Curriculum ideologies

There are four different curriculum ideologies to solve in a different way practical problems. So this is how to plan instruction and classes. The four ideologies are:

- The Scholar Academic Ideology

- The Social Efficiency Ideology

- The Learner Centered Ideology

- The Social Reconstruction Ideology

• The Scholar Academic Ideology:

The most important aspects of this ideology are the academic disciplines as a way of teaching for the life, it is very important that children study all the subjects and that they develop their intellect. In the curriculum are established all the subjects with the knowledge children should have. The most important role of education is to preserve all the academic disciplines in order they continue existing in the future so they have to be transmitted to all the population.

People who defend this ideology care about curriculum content more than students’ learning. The role of teachers is to transmit all the disciplines to the children and they finally have to learn all (it doesn’t matter if they don’t understand at all something). In order to see if children have learned and who are the bests, teachers make tests about all the curriculum disciplines.

This is not a correct ideology because they don’t specify why they introduce all those academic disciplines, so they don’t really know what the objective of learning is or for what children are learning. Teachers only transmit their knowledge to students and they learn without thinking what they are learning.

• The Social Efficiency Ideology:

In this ideology the most important idea is to relate the curriculum with what society want. People who defend this ideology want to update the traditional school and all the contents. Educators have to teach students good techniques in order they can make what they are told to do. In schools children should learn how to behave and face the problems of the real life, and also each one have to learn his or her society role. In general this ideology understands the education as a training in which students learn his role in the society in order to be efficient citizens. Education is at the service of society so all the objectives are related with the interests of that society. Students develop into adulthood with teachers’ and educational media’s help. Children who succeed in evaluation are appreciated by the society and those who don’t succeed have to repeat and improve themselves.

This ideology doesn’t work well because it is focused only in society. It doesn’t care about children learning because they only want to transform them into good members of the society.

• The Learner Centered Ideology:

It doesn’t have any relation with the traditional school, this ideology is based on children and their interests. People who defend this ideology assume that children can be responsible of their own development and they decide what they want to learn, educators only guide and help them. Children enjoy classes because they work with interest objects for them and they can be novels and innovative. Children grow through their experiences and different activities. The way of thinking of each child depends on the development stage they are and they pass to the following one by themselves, educators shouldn’t force them to mature. In this ideology is present constructivism and socio-constructivism since children’s development depend on the environment and the people around them. They rarely make tests because each child evolves in a different way, so they evaluate child interests and development individually.

This ideology is good because it focuses on individual children so all of them can develop in the best way as possible.

• The Social Reconstruction Ideology:

This ideology thinks that when children born are not good or bad, they are members of the future society. In this ideology is present socio-constructivist method based on previous knowledge and new experiences. The curriculum should be related with students’ context and with the culture. The learning is a social process not individual so it takes place on schools (through debates, problems analysis, discussions, etc) and outside them. Educators’ role is to reconstruct children and the society in general, they have to understand society problems and be able to analyze and solve them. Knowledge is inside individuals and with it people can be able to improve society. They make subjective evaluations to control students but not to evaluate their knowledge, self-evaluation is also very important.

This ideology let freedom to students develop so it is an interesting ideology and it is also focused on children who are the protagonists of learning process.

Curriculum Ideologies

Focused on

The Scholar Academic Ideology	Academic disciplines
The Social Efficiency Ideology	Society interests
The Learner Centered Ideology	Individual children
The Social Reconstruction Ideology	Reconstruct children