Components, Characteristics, and Uses of Teaching and Training Curriculum

The curriculum embraces the total spectrums of content, resources, materials, and methods of teaching where the key purpose of education is achieved. It is a standardized sequence of planned experiences that enables the teacher and the learner to achieve a certain level of proficiency by applying proper learning skills.

The units and structure in the curriculum are developed to facilitate instruction and learning. The curriculum sets the tone for an understanding of what is essential for learning and teaching and it must include the goals, methods, materials, and assessments to effectively support instruction and learning.

COMPONENTS OF CURRICULUM

A good teacher or facilitator will be involved and he/she will have different values, attitudes, abilities, beliefs, systems, and even different learning environments. It is acceptable to develop a curriculum to guide instructions. The curriculum must include the following components:

Goals

The curriculum makes it easy for goals to be properly set and explained. Goals are expressed in the form of skills to be addressed. A good curriculum must give an insight into the depth to which a trainee is expected to go or learn.

Methods

Methods are well articulated in the curriculum. These are the approaches, instructional decisions, routines, and procedures that are used in the learning environment. This enables meaningful learning.

Usually, to ensure good learning outcomes, methods are adjusted or differentiated to meet the needs of the learner, the different tasks, and the learning environment.

It is envisaged that the training of teachers and facilitators will require facilitators and teachers to use well-articulated methods to enable the universality of training while making all necessary adjustments to meet the peculiarities of the trainees and the learning environments.

Materials

The curriculum allows for the intentional selection of materials to support learning. Materials are carefully selected to support instruction. In this case, only relevant materials are identified. The selection of materials is based on relevancy, appropriateness, and diversity.

Evaluation

The curriculum ensures proper evaluation procedures as it allows the use of a variety of ways of documenting or measuring the level of knowledge of a subject matter.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CURRICULUM

To ensure success in the classroom, academia has developed a training curriculum to guide the teachers and facilitators for credible teaching and facilitation. This curriculum has been developed to meet up with the capacity of students and learners at all levels by providing them with the necessary skills and education to meet up with challenges.

The curriculum, therefore, is meant to actualize this by guiding the teaching, training, and facilitating and the teachers, trainers, and facilitators to deliver optimally. The following are the main features of the curriculum.

Purposeful aim and objectives

The training curriculum has well-stated purposeful aims and objectives for all the units. This will guide the teaching or training and ensure proper understanding and application of concepts in multiple places without significant variations in content and procedure.

Functionality

The curriculum is meant to strike a balance between theory and practice. It is developed based on the understanding that all issues in it are workable, practicable, feasible, and attainable.

Flexibility

The curriculum is designed in such a way that it does not follow a rigid protocol but is capable of adapting to the needs of different learners. The units of instruction even allow training to be re-oriented in a variety of ways. This flexibility allows easy adaptation in different circumstances.

Relevance

The curriculum is developed based on the manual of instruction for teaching and learning in the classroom. It has been adequately crafted or designed to enhance or facilitate the transfer of knowledge and develop necessary skills.

Up-to-datedness

The curriculum has up-to-date concepts and generalizations and for teaching and learning in the classroom. It contains some of the very pertinent issues, terms, definitions, and concepts for the teaching and learning process.

Evaluation

The curriculum is developed on the premises of regular evaluation protocols to monitor progress as the case may be. It is a point of reference against which one may choose to compare or assess performance. The evaluation should aid learning significantly.

HOW TO USE THE CURRICULUM

The teaching and teaching curriculum serves as an effective guide to using the manual instructions as it allows the manual to be broken down into manageable, time-bound, and simplified units.

This allows for a sequential progression in the learning tasks; as either such terms are brought together or structured in such a way as to ensure learning progression from simpler to harder content. The following are good points of how curriculum can be used effectively.

1. Categorization and compartmentalization

Every chapter of a good curriculum should be subdivided into units to reflect the major categorization or compartmentalization of the chapter. This is like the development of a work plan or lesson plan that ensures that appreciative weight is given to each aspect of the chapter.

The facilitator/trainer is to use the curriculum to guide content delivery. The simplicity of the curriculum into units will make widen the knowledge of the learners.

2. Introduction, aim, and objectives

A good curriculum should have each unit that has an introduction, the aim and objectives, the types of resources required in teaching that unit, and the evaluation protocol among others.

The facilitator is expected to follow the content of each unit from the beginning of the unit to the end. One is to see the curriculum as a work plan or lesson plan. Therefore, the background, stated objectives and general aim of the lesson will make the curriculum standardized.

3. Assessment

A good curriculum should be assessed for use all the time. Each unit has an assessment question that the facilitator or the trainer is supposed to ask the trainee. The evaluation is meant to enhance understanding of the contents of the unit and is not necessary for punitive measures.

So, if the curriculum has enough assessment questions and formative and summative evaluation, the understanding of the learners will be discovered.

4. Availability

A good curriculum should be available to the facilitator/trainer only and it is meant to guide him/her to structure the delivery of the manual in sequential order.

The manual of instruction remains the only material for use in the class by the trainees and the trainers or teachers or facilitators in other words; the trainer uses the curriculum to specifically enable him or her to take full control of the training process.

Conclusion

Both the manual of instructions and the training curriculum are reference materials in the teaching and learning process. However, the curriculum is meant only for those that are involved in training people on the manual of instructions.