Planning goals and learning outcomes

By:somaye Bagheri kangani

According to early planners of English language courses the purpose of language teaching was seen as self evident and it was sufficient to state that the goal of a course was to teach English, but ESP movement argued that in order to teach English finding the answers of these questions is necessary:

1-what kind of English?2-at what level of proficiency?

3-and for what purpose?

SO,-needs analysis seeks to provide answers to these questions

and-situation analysis seeks to identify the role of contextual

factors in implementing curriculum change.and now we discuss about another dimension of decision

making in curriculum planning:Determining the goals and outcomes of a program .

Key assumptions about goals:-people are generally motivated to pursue specific goals.

-the use of goals in teaching improves the effectiveness of teaching and learning.

-a program will be effective to the extent that its goals are sound and clear described.

5 curriculum ideologies that shape the nature of language curriculum and the practices of language teaching in different ways:

1-academic rationalism2-social and economic efficiency

3-learner-centeredness4-social reconstructionist

5-cultural pluralism

-stresses the intrinsic value of the subject matter and its role in developing the learner’s intellect, humanistic value, and rationality.

-the role of schools is to provide access to the major achievement of a particular cultural tradition and to know the insights gained from studying enduring fields of knowledge.

-academic rationalism is sometimes used to justify the inclusion of certain foreign languages in school curricula, where they are taught not as tools for communication but as an aspect of social studies.

Academic rationalism

-emphasizes the practical needs of learners and society and the role of an educational program in producing learners who are economically productive.

-socioeconomic ideology stresses the economic needs of society as a justification for the teaching of English.

-advocates of social-efficiency approach argue that the curriculum should focus on knowledge and skills that are relevant to the learner’s everyday life needs and should be planned to meet the practical needs of society.

Social and economic efficiency

-stresses the individual needs of learners, the role of individual experience, and the need to develop awareness, self reflection, critical thinking, learner strategies, and other qualities and skills that are believed to be important for learners to develop.

-reconceptualists emphasizes the role of experiences in learning.

-constructivists emphasizes that learning involves active construction and testing of one’s own representation of the world.

-progressivisms suggest that it involves seeing education as a means of providing children with learning experiences from which they can learn by their own efforts.

Learner-centeredness

-emphasizes the roles schools and learners can and should play in addressing social injustices and inequality.

-schools must engage teachers and students in an examination of important social and personal problems and seek ways to address them. this process is known as empowerment.

Teachers must empower their students so that they can recognize unjust systems of class, race, or gender, and challenge them .

Social reconstructionist

-this philosophy argues that schools should prepare students to participate in several different cultures and not merely the culture of the dominant social and economic group.

-cultural pluralism seeks to redress racism, to raise the self esteem of minority groups, and to help children appreciate the viewpoints of other cultures and religions.

Cultural pluralism

The philosophy of the curriculum:Is the result of political judgment in that it reflects a

particular set of choices about curriculum options. It reflects to the participants goals and the changes they feel the curriculum should bring about.

AimsThe term GOAL and AIM are used to refer to a description of

the general purposes of a curriculum.OBJECTIVE refers to a more specific description of purposes.

Stating curriculum outcomes

An AIM refers to a statement of a general change that a program seeks to bring about it.

The purposes of aim statements are:-to provide a clear definition of the purpose of a program.-to provide guidelines for teachers, learners, and materials

writers.-to help provide a focus for instruction.

-to describe important and realizable changes in learning.

For example:Aims of teaching English at primary level in Singapore:

our pupils learn English in order to:-communicative effectively, in both speech and writing, in

everyday situations to meet the demands of society-cope effectively and efficiency with change, extended

learning tasks, and examinations…-

-aim statements are generally derived from information gathered during a needs analysis.

-In developing aim statements, it is important to describe more than simply activities that students will take part in. the example is NOT aim:

--students will learn about business letter writing in English.-A change to become aim:

--students will learn how to write effective business letters for use in the hotel and tourism industries.

Aims are very general statements of the goals of the program. they can be interpreted in many different ways.

In order to give a more precise focus to program goals, aims are often accompanied by statements of more specific purposes which are known as objectives, instructional objectives or teaching objectives.

objectives

-They describe what the aim seeks to achieve in terms of smaller units of learning.

-they provide a basis for the organization of teaching activities.

-they describe learning in terms of observable behavior.

Characteristics of objectives:

-objectives describe a learning outcome. In writing objectives, expressions like: will study, will learn about, will prepare students for are avoided because they do not describe the result of learning but rather what students will do during a course. Objectives can be described with phrases like will

have, will learn how to, will be able to.

Characteristics of statements of objectives:

Objectives should be consistent with the curriculum aim. Only objectives that clearly serve to realize an aim should be included. For example, the objective below is unrelated to the curriculum aim students will learn how to write effective business letters for use in the hotel and tourism industries.

Objectives should be precise. Objectives that ambiguous are not useful. For example:

Students will know how to use useful conversation expressions.

Objectives should be feasible. Objectives should describe outcomes that are attainable in the time available during a course, the following objective is probably not attainable in a 60-hour English course:

Students will be able to follow conversations spoken by native speakers.

Thanks for your attention