refer to rejection of teaching – directed learning

3. Social Reconstructionism

            The curriculum perspective emphasizes the roles schools and learners can and should play in addressing social injustices and inequality. Curriculum development is not seen as a neutral process. School likewise do not present equal opportunities for all (Freire 1972; Apple 1986) but reflect the general inequalities in society. School must engage teachers and students in an examination of important social and personal problems and seek ways to addres them. This process is known as ‘’empowerment.’’ Teacher must empower their students so that they can recognize unjust system of class, race or gendeer, and challenge them.

            The most persuasive and currently popular representatives of his view point are assosiated with the movement known as critical theory and critical pedagogy . one of the best – known critical pedagogies is freire (1972), who argued that teachers and learners are involved in ajoint process of exploring and constructing knowledge. Students are not the ‘’object’’ of knowledge; they must find way of recognizing and resisting various forms of control. In language teaching. Auerbach’s (1992) work is an important application of critical pedagogy, stressing that teaching must seek to empowers student and help them bring about change in their lives. Criticts of this position argue that teachers and students may not be able to change the structure of the system in which they work and that other channel are often available to address such changes.

4. Cultural Pluralism

            This philosopy argues that schools should prepare students to participate in several different cultures and not merely the culture of the dominant social and economic group. Banks (1988) argue taht student in multicultural societies such as the United States need to develop cross – sultural competency or what is sometimes termed intercultural communication. This means taht one cultural group mis not seen as superior to others and that multiple perspectives representing the view ponit of different cultural group should be developed within the curriculum. Cultural pluralism seeks to re3dress rtacism, to raise the self system of minority group, and to help children appreciate the viewpoint of others cultures and religions (Uhrmacher 1993).Auerbach has questioned the rationale for the exclusive use of english in ESL classrooms and argues taht literacy in the first language is a significant factor in the  learning of a second language (Auerbach 1995; 25).

The extent to which one or other of the curriculum ideologies discusses in this section serves as the ideological underpinning of the curriculum and the relative emphasis they receive in the curriculum will reflect the particular context in which the curriculum occurs. The philosophy of the curriculum is the result of political judgment in that it reflect a particular set of choices about curriculum opotions.

5. Stating Curriculum Outcomes

            5.1 Aims

                        In curriculum discussions, the terms goal and sim are used interchangeably to refer to a description of the general puroses of a curriculum and objective to refer to a more specific and concrete description of purposes. We will use the term aim and objective here. An aim refer to statement of a general change that a program seeks to bring about in learners. Purposes of aim statements are :

• To provide a clear definition of the purposes of a program
• To provide guidelines for teacher, learners and material writers
• To help provide a focus for instruction
• To describe important and realizable changes in learning

In developing aim staement, it is important to describe more than simply the activities that student will take part in.

            5.2 Objectives

Aims are very general statements of the goals of a program they can be interpreted in many different ways. Statement of objectives have the following characteristics :

Objectives describe a learning outcome. In writing objectives, expressions like will study, will learn about, will prepare student for are avoided because they do not describe the result of learning but rather what students will during a course.

6. Critism Of The Use Of Objectives

            Although in many institutions the use of onjective in course planning is seen as a wayof bringing rigor and structure to the process of course planning, the use of objectives either in general form or in the form of behaqvioral objectives has also atracted some critism. The amjor critism of their use are :

• Objectives turn teaching into a technology
• Objectives trivialize taching and are product oriented.
• Objectives are unsuited to many aspect of language use.

7. Competency Based Program Outcomes

            An alternative to the use of objectives in program planning is to describe learning outcomes in term of competencies, an approach associated with Competency Based Language Teaching (CBLT). CBLT seeks to make a focus on the outcomes of learning a central planning stage in the development of language program (Schneck 1978; Grognet and Candall 1982).

8. The Nature Of Competencies

            Competencies refer to observable behaviors that are necessary for the succesful completion of real world activities. These activities m ay be related to any domain of life, though they have typically been linked to the field of work and to social survival in a new environment. Docking (1994,11) said there is relationship between competencies and job performance. Tollefson (1986) observes that the analysis of job into their constituent functional competencies in order to develop teaching onjectives goes back to the mid century, but another observe like Northrup (1997) report on a study comisioned bu the US Office education in which a wide variety of tasks performed by adult in american society were analyzed and the behaviors needed to carry out the tasks classified into five knowledge areas and four basic skill areas. From this analysis sixty five competencies were identified.

9. Critisms Of The Use Of Competencies

            The use of competencies in program planning is not without its critics. These critisms focus on the following issues :

• Definition of competencies
• Hidden values underlying competency specification

Tollefson (1986, 656 -657) point out that such competencies encourage refugees ‘’to consider themselves fortunate to find minimum – wage employment, regarless of their previous education. Moreover, the competencies attempt to inculcate attitudes and values taht will make refugees passive citizens who comply rather than complain, accept rather tahn resist, and apologize rather than disagree.’’

10. The Standard Movement

            The most recent realization of a competency perspective in the United States is seen in the ‘’standardd’’ movement, which has dominated education discussion since the 1990s. Standards are description of the targets students should be able to reach in different domain of curriculum content, and throughout the 1990s there was adrive to specify standards for subject matter accross the curriculum.

11. Nonlanguage Outcomes And Process Objectives

            A language curriculum typically includes other kinds of outcomes apart from language related objectives of the kindsdescribed above. If the curriculum seeks to reflect values related to learner centeredness, social reconstruction, or cultural pluralism, outcomes related to these valueswill also need to be included. Because such outcomes go beyond the contentof a linguistically oriented syllabus, they are sometimes referred to as nonlanguage outcomes. Those that describe learning experiences rather than outcomes are also known as aprocess objectives.

11.1. Learning Strategies

            Objectives in the category of learning how to learn refer to learning strategies. Learning strategies theory suggest that effective learning involves :

• Developing an intregrated set of procedures and operations that can be applied to different learning- that is strategies
• Selecting strategies appropriate to different tasks.
• Monitoring strategies for their effectiveness and replacing or revising them if necessary.

The english language syllabus for the teaching of english at primary level (1991) in singapore includes a numbers of catagories of process objectives

11.1.a. Thinking Skills

At the end of the course, pupils should be able to :

• Explore an idea, situation, or suggested solution for a specific purpose

• Think creatively to generate new ideas, to find new meanings, and to deal with relationships
• Analyze and /or evaluate an idea, a situation or a sugessted solution for a specific purpose

11.1.b. Learning How To Learn

At the end of the course, pupils should be able to :

• Apply a repertoire of library, information, and study skills
• Take some responsibility for their own learning
• Use some of the basic skills relating to information technology

11.1.c. Language And Culture

At the end of the course, pupils should be able to:

• Appreciate that there are varieties of english reflecting different cultures and use this knowledge appropriately and sensitively in communication
• Adopt a critical, but not negative, attitude toward ideas, thoughts, and values, reflected in spoken and written texts of local and foreign language.

The American council on the teaching of foreign languages in its natiaonal standards for foreign language learning(1996) identifies a number of objectives for language programs that relate to the philosopy of cultural pluralism. For example :

• Student demonstrate understanding of the concept of culture through comparisons of the culture studied and their own.
• Student acquire information and recognize the disticntive viewpoints that are only available through the foreign language and its cultures

The planning of learning outcomes for a language course si closely related to the course planning process.

                       

REFERENCES

1. Auerbach, E.R. 1992. Competency based ESL: one step forward or two step back? TESOL Quarterly, 20(3): 441-430.
2. Hirsch, E. 1987. Cultural Literacy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
3. Clark, J.L. 1987. Curriculum renewal in school foreign language learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press.