Csapó, B. (2004). Knowledge and competencies. In: Letschert, J. (Ed.). The integrated person. How curriculum development relates to new competrencies (pp. 35-49). Enschede: CIDREE. (original) (raw)
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Curriculum Development: Beyond Knowledge and Competencies
Abstract Curriculum Development: Beyond knowledge and competencies Higher education as social practice may be considered contested terrain depending on which agencies hold sway over policy, curriculum development and curriculum enactment. Curriculum in higher education relates to what is considered privileged subject content, by whom, for what purposes and where autonomy is positioned. The importance of curriculum as construct, process and practice resides in how it shapes and prepares graduates for their role in their respective professions and society. Given the centrality of curriculum in higher education and the ramifications thereof for graduates, professions and society at large, it could be argued that there is an ethical and moral responsibility to ensure that curriculum provides for the holistic development of graduates. The thesis of this presentation is that curriculum development is more than decision-making about knowledge, skills and implementation, but that it should incorporate ontological perspectives of qualities, dispositions and capabilities for respective professions and the good of society. Yet the prevailing discourse of curriculum panders primarily to the knowledge economy and competencies that promote performativity of graduates. While these are no doubt important, it may be argued that knowledge and skills alone are not adequate for the holistic development of graduates. To this end, this study draws on curriculum development approaches of knowing, doing and being as well as the capabilities approach for graduate development as a literature framework. This presentation reports on the revision of five diploma programmes at a university of technology as to how academics conceived of curriculum. The extensive submissions for each diploma programme relating to the purpose, rationale, academic (subject) structure, teaching, learning and assessment, amongst others, were analysed by means of content analysis to determine the extent to which ontological perspectives were evident. The findings showed that the prevailing discourse was one of knowledge and skills across the diplomas in question with minimal recourse to developing an ontological stance. Epistemology was dominant in terms of knowing and doing with limited attention afforded to embedding and assessing qualities, dispositions and attributes befitting higher education vocational qualifications. By implication, graduates are meant to develop ontological perspectives by immersion in, acculturation to higher education, or in the workplace. The findings present challenges to curriculum development and curriculum developers to firstly, clarify appropriate qualities, dispositions and attributes for respective programmes of study, and secondly, how best to embed these into pedagogy to align epistemic and ontological values for societal good. Key Words: Curriculum development; higher education; vocational education; capabilities; ontology
British Journal of Educational Studies, 1977
recently, i had the opportunity to listen to Michael F. d. Young, whose book Knowledge and Power (1971) was very influential on my early thinking about curriculum. Michael Young is an emeritus professor at the University of london and was in New Zealand to give the prestigious Hood lecture at the University of auckland. He began his talk, titled "Curriculum for a knowledge society: lessons from the sociology of knowledge", with this challenge:
A Cognitive Model for Developing a Competence-based Curriculum in Secondary Education
The last decade brought about a vivid discussion concerning a competence-based curriculum in order to better train the students for the knowledge society. The present paper describes a cognitive model that aims at designing competences for secondary education. It consists in six operational categories which are combined based on epistemological and pedagogical constraints and allows structuring knowledge from a domain expert’s perspective. The model was applied in developing the new curriculum for secondary education in Romania. A few examples from different subject matters are meant to show how the model is functioning in concrete situations.
Switching from knowledge - based to competencybased curriculum
This presentation represents the outcomes of our study about the draft curriculum framework (DCF) for pre-university education. Findings from the research, our comments and conclusions are set forth in four sections, interconnected. The study summarizes the main features of the contemporary epistemological hypotheses. Although the new curriculum is not based on a particular theoretical approach, new ideas need to be drawn from it so far as the central idea of both is that students are architects and key actors in the process of building new knowledge and competencies. The accomplishment of this idea is related to the new meanings of “the curriculum” and “the competency”. Key terms: Behaviourism; constructivism; curriculum; competency; content-based curriculum; competency-based approach.
What Counts as Knowledge in Educational Settings: Disciplinary Knowledge, Assessment, and Curriculum
Review of Research in Education, 2008
A t this historical moment, knowledge itself is in transition. The digitalization of the human archive has created new objects of science and experience; it has created new sciences and reorganized the relationships between long-standing disciplines and fields of inquiry; and it has created new cultural representations and industries. Complex histories and ethnographies of knowledge production show that universities, school systems, governments, and corporations are in transition, developing new systems for the generation, systematization, surveillance, and management of knowledge. The new knowledge bases are being shaped by, and are shaping, current international debates on issues of access to knowledge as well as intellectual, artistic, and industrial property. At the center of these debates are questions about how knowledge is made, who will control these directions, and who should have access to what kind of knowledge, in all of its traditional and emergent forms, from books to websites to mass media and the arts.
Michael Young, knowledge and curriculum: an international dialogue
Michael Young, knowledge and curriculum: an international dialogue ZONGYI DENG No questions are more fundamental to curriculum theory than what knowledge is of most worth, what schools should teach, and how knowledge(s) is selected, organized and transformed into the content of the curriculum . Such questions are epistemological (having to do with various ways of knowing), normative (having to do the purposes of schooling) and practical (having to do with curriculum-making). Such questions, vital for educational policy and curriculum development, have been at the heart of traditional curriculum research and theorizing (e.g. Ausubel
Curriculum and the Specialization of Knowledge
2015
Michael Young and Joe Muller's Curriculum and the specialization of knowledge collects eight years of their cooperative theorising into one volume. The book systematises and rewrites the papers into a satisfying whole that grapples with the current state of curriculum studies and the sociology of education. It contains critique and new moves forward in equal measure. At the heart of the book lies a defence of knowledge as worthwhile in its own terms, and not just any old knowledge, but knowledge that specialises, differentiates, innovates, improves the world, liberates minds, increases life opportunities and equality, produces good citizens, and advances democracy. Knowledge provides a win-win scenario-it is both intrinsically wonderful and it results in all sorts of economic, social, political, cultural, and individual goods. The problem is that this magnificent force is hamstrung on two sidesthose who wish to stultify knowledge by making it about learning the traditions in an out-of-date way; and those who wish to relativise knowledge into a warm soup where everyone has a valid standpoint that is gratefully slurped by all and sundry. Young and Muller chart a middle line between traditional knowledge and relativism, holding to specialisation and differentiation as their two guiding lights into a present and future world that valorises knowledge.