Different types of curricula

At the end of the workshop on Flexible Curricula different participants asked me to share the form I prepared to score different curricula. I promised to share it on Open Space so here it is, you will find the form attached to this blog. Participants of the workshop will understand how they can use this form to facilitate discussion on different types of curricula. For others this might not be clear immediately, so I will use this opportunity to give an explanation on how we used it during the workshop.

In my previous blog I wrote about the characteristics of future-proof curricula, we used the second part of the workshop to score examples of different curricula against these criteria. These example curricula have been created just to show different ways to organise a curriculum, they are not based on actual qualification or learning outcomes. It will always depend on the learning outcomes, the context and the prioritisation of the different characteristics what will be the best solution in a given situation. Moreover, you will often find a combination of the different types of curricula used as examples during the workshop.

We used these four types of curricula for the discussion:

• A subject-oriented curriculum: the curriculum is organised around different subjects, even theory and practice related to the same subject might be offered separately.
• A modular curriculum: different modules are designed based on learning outcomes, within the modules theory and practice are offered in an integrated way. Modules often allow for flexibility as learners can skip some modules or can decide to follow more or less modules during a period.
• A workplace-oriented curriculum: here the tasks at the workplace are the starting point of the learning process. The learning activities the learner conduct at school should support the learner in performing the tasks at his/her workplace. As learners might have different tasks depending on where they do their internship learners will work on different learning activities at school. To ensure that learners acquire all learning outcomes of the qualification a work book can be created with different assignments based on the desired learning outcomes. Learners will have to perform these assignments in their workplaces.
• A project-oriented curriculum: in this example projects are the focus of the curriculum. Learners will work on real-life problems, often in groups. A project will last for a specific period of time and learners will have to come up with a solution, product or event at the end of the project. Each week learners will have time to work on the project, teachers will coach them in groups and individually. Theory and practical classes are linked to the project and offer content and skills the learners need to complete the project.

We asked the participants to score these four examples against the different characteristics, this resulted in the following scores (see also the attachment below):

This is of course not a scientific approach, but it gives an impression of how the different curricula are perceived and in which cases they could be a good solution. Feel free to use the format in your school, organisation or event to start discussing how the ideal curriculum in your context should look like. If you use the format it would be great if you could share your experiences and the results with us!