Curriculum Development

(Education Dept. BS-II 4th sem)

Topic:

Hilda Taba

Submitted To:

Miss Sadia

Submitted by:

Romana Umar

Roll No. 798

Date:

27-03-2012

The Hilda Taba Model

Another approach to curriculum development was proposed by Hilda Taba

in her book Curriculum Development: Theory and Practice published in 1962. She

argued that there was a definite order in creating a curriculum. She believed that

teachers, who teach the curriculum, should participate in developing it which led to

the model being called the grass-roots approach. She noted 7 major steps to her

grass-roots model in which teachers would have major input. She was of the

opinion that the Tyler model was more of an administrative model. The Tyler

model involved too much top-down decision making, the greater portion of

curriculum decisions were made by administrators in the Central Office or the

Ministry of Education.

Taba felt that a curriculum should be designed by the users of the

programme. Teachers should begin the process by creating specific teaching-

learning units for their students. She advocated that teachers take an inductive

approach to curriculum development. This meant starting with the specifics and

building toward a general design this was just the opposite to the more traditional

deductive approach which starts with the general design and then working toward

the specifics.

Teacher Input

Evaluation

Teacher

Input

Teacher Input

Taba proposed 7 major steps to her grass-roots model in which teachers would

have major input throughout the curriculum development process:

Diagnosis of

Needs

Formulation of Objectives

Selection of

Content

Organisation of Content

Organisation of Learning

Activities

Selection of

Learning Activities

1. Diagnosis of need: The teacher who is also the curriculum designer starts the

process by identifying the needs of students for whom the curriculum is

planned. For example, the majority of students are unable to think critically.

2. Formulation of objectives: After the teacher has identified needs that require

attention, he or she specifies objectives to be accomplished.

3. Selection of content: The objectives selected or created suggest the subject

matter or content of the curriculum. Not only should objectives and content

match, but also the validity and significance of the content chosen needs to

be determined. i.e. the relevancy and significance of content.

4. Organisation of content: A teacher cannot just select content, but must

organise it in some type of sequence, taking into consideration the maturity

of learners, their academic achievement, and their interests. [We will discuss

curriculum design in more detail in Module 6].

5. Selection of learning experiences: Content must be presented to students and

students must be engaged with the content. At this point, the teacher selects

instructional methods that will involve the students with the content.

6. Organisation of learning activities: Just as content must be sequenced and

organised, so must the learning activities. Often, the sequence of the learning

activities is determined by the content. But the teacher needs to keep in mind

the particular students whom he or she will be teaching.

Evaluation and means of evaluation: The curriculum planner must determine just

what objectives have been accomplished. Evaluation procedures need to be

designed to evaluate learning outcomes.

Taba’ model has much merit. However, some argue that teacher

involvement throughout the process assumes that they have the expertise and,

perhaps more importantly, the time to engage in such an extensive and intensive

curricular activity. Teachers being involved in the early stages of curriculum

development may not necessarily be an advantage as it will not necessarily

guarantee an effective curriculum since it is a highly specialised process.