• Discuss the concept of curriculum.
• Enumerate curricular foundations and components.
• Distinguish between various curricular strategies.
• Plan the curriculum in your own subject area.

You must have heard the term 'Curriculum' a number of times during your teaching career. Before proceeding further, try to define the word curriculum in your mind. You may have come up with one or more of the following definitions :

• A statement of learning objectives.

• A statement of learning experiences.

• A statement of learning outcomes.

• A listing of the subject matter.

While all of the above statements are true, none of them individually reflects the concept of curriculum. In fact, they represent various schools of though prevalent at various times. A curriculum is much more than any of the above put individually.

Let us take you to the origin of the word 'curriculum'. It has originated from a Latin root, which means 'race - course'. You will appreciate that it essentially denotes two important aspects - the path to be followed and the frame within which it has to be followed. If we synthesise these aspects, it emerges that a curriculum is a plan of action which incorporates the learning outcomes to be attained over a period of time by exposing the learner to various learning experiences. This type of definition provides flexibility to the teachers to use different kinds of learning experiences to attain similar learning outcomes. A corollary of this being that even within a given subject area, you can have different types of curricula. We shall discuss about that a little later.

Planning the curriculum : To be able to plan the curriculum, you should know about two more terms viz. curricular foundations and curricular components. Let us discuss each one of them. If you are interested in names, let us tell you that this method of planning in names, let us tell you that this method of planning the curriculum has been devised by Zais and is aptly termed as Zais model.
Curricular foundations are represented by four questions, the answers to which will help you to give a desired shape to the curriculum. These are :

• Why a subject is being taught ? (i. e. the need, rationale etc.).

• Who is being taught ? (i. e. what are the characteristics, back - ground and knowledge of the learners).

• How a subject is being taught ? (i. e. is it a face to face teaching or is it through distance mode).

• What will have been achieved when a subject has been taught ? (i. e. what will will be the learning outcomes after going through a course of instruction).
  
  You should be absolutely clear of answers to these questions as your teaching methodology and learning resources will be dependent upon them. Let us illustrate it by an example :

Same is true of answers to other questions e.g. if the students are of higher ability, you would teach in a very different way as compared to students from say a rural medical college. This is the reason, why we called these four questions as foundations of curriculum - the whole curriculum is built on this foundation.

Curricular components : These aspects are decided on the basis of curricular foundations. Whatever type of curriculum it may be, it will essentially have the following four components :

• Objectives i. e. what will the learner be able to do at the end of instructions. You will find a detailed discussion on this in the chapter Educational Objectives.

• Materials include all learning resources like books, manuals, models, A - V aids etc.

• Methods denote the way the materials will be used e. g. lectures, practicals, group discussions, self study, field visits etc.

• Evaluation, which helps to provide a feedback to the learner and the teacher and also helps to certify the attainment of stipulated proficiency. You will learn more about it in the chapter on Evaluation.

These curricular components are not independent but are highly  dependent on one another. Thus your evaluation has to be based on teaching methodology and conversely, the teaching methodology has to be in concurrence with evaluation techniques. This inter - relation can be expressed with the help of the following diagram :

Did you notice that evaluation planning comes immediately after objectives and not as an end product. This approach makes a decision about material and methods easy and more rational. It also avoids any mismatch between what is taught and what is evaluated.

Approaches to curriculum planning : You will recall that a lot of flexibility can be built into the curriculum planning process to attain the same learning outcomes. As a very practical example, it can be said that if you want the student to learn about communication skills' you can adopt any one of these methodologies - lecture, demonstration, role play, video recordings or field situations. Based on the choice of individual teachers, the approach to curriculum can be one of the following types.

Learner centered approach is another way where emphasis is on fulfilling the needs of the learner. There is a danger, however, that these needs may not be congruent with national health needs. The learners, for example, may be learning with the intent of faring well in USMLE examinations !

Problem solving approach emphasises the ability of the learner to solve a given problem and thus takes into account, both the above approaches. It, however, requires great care to strike a balance between needs of the subject and needs of the learner.

You will appreciate that none of the approaches outlined above are entirely satisfactory. The subject centered outlined above are entirely satisfactory. The subject centered approach is the least satisfactory of all. It has been rightly pointed out that through years at an authoritarian medical school, idealistic young doctors are moulded into rigid doctors, who have lost much of their original ability to sympathise with the patients and listen to their problems. This problem has been felt the world over and as a result, six keys elements in medical cirriculum have been recognised, each seen as a continuum. These include :

Let us make it very explicit that these questions in any medical school do not exist in absolute black and white ; rather they exist in varying shades of grey. The more your curriculum is on the left side of the continuum, the better it is. This model of curriculum is commonly referred  to as SPICES model.

Stage of curriculum planning : A curriculum is not an inert document. It does not exist in vacuum - rather it is a deliberate attempt to bring the needs and expectations of the society into the centrestage of educational process. To a great extent, it has to be a corporate effort. The keyword of this process has to be 'relevance' to the needs of the society.

Based on this approach, a number of planning models are available - we do not intend to go into those details. However, if you are keen on knowing them, we have listed some books for you to go through. One of the models, which we feel is very simple, goes like this.

You may find some of these terms difficult to understand at present but as you progress through this book, you will find them simple and more understandable. We suggest that you go though this chapter once again after you have read the chapters on Educational Objectives and Evaluation.

Before we close this discussion, we will like to re - emphasise that  the outcome of a given curriculum is the result of interaction of various curricular components and our frustration  with the present system of medical education is often the result of our inability to understand the interdependence of these components.