Curriculum Design and Development: K-12 Science Report Analysis

This report provides a detailed overview of a proposed science curriculum for K-12 students, focusing on California's educational context. It explores curriculum development practices, the specific discipline of science, and the grade levels targeted. The report outlines three key benefits for students, emphasizing flexibility, innovation, and skill identification. It also defines four core instructional goals, including equality of education, constitutional obligations, the promotion of values, and the preservation of cultural heritage. The curriculum aims to move beyond theoretical learning through practical application, promoting critical thinking and observational skills. The report highlights the importance of addressing social and environmental aspects of science education and includes a comprehensive list of references.

Curriculum Design and Development

Contents
Contents...........................................................................................................................................2
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Practices related to curriculum development.........................................................................3
Specific discipline and grade level(s) for which the pilot curriculum will be developed......3
Rationale that proposes three benefits to the students of the pilot curriculum.......................4
At least four core instructional goals of the curriculum, providing a rationale for the goals.5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

MAIN BODY
Practices related to curriculum development
California state has been taken for consideration which is one of the dense populated states
and reason behind selecting this state is high number of students studying in K-12 classes.
According to 2018 census report, 72 % of population belongs to white colour, approximately
14% Asians and remaining per cent from various races (Brown & Thompson, 2018). Total of
100 million population out of 300 million is living under minority tag which can be imply their
millions of students are studying but are not getting proper education or healthcare due to
minority status. So this program will motivate and attract them to take science as an option due
to its intriguing and mesmerising concepts. California State Board of Education manages and
monitors the curriculum of students studying in K-12 sections (Goode, Hegarty & Levy, 2018) .
Different practices adopted while setting curriculum is given below,
 Self-evaluation of current curriculum was done by teachers and experts of science
subjects so that proper evaluation of it would be conducted with the aim of finding
learning gapes, innovating techniques etc
 All the plan and strategies is evaluated by experts and students studying the same sector
to find out their view and perception of new learning techniques (Romiszowski, 2016).
 Try to produce the best combination of subjected centred, learner centred and problem
centred design
Specific discipline and grade level(s) for which the pilot curriculum will be developed
Curriculum
Curriculum refers to a process of learning knowledge and set of activities in the specific
subject area from teachers and other coordinators with the aim of gaining depth information or
knowledge relate to it (Ertmer, Quinn & Glazewski, 2019). Standard curriculum was mainly
focuses on books and literature produced and set by the local government but in the recent era,
more focus is given to an advanced curriculum in which students would be able to understand
any particular topic with the help of materials, task, discussions with students etc so that proper
knowledge and practical knowledge would be gained by them. Overall curriculum is set by local

and central government and agencies, schools, teachers, coordinators, students etc and all the
methods or practices stated in curriculum is explained with proper justification of it.
For this report, Science curriculum will be produced for K-12 students which will assist
them to understand the concept from its base instead of reading and learning theoretically.
Primary objective of this curriculum would be to help students to understand three concepts of
science i.e., observational skills, designing and describing the functions of earth and
understanding the reason behind it (Livingstone, 2019). For instance, why water turn into steam
after heating in high temperature will be explain by taking proper usage of fire, water and other
instruments so that students would conduct these practices on their own while clearing their
doubts and concepts though proper measures must be taken before conducting these practical’s.
Besides this, curriculum main focus is to open children mind for questions, logical thinking of
every actions, objectivity and precision of earth etc. For instance, most of the science practices
talk about cost of conducting it, risk and benefits associated with it but no one talks about its
social environmental aspects in school (Watt-Watson & et al., 2017). Apart from this, theoretical
classes must be converted in to practical classes in which each and every concept coming in the
exams must be conducted personally by each and every student in the district so that cheating or
other offence can be reduced to a certain level. So overall, way of teaching science must be
change for the betterment of students and the society in which they are living as openness of
children mind always leads to innovation which improves life of society.
Rationale that proposes three benefits to the students of the pilot curriculum
Various benefits which would be attain by students from this pilot curriculum of science
learning is given below,
 It makes student’s flexible and self-paced in learning science as it’s up to student to conduct
the pre designed set of syllabus before writing the exam. Moreover, more interest is
developed for student due to its unique pedagogy and understanding of subjects.
 It is a simpler way of engaging the students for innovation in the early stage as practical
based teaching motivates students to take risk or learn new concept in every stage of life
resulting in generation of innovative ideas (Bound, Rushbrook & Choy, 2016) .
 It becomes easier for student to identify their skill as theoretical subjects can be easily
passed by students with the help of rotting the words. But on the other hand, student can

only pass the exam if they have proper knowledge and interest in to it so only skill based
students would be able to pass the examinations (Handelzalts, 2019).
At least four core instructional goals of the curriculum, providing a rationale for the goals
Four core instructional goals of the curriculum is given below,
 Equality of education and opportunity for every caste, religion, creed, race, income class etc
as it will be the only way of bridging the gap among the students. It will assist society to
bring social transformation in the district and all the materials or information which is
implying discrimination on the basis of anything must be eliminated from the curriculum
(Prior & Curtner-Smith, 2019).
 It is the constitutional obligation or rights and duties of person living there to get proper
education irrespective of social or economic status of it. The nation can only sustain as a
socialist, democratic and secular in nature if and only if youth of the country is well versed
with the concept of actions taken place on a daily basis.
 Other instructional goals of curriculum are to bring back all the values in United states
which brings moral and social values of society. Hence, value education must also be there
in any curriculum for the betterment of society
 Curriculum must convey the message of preservation of cultural heritage which is connected
with the history of society as it assists students to understand the concept more easily like
evolving of human specifies from chimpanzee etc (Stambaugh & Mofield, 2017) .

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Bound, H., Rushbrook, P., & Choy, M. (2016). Towards learner-centred design: the development
of a model for considering curriculum design. Advances in the Scholarship of Teaching
and Learning, 3(1), 1-19.
Brown, A. V., & Thompson, G. L. (2018). The changing landscape of Spanish language
curricula: Designing higher education programs for diverse students. Georgetown
University Press.
Ertmer, P. A., Quinn, J. A., & Glazewski, K. D. (Eds.). (2019). The ID casebook: Case studies in
instructional design. Routledge.
Goode, C. A., Hegarty, B., & Levy, C. (2018). Collaborative curriculum design and the impact
on organisational culture. TechTrends, 62(4), 393-402.
Handelzalts, A. (2019). Collaborative curriculum development in teacher design teams. In
Collaborative Curriculum Design for Sustainable Innovation and Teacher Learning (pp.
159-173). Springer, Cham.
Livingstone, K. A. (2019). The Place of Information and Communication Technologies in
Curriculum Design and Development. International Journal of Education and
Development using Information and Communication Technology, 15(4), 180-197.
Prior, L. F., & Curtner-Smith, M. D. (2019). Effects of occupational socialization on United
States secondary physical education teachers’ beliefs regarding curriculum design.
European Physical Education Review, 1356336X19840062.
Romiszowski, A. J. (2016). Designing instructional systems: Decision making in course planning
and curriculum design. Routledge.

Stambaugh, T., & Mofield, E. (2017). Concept-Based Curriculum Design and Practice in the
United States. In Curriculum for High Ability Learners (pp. 61-76). Springer, Singapore.
Watt-Watson, J., Lax, L., Davies, R., Langlois, S., Oskarsson, J., & Raman-Wilms, L. (2017).
The pain interprofessional curriculum design model. Pain Medicine, 18(6), 1040-1048.