Curriculum Design

Recent developments in Singapore education requires schools and teachers to design school-based programmes for their students. This is in line with the view that teachers, as professionals, should not merely enact a national curriculum, but engage their intellectual and emotional investments in their work on behalf of and sometimes in collaboration with the students they know best. It is crucial that teachers understand their professional role in curriculum making, which includes making sense of the MOE syllabi, scoping and sequencing the content in a way that is relevant to their students, and designing meaningful learning experiences for their students in the various curricular programmes available in the school. This course will help students to explore seminal views on the aims of education and the philosophies underpinning these views. This course aims to help students unpack the range of issues and considerations that constitute teacher's agency in curriculum thinking and curriculum making in the context of Singaporean classrooms today. Ultimately, this course strengthens students' awareness and appreciation of the fundamental issues and considerations in curriculum thought and curriculum-making, and puts them on the path to becoming critically reflective curriculum thinkers and makers. Each lesson in the course builds on the previous, but each lesson also provides student and instructors with the opportunity to revisit ideas and issues previously discussed in greater depth and at higher levels of sophistication.