ST.

ANTHONY COLLEGE THE TEACHER AND THE

SCHOOL CURRICULUM
CALAPAN CITY, INC.

INFORMATION SHEET 1.3

CURRICULUM AND THE TEACHER

Module 1 is all about school curricula and the teacher. It identifies the different
types of curricula that is existing in the teacher’s classroom and school. It also
describes the important roles of the teacher as curricularist who engages in the different
facets of curriculum development in any educational level.

Lesson 1: CURRICULUM IN SCHOOLS

Here is a story about “The Sabre-Tooth Curriculum by Harold Benjamin (1939)

as indicated in the book of Purita P. Bilbao, 2015. Take your time to read it and reflect
what is curriculum all about during those times.

Start here and enjoy reading.

A man by the name of New-Fist-Hammer-Maker knew how to do things his

community needed to have done, and he had the energy and the will to go ahead
and do them. By virtue of these characteristics, he was an educated man. New-
Fist was also a thinker. Then as now, there were few lengths to which men would
not go to avoid the labour and pain thought ... New-Fist got to the point where he
became strongly dissatisfied with the accustomed ways of his tribe. He began to
catch glimpses of ways in which life might be made better for himself, his family
and his group. By virtue of this development, he became a dangerous man.....

New-Fist thought about how he could harness the children’s play to make
their life better in the community. He considered what adults do for survival and
introduced activities to children in a deliberate and formal way. These included
catching fish with bare hands, clubbing little wholly horses, and chasing away-
sabre-toothed-tigers-with fire. These then became the curriculum and the
community began to prosper – plenty of food, hides for attire and protection from
threat. “It is suppose that all would have gone forever with this good educational
system, if conditions of life in that community remained forever the same.” But
conditions changed.

The glacier began to melt and the community could no, longer see the fish
to catch with their bare hands, and only the most agile and clever fish remained
which hid from the people. The wholly horses were ambitious and decided to
 ST. ANTHONY COLLEGE THE TEACHER AND THE
SCHOOL CURRICULUM
CALAPAN CITY, INC.

leave the region. The tigers got pneumonia and most died. The few remaining
tigers left. In their place, fierce bears arrived who would not be chased by fire.
The community was in trouble.

One day, in desperation, someone made a net from willow twigs and found
a new way to catch fish and the supply was even more plentiful than before. The
community also devised a system of traps on the path to snare the bears.
Attempts to change education system to include these new techniques however
encountered “stern opposition.”

These are also activities we need to know. Why can’t the schools teach
them? But most of the tribe particularly the wise old men who controlled the
school, smiled indulgently at this suggestion. That wouldn’t be education... it
would be mere training”. We don’t teach fish grabbing to catch fish, we teach to
develop a generalized agility which can never be duplicated by mere training ...
and so on.

If you had any education yourself, you would know the essence of true
education is timelessness. It is something that endures through changing
conditions like a solid rock standing squarely and firmly in the middle of a raging
torrent.

The story was written in 1939. Curriculum then, was seen as a tradition of
organized knowledge taught in schools of the 19 th century. Two centuries later, the
concept of a curriculum has broadened to include several modes of thoughts or
experiences.

No formal, non-formal or informal education exists without a curriculum.

Classrooms will be empty with no curriculum. Teachers will have nothing to do, if there
is no curriculum. Curriculum is at the heart of teaching profession. Every teacher is
guided by some sort of curriculum in the classroom and in schools.
 ST. ANTHONY COLLEGE THE TEACHER AND THE
SCHOOL CURRICULUM
CALAPAN CITY, INC.

In our current Philippine educational system, different schools are established in

different educational levels which have corresponding recommended curricula. The
levels are:

1. Basic Education. This level includes Kindergarten, Grade 1 to Grade 6 for

elementary, and for secondary, Grade 7 to Grade 10, for the Junior High
School; and Grade 11 and 12 for Senior High School. Each of the levels has
its specific recommended curriculum. The new basic education levels are
provided in the K to 12 Enhanced Curriculum of 2013 of the Department of
Education.
2. Technical Vocational Education. This is post-secondary technical
vocational educational and training taken care of by Technical Education and
Skills Development Authority (TESDA). For TechVoc track in Senior High
School of DepEd, both DepEd and TESDA work in close coordination.
3. Higher Education. This includes the Baccalaureate or Bachelor Degrees
and the Graduate Degrees (Master’s and Doctorate) which are under the
regulation of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED).

In whatever levels of schooling and in various types of learning environment,

several curricula exist. According to Allan Glatthorn (2000) as mentioned in
Bilbao, et. al (2015) classified as follows:

1. Recommended Curriculum. Almost all curricula found in our schools

are recommended. For Basic Education, these are recommended by
the Department of Education (DepEd), for Higher Education, by the
Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and for vocational education
by TESDA. These three government agencies oversee and regulate
Philippine Education. The recommendations come in the form of
memoranda or policies, standards and guidelines. Other professional
organizations or international bodies like UNESCO also recommend
curricula in schools.
2. Written Curriculum. This includes documents based on the
recommended curriculum. They come in the form of course of study,
syllabi, modules, books or instructional guides among others. A packet
of this written curriculum is the teacher’s lesson plan. The most recent
written curriculum is the K to 12 for Philippine Basic Education.
3. Taught Curriculum. From what has been written or planned, the
curriculum has to be implemented or taught. The teacher and the
learners will put life to the written curriculum. The skill of the teacher to
 ST. ANTHONY COLLEGE THE TEACHER AND THE
SCHOOL CURRICULUM
CALAPAN CITY, INC.

facilitate learning based on the written curriculum with the aid of

instructional materials and facilities will be necessary. The taught
curriculum will depend largely on the teaching style of the teacher and
the learning style of the learners.
4. Supported Curriculum. This is described as support materials that
the teacher needs to make learning and teaching meaningful. These
include print materials like books, charts, posters, worksheets, or non-
print materials like Power Point presentation, movies, slides, models,
realias, mock-ups and other electronic illustrations. Supported
curriculum also includes facilities where learning occurs outside or
inside the four-walled building. These include the playground, science
laboratory, audio-visual rooms, zoo, museum, market or the plaza.
These are the places where authentic learning through direct
experiences occur,
5. Assessed Curriculum. Taught and supported curricula have to be
evaluated to find out if the teacher has succeeded or not in facilitating
learning. In the process of teaching and at the end of every lesson or
teaching episode, an assessment is made. It can either be
assessment for learning, assessment as learning or assessment of
learning. If the process is to find the progress is to find the progress of
learning, then the assessed curriculum is for learning, but if it is to find
out how much has been learned or mastered., then it is assessment of
learning. Either way, such curriculum is the assessed curriculum.
6. Learned Curriculum. We always believe that if a student changed
behaviour, he/she has learned. For example, from a non-reader to a
reader or from not knowing to knowing or from disobedient to being
obedient. The positive outcome of teaching is an indicator of learning.
These are measured by tools in assessment, which can indicate the
cognitive, affective and psychomotor outcomes. Learned curriculum
will also demonstrate higher order and critical thinking and lifelong
skils.
7. Hidden/Implicit Curriculum. This curriculum is not deliberately
planed, but has a great impact on the behaviour of the learner. Peer
influence, school environment, media, parental pressures, societal
changes, cultural practices, natural calamities, are some factors that
create the hidden curriculum. Teachers should be sensitive and aware
of this hidden curriculum. Teachers must have good foresight to
 ST. ANTHONY COLLEGE THE TEACHER AND THE
SCHOOL CURRICULUM
CALAPAN CITY, INC.

include these in written curriculum in order to bring to the surface what

are hidden.

In every teacher’s classroom, not all these curricula maybe present at one time.
Many of them are deliberately planned, like the recommended, written, taught,
supported, assessed, and learned curricula. However, a hidden curriculum is implied,
and a teacher may or may not role on the life of the teacher as a facilitator of learning
and have direct implication to the life of the learners.

Now that you are fully aware that there are seven types of curricula operating in
every teacher’s classroom, it is then very necessary to learn deeper and broader about
the role of the teacher in relation to the school curriculum.