CURRICULUM: DEFINITIONS AND PERSPECTIVES

Before focusing on the pertinent types of curriculum integration, it is important to review briefly what a “curriculum” is. It is not unusual to find the terms “programme”

and “curriculum” used interchangeably. Many people still equate “curriculum” with a

“syllabus” and thus “limit their planning to a consideration of the content or the body of knowledge they wish to transmit” (Kelly, 1989:10). From this statement, a

“syllabus” is a listing of content areas or topics to be taught but a “curriculum” is much broader than that. According to Tyler (1949) there is need for proper curriculum planning which consists of four elements: objectives, content or subject matter, methods or procedures, and evaluation.

Boyle (1981:4) attempted to define the difference between “programme” and

“curriculum” by saying that “programme” is often equated with “curriculum” as used in references focusing on formal school situations. Boyle goes on to suggest that definitions of “curriculum” usually express the concept of structured learning opportunities to achieve specified objectives while “programme” is the product resulting from all the programming activities in which the professional educator and learner are involved. According to Dent et al. (2009:194):

The curriculum of a basic medical education course must be designed to ensure that appropriate learning opportunities are provided to enable the student to achieve the predefined learning outcomes for the programme as a whole.

This view implies that the programme is broader than the curriculum. However, in line with their definition Dent et al. (2009) further present a wider view of a curriculum (Figure 2.1) which suggests overlaps between curriculum and programme.

Figure 2.1: A wider view of a curriculum (adapted from Dent et al., 2009:11)

Similar to Boyle’s (1981) view which suggests that a programme is broader than a curriculum, Dent et al. (2009) are of the opinion that a curriculum is about the teachers’ activities, and the way they make these happen in a teaching programme.

Similar to Tyler (1949; 1957), and according to Prideaux (2003:268), the definition of “curriculum” includes:

…all the planned learning experiences and has at least four elements – content, teaching and learning strategies, assessment, and evaluation processes. The curriculum exists at three levels: what is planned for the students, what is delivered to the students and what the students’ experience.

The first two levels refer to the formal curriculum and the last is informal. It is this last of these levels that is the essence of this study, finding out students’

experiences.

The words “programme” and “curriculum” have different meanings to different people but the detail included in them is more or less the same. Of note is that a

“curriculum” contains integrated components that are necessary for its com-pleteness.

The curriculum

Content

Educational strategies

Learning opportunities

Assessment Educational

environment Learning opportunities

The discussion on curriculum cannot be complete without paying attention to the

“official” or “formal” and “hidden” curriculum. According to McKimm and Barrow (2009:714), the “formal” curriculum is the one that is declared by faculty; this is the:

“…written and published curriculum (for example, course documentation including the prospectus, course guides or lecturers’ handouts).”

In contrast, the “hidden curriculum” is where students acquire values and patterns of behaviour often incidentally (Harden, 2001a; 2001b). According to Higashi, Tillack, Steinman, Johnston and Harper (2013:14):

As opposed to the formal curriculum, which involves knowledge communicated via such mechanisms as lectures, planned small group activities, texts, and online learning modules, the basic premise of the hidden curriculum is that medical education is a cultural process through which students learn what is and what should be valued and how to discriminate between ‘good’ and ‘bad’

clinical practices.

As Hafferty (1998) and Hafferty and Franks (1994) observed, “culture” cannot be fully conveyed through the formal curriculum. This is because most of the medical culture that students internalise in terms of values, beliefs and related behaviours deemed important within medicine is learnt not within the formal curriculum but via a more latent one, a “hidden curriculum”. In addition, certain subtle practices dominate the hidden curriculum arena. Several authorities – including Apple (1971), Fryer-Edwards (2002), Gaufberg, Batalden, Sands and Bell (2010), Hafferty and Franks (1994), Harden (2001a; 2001b), Joughin (2010), McKimm and Barrow (2009) and Wear (1998) – have cautioned that the hidden curriculum is not as quiescent as it may seem.

Case (1991:217) cites a specific example that “teachers verbally affirm the importance of critical thinking” although many tests mainly “require recall of factual information”. Also, Jacobs (1989) cites another example (not so obvious) of the ambivalence between what educators purport and their actual actions. This is seen in the construction of the timetable where students are shunted from one teacher, subject, classroom (and sometimes another set of students) for every class period several times a day. These disconnections create compartments which negate integration.

Given these observations, the influence of the hidden curriculum in shaping or modelling students is highly significant. In essence, the hidden curriculum should be considered the “lived” curriculum because that is what the students “live” and experience.

This discussion reveals that a curriculum is a compendium of integrated elements that are designed to provide the learning opportunities according to plan. It is evident, however, that there may be variances between what the teachers intend for the students to learn, what they deliver to the students and what the students actually learn. What is planned for the students is presented as the formal curriculum which is to be found on paper. The way the learning experiences are presented and the general social environment in which the students are may result in the variances in intentions and the outcomes; and these are the results of the hidden curriculum.

The formal curriculum is presented in predetermined pedagogical experiences like lecture and group discussions. In contrast, the influence of the hidden curriculum is covert and not predetermined. From this discussion it seems logical that exploring the experiences of the students themselves is an effective way of revealing the effects of the hidden curriculum on student learning.

The following discussion will examine what curriculum integration is.