EDU 513: Curriculum: Status, Issues, and Trends: Resources for Curriculum Project

This document available from the Connecticut State Department of Education's website is a step-by-step guide to what goes into developing a K-12 curriculum.

This page at ASCD's website has a sample chapter from the book "Align the Design"
by Nancy J. Mooney and Ann T. Mausbach. It discusses curriculum leadership and includes concrete examples to show what the curriculum development process looks like. You will find the full eBook at Ikeda Library (see the left hand box for the link).

This document, written by Ben Lummis of the Center for Collaborative Education, focuses on a particular approach and demonstrates how a curriculum can be developed using this approach for middle schools.

This document from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations shows how to develop curriculum for non-school settings.

This article by Dr. Leslie Owen Wilson on her site The Second Principle looks at what needs to be taken into account before the curriculum development process begins. There are a number of other useful articles under the Instructional Design heading as well, including "Types of Curriculum."

The rubric on this page at Gulf Coast State College's website demonstrates one way that a curriculum's outcomes can be critiqued. You might find this a helpful guide for thinking through the goals and underlying principles of the curriculum you plan to critique.

This page from the site "Schools-Teachers-Parents," maintained by Dr. Jeff Bloom, has a number of other resources that might be helpful to SUA graduate students. This page has a list of questions to help students identify and critique the assumptions that underlie the curriculum to be examined, and a diagram of philosophical and theoretical curriculum orientations at the bottom.

This manual by Jonathan D. Jansen and Vijay Reddy was designed to help NGOs evaluate curricula. The link to the manual is second to last on the page, which is maintained by the Improving Educational Quality Project, which studies education reform in developing countries.

This is a slide show by Anne-Mart Olsen. While the original context was higher education in South Africa, much the information in this presentation is applicable to other contexts. The reference list might also be helpful.

This blog post links to a completed project that describes how to align mathematics materials to the Common Core curriculum. Here the alignment of the materials to the curriculum is what is being critiqued. The blog is maintained by Bill McCallum, Ashli Black, Kristin Umland, and Ellen Whitesides for those interested in implementing the mathematics Common Core standards.

This page about PREMA2 at the Durham University website was, like the link above, intended to critique mathematics curricula, but has information applicable to all subjects. It suggests ways to critique extra-linguistic or content elements, such as illustrations and types of activities. The other pages of this site, accessible from the menu on the left hand side of the page, are worth exploring as well.

This document by Margaret E. McNeely provides an overview of five different curriculum analysis methods and includes data for both the U.S. and international contexts.

This curriculum analysis tool by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention offers K-12 schools a way to evaluate their physical education curricula.

The full report of the study undertaken by UNICEF Canada and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto (OISE/UT) is linked to on the right side of this page ("Get a copy of the Guide"). The report discusses the history of global education and the curricular philosophy of global education as it applied in various areas of Canada. While specific to Canada's school system, the appendix of this report can be used to evaluate curricula about or including global education and international development in other contexts as well.

This article by Olaf Jorgenson, available from the National Association of Independent Schools website, offers a great deal of information on curricular change: from recent instructional innovations that make it necessary, to strategies for implementing changes.

This article by Judy A. Johnson (2001), published in the Journal of Research for Educational Leaders (1(1), pp. 5-18), describes a curriculum revision program designed for public schools in southeast Missouri. The description of the revision process and the outcomes, as well as the references, may be helpful for students working on the curriculum change research proposal option.

This paper by Gregory V. G. O'Dowd from the conference proceedings for the 1st Annual JALT Pan-SIG Conference ("Curriculum Innovation, Testing and Evaluation" was the theme) focuses on curriculum change from the standpoint of its effect on the stakeholders. The case study described was for a Japanese institution, and so this paper might be helpful to students interested in curriculum change in non-US cultural contexts.

This Western Michigan University page has links to their documents on changing curriculum, and many of the practices and procedures outlined in these documents are similar to what other higher education institutions require for changes to be made to their curricula as well. These documents will help students working on research proposals for curricular changes in a post-secondary context see what is considered a change to curriculum and what has to be taken into account before it can happen.

While the intended audience for this article is nursing educators, the definitions, approaches, and guidelines discussed are relevant to most situations where curriculum changes might be necessary. Be sure to read parts 2 and 3. Click on the links at the bottom of the article to find them.

This resource pack is by UNESCO's International Bureau of Education and has a great deal of information about curriculum change planning in international contexts. The activities are not available online (the activities are tailored to specific contexts according to the site), but students will find the glossaries and descriptions helpful, and can try reaching the contact person listed at the bottom of each task screen for more information.