Chapter 1

Curriculum Essentials
Module 1
Curriculum and the Teacher
Module Overview
Module 1 is all about school curricula and the teacher. This intrductory module identifies
the different types of curricula that exist in the teacher's classroom and school. Further, Module 1
describes the important roles of the teacher as a curricularist who engages in the different facets
of curriculum development in any educational level.

Lesson 1
Curriculum in Schools
Desired Learning Outcomes
 Discuss the different curricula that exist in the school.
 Enhance understanding of the role of the teacher as a curricularist.
 Analyze the significance of curriculum and curriculum development in the
teacher's classroom.
Take Off
Have you read "The Sabre-Tooth Curriculum by Harold Benjamin (1939)?" Take some
time to read it and find out what curriculum is all about during those times.

Start here and enjoy reading.

A man by the name of New-Fist-Hammer-Maker knew how to do things his community
needed to have done, and he had the energy and the will go to ahead and do them. By virtue of
the characteristics, he was an educated man. New-Fist was also a thinker. Then as now, there
were few lengths to which men would not to avoid the labour and pain of thought.
…New-Fist got to the point where he became strongly dissatisfied with the accustomed
ways of his tribe. He began to catch glimpses of ways in which life might be made better for
himself, his family and his group. By virtue of his development, he became a dangerous man…
New-Fist thought about how he could harness the children's play to better the life of the
community. He considered what adults do for survival and introduced there activities to children
in a deliberate and formal way. These included catching fish with bare hands, clubbing little
woolly horses, and chasing away-sabre-toothed-tigers-with-fire. These then became the
curriculum and the community began to prosper-with plenty of food, hides for attire and
protection from threat. “But conditions changed”.
The glacier began to melt and the community could no longer see the fish to catch with
their bare hands, and only the most agile and clever fish remained which hid from the people.
The woolly horses were ambitious and decided to leave the region. The tigers got pneumonia and
most died. The few remaining tigers left. In their place, fierce bears arrived who would not be
chased by fire. The community was trouble.
One day, in desperation, someone made a net from willow twigs and found a new way to
catch fish and the supply was even more plentiful than before. The community also devised a
system of traps on the path to snare the bears. Attempts to change education system to include
these new techniques however encountered "stem opposition."
These are also activities we need to know. Why can't the schools teach them? But most of
the tribe particularly the wise old men who controlled the school, smiled indulgently at this
suggestion. "That wouldn't be education… it would be mere training". We don't teach fish
grabbing to catch fish, we teach it to develop a generalized agility which can never be duplicated
by mere training . . . and so on.
"If you had any education yourself, you would know that the essence of true education is
timelessness. It is something that endures through changing conditions like a solid rock standing
squarely and firmly in the middle of a raging torrent".

The story was written in 1939. Curriculum then was seen as a tradition of organized
knowledge taught in the schools of the 19th century. Two centuries later, the concept of a
curriculum has broadened to include several modes of thoughts or experiences.
No formal, non-formal or informal education exists without a curriculum. Classrooms
will be empty with no curriculum. Teachers will have nothing to do, if there is no curriculum.
Curriculum is at the heart of the teaching profession. Every teacher is guided by some sort of
curriculum in the classroom and in school.
In our current Philippine education system, different schools are established in different
educational levels which have corresponding recommended curricula. The educational levels are:
1. Basic Education. This level includes Kindergarten, Grade 1 to Grade 6 for elementary,
and for secondary, Grade 7 to Grade 10, for the Junior High School and Grade 11 and 12 and for
the Senior High School. Each of the levels has its specific recommend curriculum. The new
basic education levels are provided in the K to 12 Enhanced Curriculum of 2013 of the
Department of Education.
2. Technical Vocational Education. This is post-secondary technical vocational education
and training taken care of by Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA).
For the Tech Voc track in SHS of DepEd, DepEd and TESDA work in close coordination.
 3. Higher Education. This includes the Baccalaureate or Bachelor Degrees and the
Graduate Degrees (Master’s and Doctorate) which are under the regulation of the Commission
on Higher Education (CHED).

Content Focus
In whatever levels of schooling and in various types of learning environment, several
curricula exist. Let us find out how Allan Glatthorn (2000) as mentioned in Bilbao, et al (2008)
classified these:

Types of Curricula in Schools

Have you realized that in every classroom these are several types plot curricula
operating? Let us look into each one.
1. Recommended Curriculum. Almost all curricula found in our schools are
recommended. For Basic Education, these are recommended by the Department of Education
(DepEd), for Higher Education, by the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and for
vocational education by TESDA. These three government agencies oversee and regulate
Philippine education. The recommendations come in the form of memoranda or policies,
standards and guidelines. Other professional organizations or international bodies like UNESCO
also recommend curriculum schools.
2. Written Curriculum. This includes documents based on the recommended
curriculum. They come in the form of course of study, syllabi, modules, books or instructional
guides among others. A packet of this written curriculum is the teacher's lesson plan. The most
recent written curriculum is the K to 12 for Philippine Basic Education.
3. Taught Curriculum. From what has been written or planned, the curriculum has to be
implemented of taught. The teacher and the learners will put life to the curriculum. The skill of
the teacher to facilitate learning based on the written curriculum with the aid of instructional
materials and facilities will be necessary. The taught curriculum will depend largely on the
teaching style of the teacher and the learning style of the learners.
4. Supported Curriculum. This is describing as support materials that the teacher needs
to make learning and teaching meaningful. This include print materials like books, charts,
posters, worksheets, or non-print materials like Power Point presentation, movies, slides, models,
realias, mockups and other electronic illustration. Supported curriculum also includes facilities
were learning occurs outside or inside the four-walled building. These include the playground,
science laboratory, audio-visual rooms, zoo, museum, market or the plaza. These are the places
where authentic learning through direct experience occurs.
5. Assessed Curriculum. Taught and supported curricula have to be evaluated to find out
if the teacher has succeeded or not in facilitating learning. In the process of teaching and at the
end of every lesson or teaching episode, an assessment as learning or assessment of learning. If
the process is to find the progress of learning, then the assessed curriculum is for learning, but if
it is to finf out how much has been learned or mastered, then it is assessment of learning. Either
way, such curriculum is the assessed curriculum.
6. Learned Curriculum. How do we know if the student has learned? We always
believe that if a student changed behavior, he/she has learned. For example, from a non-reader to
a reader or from not knowing to knowing or from being disobedient to being obedient. The
positive outcome of teaching is an indicator of learning. These are measured by tools in
assessment, which can indicate the cognitive, affective and psychomotor outcomes. Leaned
curriculum will also demonstrate higher order and critical thinking and lifelong skills.
7. Hidden/Implicit Curriculum. This curriculum is not deliberately planned, but has a
great impact on the behavior of the learner. Peer influence, school environment, media, parental
pressures, societal changes, cultural pratices, natural calamities, are some factors that create the
curriculum. Teacher's should be sensitive and aware ofbthis hidden curriculum. Teachers must
have good foresight to include these in the written curriculum, in order to bring to the surface
what are hidden.
In every teacher's classroom, not all these curricula may be present at one time. Many of
them are deliberately planned, like the recommended, written, taught, supported, assessed, and
learned curricula. However, a hidden curriculum is implied, and a teacher may or may not be
able to predict its influence in learning. All of these have significant role on the life of the
teacher as a facilitator of learning and have direct implication to the life of the learners.
Now that you are fully aware that there are seven types of curricula operating in every
teacher's classroom, it is then very necessary to learn deeper and broader about the role of the
teacher in relation to the school curriculum.