THE NEED FOR DEVELOPING A FRAMEWORK FOR CURRICULUM EVALUATION

This paper will highlight the importance of developing a framework for curriculum evaluation. This framework should be based on quality standards, made public and be able to be used to help different practitioners and people involved in any institution to know what their role is and the best way to evaluate the curriculum.

Developing a framework is expected to be beneficial for all parties. For example, in the English teaching context, having clear standards would help planners at a higher level, training, curriculum, supervision and assessment officers. This would also helps practitioners in the field such as teachers to know what they are expected to do and methods used to check what is being covered. It would also help the whole nation such as parents to know what has been covered and what kind of support they need to offer. This supports the need to have and develop a public curriculum evaluation framework.

The need to develop this also for education and to develop certain quality standards in a written framework for the whole system is essential. However, to develop framework standards for curriculum evaluation is also needed. This might be generic studies as they could be used in different context. These studies need to end up by creating a curriculum evaluation framework; trying them out in a context and then producing a final version. This would add to the field of education in general and to curriculum evaluation in particular.

The paper will start by presenting the main theoretical issues about curriculum evaluation, the different purposes of curriculum evaluation, who should be involved in the evaluating process, the various types of evaluation, methods of gathering evaluation data, ways to show results and the keeping of records. The paper will end by presenting what a curriculum framework should include, the idea of quality standards, and suggested research towards developing a framework for curriculum evaluation.