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Hello, welcome back to week one, lecture two on Aspects of Curriculum.

There are different ways of looking at curriculum.

And there's the formal, informal, and hidden.

Of the three, the hidden curriculum is a little interesting because it's no

very much spoken about.

And we shall see what are the differences between these three types of curriculum.

What is formal curriculum?

Take a look at this slide and its definition.

This is something that is given to teachers to follow in teaching.

An example is like civic senses, citizenship education.

The contents of this subject will be explicitly described,

outlined in the form of syllabus or guidelines, and given to teachers.

And this will usually contain the objectives, the subject matter,

learning experiences, teaching techniques, assessment suggestions, and

the reading materials.

So, this actually becomes part of a formal curriculum that is provided or

pre-packaged and given to teachers.

And informal curriculum is something that is beyond the formal curriculum.

And you may want to take a look at the slide and

see how this is different from the formal curriculum.

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This very much involves

student participation in extracurricular activities or co-curricular activities,

like clubs, uniform units, subject-specific societies, student

councils, international organizations, and so on, which will help students

understand different aspects that they are learning in the formal curriculum.

For example, we talk about civics and citizenship education.

And the different elements of that subject,

like democracy through participative decision making or

becoming responsible citizens or leading a good nation and productive life,

such elements will come through very naturally, via informal curriculum.

There are several more examples on informal curriculum.

You can take a look at this list, and

see whether your familiar with this list, which may be happening in your school.

Okay, we just saw what is formal curriculum and informal curriculum,

now, let's move on to hidden curriculum.

This is a curriculum that is not very much spoken about by teachers,

but it has a lot of impact on student's learning and their behavior.

It is this unwritten and

sometimes, unconscious values, beliefs, behaviour assumptions.

That comes together with the formal and

informal curriculum that happens in the school.

For example, teachers who spend a lot of time talking and

not giving much opportunity to the children to speak or

to answer may bring about this kind of understanding among,

amongst students that teachers are the most powerful people in the school,

an authority that need to be abided by,

and students will become very passive in nature.

And also, in some instances, school teachers may pay attention to

certain group of students, and not the others,

and this may also bring about some understanding among students,

that certain group of people are more valued than the others.

So, these are the kind of examples that happens in school.

And this can be caused by the human intervention, human behaviour,

teachers' behaviour.

Or it can be also structural in the sense that schools can

also impose some kind of hidden curriculum on the students.

So, this is a very important concept that you, as a teacher, understand

and consciously make efforts to pay attention to this aspect of curriculum.

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At this point, I would like to take you to Elliot Eisner's concept

of implicit curriculum, which is very much related to hidden.

But yet, it differs slightly in some ways.

He says that implicit curriculum is intended curriculum, and

it extends to what happens in a classroom.

And it gets displayed in a very subtle manner, but

has a powerful impact on student learning.

And this is a definition given by Elliot Eisner,

take a look at this slide on Implicit Curriculum.

According to him, he says, the furniture, the murals, the pin-ups, the whole

environment that is created in a classroom has an impact on student learning.

Which does not come out formally, but it is there all the time

and which has very powerful impact on students.

Now, we can take a look at this quadrant, which has Formal and Implicit curriculum.

And see, in the classroom level as a teacher,

how do you work with the formal curriculum?

And how do you work on the implicit curriculum?

How can you make these two work together in order to

bring about powerful learning experience for the students?

At the school organizational level, the school leadership could also focus on

the formal curriculum and the implicit curriculum.

And how they can make this an impact on students in the schools.

In addition to the Formal, Informal, Hidden, and the Implicit curriculum.

There is a different category that has been provided by Larry Cuban.

This is very much based on the policy practice aspect.

So, he talks about four different curriculum that happens at the school level.

The official curriculum, the taught curriculum, the learned curriculum, and

the tested curriculum.

What are they?

The official curriculum usually, as we know, that is something that is

handed down by the state or the district education office to the school.

Which outlines all the subjects that need to be taught for

the different grade levels in schools.

And the taught curriculum is something what teaches choose to teach.

It depends very much on their knowledge,

on their subject matter experience, expertise and the kind of affection,

compassion they have for certain subjects.

And they teach what they want to teach or what they are comfortable with teaching.

And the learned curriculum is more expansive and

inclusive than the overtly taught curriculum.

It is beyond the content learning, students also learn many unsuspected,

unspecified lessons that are embedded in the environment.

That's especially from the implicit curriculum that I spoke about earlier.

The kind of pin-ups or the posters or the murals that happens in the school.

The way that school is organised.

The chairs and desks, the way it is placed.

All these things send some kind of message to students.

And they learn from the formal curriculum and the implicit curriculum,

different aspects about schools, and they gather information like that.

Finally, comes the tested curriculum.

This is very much intended by the policy makers, or the testing institutions.

They test on what the formal curriculum says and

not really very much on what teachers taught or the students learned.

So, there is actually no fit between what is taught, learned, and tested.

So, this happens very much in the public education system.

There is a vast difference between what is the official curriculum and

what is taught, learned, and eventually tested.

So, this is another category that is provided by Larry Cuban,

that may be helpful in understanding how the whole curriculum gets laid out

in the classroom level.

Now, we have come to the final part think, pair, and share.

With a colleague of yours, you may want to revisit the quadrant

and consider the balance between the activities within the school and your

own classrooms, with regard to the formal curriculum and the implicit curriculum.

Think about how it happens in the classroom.

And how it gets played out at the school organizational level?

And how it can bring about the learning experience for the students?

Thank you very much, we have come to the end of lecture two.

And I shall see you in the next lecture.

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Lecture 2: Aspects of Curriculum

Foundations of Teaching for Learning: Curriculum

Meet the Instructors