Collegiate Cycling

Creating a system that supports the curriculum change

Introduction

In everyday life changes in rules, roles and relationships that control the lives of people demand corresponding changes in their behavior. Regarding structural change real requirements are even higher because it requires the reorganization of the entire system of values and meaning that all levels of people's lives. No wonder it's so difficult to make changes. Real structural changes such as changing the curriculum, often challenge traditional views of stakeholders in education and meet much resistance. It is not surprising that a principal who has excelled as a strong set of control when pushed into a more participative change to unlearn much to survive, much less excel in a more supportive and less authoritarian role.

Resistance to curriculum change is not a new phenomenon. In 1939 a satire was published in the United States of America which featured the famous "curriculum saber-toothed". It focuses on a tribe of prehistoric, and whose attempts to change the curriculum has met with much resistance. In an attempt to survive the drastic changes if the following changes were made in the program to feed a growing, shelter, clothing and security, there must be a change in matter-of basic subjects such as fish-original stark bare hands, woolly-horse-clubbing and the tiger with fire to scare new topics such as net making, snaring antelope and bear death. The learning experiences included students now play with sticks, bones and stones.

This meeting with the resistance of wise men who advocated for the retention of original subjects, arguing that the essence of true education is timelessness. They do not understand how new skills such as netting and snaring antelope could replace the expensive methods such as the old fish caught with bare hands, woolly-horse-clubbing and tiger frightened by the fire. Other methods of evaluation as formative and diagnostic assessment of impact has been considered a threat to their usual methods summative. According to Hooper (1971) of such resistance to change program to proceed because of misconceptions people have about change. Many stakeholders in education do not understand the concept of curriculum change, its processes and values. The managers of curriculum change that are supposed to educate and guide them in achieving success have also failed to create systems that support program changes.

In this article the author discusses how to create a system that supports the curriculum change. The following questions will guide the discussion;

1. What is the curriculum change?

2. Why should we change the program?

3. Why change the curriculum to meet lots of resistance?

4. What are the strategies to create a system that supports the curriculum change?

5. How managers can build a curriculum outcome-based system of effective curriculum change?

6. Is it possible to reconcile tradition with the change to reduce the magnitude of the resistance to change the curriculum?

Curriculum Change

What is the curriculum change? To answer this question several other questions can be posed as - what happens when change happens, what is the source of change? Can we predict the consequences of change? Educators can monitor these changes that directly affect the impact? Bondi, J. & Wiles, J (1998) argue that the directors of education have a degree of control over the process of change if they understand the nature of change. Understand the concept of change and different types of changes, gives freedom to individuals to determine the sources of change. It also helps to understand that even if they can not predict.