CURRICULUM EVALUATION

Introduction:

There are four levels of curriculum process:

1. Intended/planned/written/formal curriculum

2. Implemented/interpreted/taught curriculum

3. Assessed/tested curriculum

4. Attained/learned curriculum

Evaluation is the process of obtaining necessary information/data for making judgments or decisions about the curriculum (including the written curriculum, subject matter, T&L, assessment, resources etc) as whether to maintain, revise, realign, improve, or to replace the existing curriculum (which maybe outdated) with a new one.

There are three main purpose of curriculum evaluation :

1. To investigate whether the curriculum as designed, planned and implemented is producing the desired results/outcomes (eg better student performance, contribution to the national , human development etc).

2. To provide constant/regular feedback or identify problems and propose possible solutions during the implementation of the curriculum.

3. To identify the strengths and weaknesses of the curriculum after the implementation of the whole curriculum.

Changes in society, advances in science and technology as well as in the subject matter, new understandings about students and learning, new demands from stakeholders (such as employers and government) etc may result in the need of curriculum change (depending on the scale of change; improvement/re-alignment (small)/reformation (medium)/transformation/engineering (major) - discuss with examples

Comprehesive curriculum evaluation should be done periodically (eg 5 year-cycle) and the process of re-designing (repeat the process of designing ) the curriculum should be based on evidences/data-driven or research findings.

There are two main types of curriculum evaluation:

1. Summative evaluation

2. Formative evaluation

Summative evaluation (sometimes called terminal, product or outcome evaluation) is conducted "at the end" of the curriculum implementation process in order to obtain a comprehensive assessment of the quality of a planned curriculum .

Formative evaluation (sometimes called continuous or ongoing evaluation) is conducted during (such as in a number of intermediate points) the curriculum implementation process

in order to obtain a feedback or a guide that can be used to "form" a better finished product.

Both evaluations are necessary depending on the purposes, time and level of generalization/the ways on how evaluation results being used.

If you are given a task to suggest for curriculum improvement from the implementation of mathematics curriculum in your school, describe what steps need to be taken in order to complete your task?