Name: IVY JOY F.

COMPAÑA

Theoretical and Conceptual foundation of curriculum planning

As a school system

The term system has been define by Newell (1978) as “a group of interacting parts or bodies forming a
unified whole”.
Rapaport explains system as including
1. Something consisting of a set (finite or infinite) of entities
2. Among which a set of relations is specified
3. Deduction are possible from some relations to other or from the relations among the entities to
the behaviour or history of the system

The principal properties of a system are described by Parsons and Shils (1962) as follows:
 The most general and fundamental property of a system is the interdependence of parts or
variables.
 interdependence consists in the existence of determinate relationship among the parts of the
variables as contrasted with randomness of variability.

Two Views of the School as a Social System

1. Actual interacting persons

2. Analytical abstraction

The Getzels-Guba-Thelen Model

 Is an example of a framework for viewing the school as a social system in terms of actual
interacting persons.
Institution –--role---expectation
 which refer to what we shall call the nomothetic or normative dimension of activity in a social
system

Individual---personality---need-disposition
 which together refer to what we shall call the idiographic or personal dimension of activity in a
social system.

The Parsons Model

 The model developed by parsons and his associates is in terms of analytical abstraction.
 We are treating social systems, including societies not as the concrete aggregate of interacting
and other wise behaving human being, but as an analytical defined subsystem of the totality of
human social action, abstracted with reference to the interaction process and structure
assumed by the relationship among actions.

Parsons calls action those aspects of behavior which directly concern “cultural-level” systems, “as
distinguished from the matageneric types of subsystems:
1.The organism
 Which through quite properly treated as a concrete entity in one set of terms, becomes, on a
more generalized level, a set of abstract components in the culturally organized system action.
2.The social system
 Which is generated by the process of interaction among individual units.

3.The cultural system

 Which is the aspect of action organized about the specific characteristics of symbol and the
exigencies of forming stable system of them.
4.The personality
 Is the aspect of the living individual, as “actor”, which must be understood in terms of the
cultural and social content of the learned patternings that make up his behavioral system.

Human interrelatedness: Thrust of Social System Theory

 There is a significance element shared by social systems theories:the emphasis upon system;
that is, upon human interrelatedness.
 There are two things, therefore, that must be emphasized with respect to systems theory and
the concept of social system.

1. System Theory-suggest that human behavior can be understood only when viewed within the context
of the situation in which it occurs, and particularly within the context of its human system.

2. Social System- means that the bahavior of an individual is not an isolated phenomenon but rather
occurs as part of a system and is intertwined with the behavior of others.
Two examples are given by Newell to illustrate the concept of system as well as the concept of social
system.
  first example: each year , a small suburban school typically experienced the firing or resignation
of one faculty member.
 Second example: a university class at the graduate level was having an apathetic discussion
when a bitter argument broke out between two of the class members.

Implication of Systems Theory for the Administrator

The proposition is put fourth that a school is a system made up of a number of subsystems and that the
school is itself a subsystem within larger systems such as the school system and the community, which
in turn are subsystems within still larger system.

 SUPRA SYSTEM (SOCIETY)

 THE COUNTRY’S EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM
 SUBSYSTEM (NATIONAL CAPITAL REGION)
 SUBSUBSYSTEM (DIVISION OF CITY SCHOOL, MANILA)
 SUBSUBSUBSYTEM (ARELLANO HIGH SCHOOL)

REFERENCE

CURRICULUM PLANNING FOR BETTER SCHOOL

-GAUDENCIO V. AQUINO-