Abstract:

Historically the design of curriculum for many professional courses in the United Kingdom have had to meet the competencies required by the appropriate national statutory body. In doing so the design for such courses has been in danger of adopting a competency based behaviourist perspective, with an emphasis on what the learner needs to know and the educator providing the essential information in a traditional style. This situation has been compounded by two things. Firstly, the vast amount of information that continously flows into curricula and secondly, very little being taken out. This additive approach to curriculum development has inevitably led to curricula becoming overcrowded, which, in turn, has led to educators resorting to teacher centred approaches as the only means of fitting all of the content in.

This paper uses a case study approach to describe how the Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation (ADDIE) model of instructional design can provide the framework for reconsidering the approach to the development of a curriculum. In it we argue that the use of this model encourages curriculum developers to consider instruction from the students’ perspective as opposed to the perspective of content, and thereby encouraging a constructivist approach to learning. It is suggested that the adoption of such an approach can facilitate education in moving away from the traditional approach of asking what should be included in the course, to instead considering the numerous factors that influence learning outcomes.

Keywords:

Curriculum, instructional design, constructivism.