Perspectives of Education & Curriculum: Course Outline

General Objective of the Course:

1. To acquaint the students with the paradigm shift in the concept of education to wards conditions of human life.
2. To enable them to form their own opinion about the socio-cultural importance of education as a social institution.
3. To familiarize them with role of education for transmission, transformation and creation of cultural values/heritage.
4. To develop an awareness of the working of human mind for knowledge acquisition, its processing, analyzing and creative utilization as a general theoretical framework.
5. To help understand the locus stand of education in the fields of all disciplines i.e. humanistic, natural and social and develop an inter-disciplinary approach.
6. To enhance their own cultural awareness to critically analyze the Pakistani culture and its spiritual foundations.
7. To promote a board outlook on all educational matters to face the 21th century challenges of the modern times.
8. To foster in them the spirit of inquiry, logical analysis and critical thinking in all educational matters.
9. To deepen their awareness of the need for development of human person as a whole in our education system.
10. To develop in them the desire for self improvement and originality in thought and expression and desire to contribute to the national solidarity and cohesion.

Specific Objectives of the Course:

1.To familiarize the students with analytical study of the philosophical, epistemological, axiological, ontological, cultural and democratic perspectives of education.

2.To give them awareness about the basic sources or foundations of all curricular studies namely about the nature of philosophy of life, nature of society, nature of learning and nature of human nature.

 Course Outline

1. The concept of knowledge, the sources of knowledge, Revealed, rational empirical; intuitive and authoritative.
2. The proportion of knowledge kinds essential for incorporation into curriculum. The concept of curriculum development. The sources of curriculum content. New models of humanistic curriculum. The elements of curriculum development like aims, goals, objectives, content organization, (psychological and logical), learning activates and evaluation techniques.
3. The organization of curriculum, the designs of curriculum, teacher-centered child centered, subject centered, core curriculum, broad-field curriculum, problem centered curriculum.
4. The philosophical perspectives of curriculum development, the perspective of national philosophy of life, the nature of good life and society, the nature of learning theories and the nature of human nature.
5. The theories of human nature, the Greek, the Europeans, the early Muslim thinkers like Al Ghazali, the modern Muslim thinkers like Dr Allama Muhammad Iqbal.
6. The nature of sociological theories comte, Herbert spenser, karl marks, Emil Durkheim, Max Weber for studying culture.
7. Contempsoaus sociology, critical theory feminism post modernism, logic of social sciences, Functionalist perspectives conflict perspective and interactionist perspective, components of culture Islamic culture, norms, folkways, mores, laws, values, language symhols.
8. The roles of education, adoption, trans formation, transmutation and creation of vision of future human civilization and its evaluation, comparison of modern evolutionary concepts and Iqbals concept of human evolution.
9. The theories of idealism, realism, pragmation and exisitentialism  as applied in the theories of education, like perennialism, essentialism, progressivism, reconstouctionism and existentialism.
10. The future trends in curriculum development based on kinds of knowledge and kinds of human developmental needs.

Methodology for Instruction

1. Written assignments: One short Presentation by individuals and one Term assignment on given topics.
2. Presentation by small group of students and class discussion. Selection from given topics.
3. Presentation by a few individual students and class discussion on given topics.
4. The teacher led discussions on specific topics discussion on given topics agreed upon in the class.
5. Presentation lectures by the teacher.
6. Panel discussion.
7. Peer evaluation.
8. Book Review.
9. Debates.

Technology to be Used

1. Encouragement to use multi media for presentation.
2. Use of internet for gathering knowledge of different areas required
3. Use of training/; teaching aids like diagrams, charts, tables, models, recording video, shows, mimeograph sheets etc.