Curriculum Audit - Report Example

Final Paper - Curriculum Audit

Introduction

Curriculum audit is a more rigorous process that involves identifying areas of a school system that may need improvement to deliver effective teachings and learning in a school. Before conducting any curriculum audit, it is imperative for the school auditing committee and management to know the standards and process that they should follow to conduct a comprehensive audit process that will yield the desired level of outcomes. The standards and procedures of the auditing process should not be ignored because they help to provide guidelines that should be followed to have an effective curriculum. Over the recent times, most schools have been unable to accomplish their target academic goals due to lack of proper instructional programs. A lot of reforms in the curriculum have been made. However, despite making numerous instructional adjustments in the school curriculum, most schools still lag behind their academic targets (Mitchell, & Fisette, 2016). The report focuses on identifying an instructional problem in my school, analyzing the problem and proposes strategies that can be established to address such problem.

Section 1: Identification of an instructional problem

One of the main instructional problems that have been facing my school is Curriculum Overload which has made it difficult for students to achieve better grades and hence reducing the overall performance of my school. The curriculum has significantly affected learning and performance in the school. Some of the concepts included in the curriculum are so sophisticated and hence undermining the quality and understanding of students in our schools. For instance, our school curriculum tends to incorporate specialized concepts that are not only unsuitable for pupils in primary schools but also in appropriate for students in high school. For example, some concept like mathematical logarithms tends to be more sophisticated and can only be suitable for students at college and university level. Such concepts are complicated to pupils in our school (Bridges, Yiu, & Botelho, 2016).

Besides, the number of subjects that should be taught to pupils tends to overload them with information and hence to hinder the ability of students to focus on subjects that they can understand and consequently lead to poor grades. The majority of pupils in our school are taught over ten subjects. Such high number of subjects tends to make students lose focus and concentration in class because they are already tired by numerous subjects being taught each day. The increase in the level of fatigue makes students to lose interest in their studies and consequently leads to poor performance. Besides, an overloaded instructional program makes the teacher feel fatigued due to overworking so that they can teach all the subjects and topics that have been recommended in the instructional program. In most cases, teachers tend to rush so that they meet the requirements and hence they may not be able to deliver efficiently and hence leading to poor performance among pupils. There is a need to ensure that instructional programs are amended so that the performance of our school can improve (Bridges, Yiu, & Botelho, 2016).

Section 2: Problem identification

The instructional problem was identified into ways namely using quantities and qualitative data and using of dialogue interviews. The quantitative data was reviewed by the teachers and the head teacher, and it was evident from the data that the performance of the school has been declining for the last five years after there were adjustments in the school curriculum. The performance of students in all classes/ levels portrayed a worrying trend that was evident in the student’s grades and school mean score. For example, since the curriculum adjustments were made in the last five years where more subjects were included in the curriculum, the performance of pupils in our school started declining.

The second method that was used is interviewed. Students were asked whether they feel satisfied with the volume of the work they get and if they feel fatigued. A response rate of 95 percent indicated that students tend to feel tired with the new curriculum. Some stated that by the time they are going for afternoon preps, they feel sleepy and cannot revise because of work overload that they were subjected to during the day. Also, teachers were interviewed and based on the majority of teachers who were being interviewed; they argued that they tend to feel overwhelmed to complete the syllabus because it has a lot of things that they must be covered before the end of the time. Some teacher argued that they end up concentrating on completing the syllabus rather than focusing on whether students are understanding or not. The reason why the instructional problem it was identified is because of numerous complaints that the school administration started to receive from parents about their student declined performance. Besides, the problem was observable and could easily see without much detail analysis (Vaughn, Capin, Roberts, & Walker, 2016).

Section 3: Learner profile

A student’s profile chart helps to show the strength and weakness of pupils in a school. A learner profile chart may take various forms which include but not limited to individual learners profile chart, class learners profile and overall learner’s profiles. By looking at the profile, a teacher can tell areas that pupils have the strength and those subject areas where pupils tend to have a lot of weakness which may call for further improvement. Below is a learner profile chart that identifies the students at my school, especially those affected by the instructional problem.

Class Teacher: Mr.Anderson Grade 2

Year: 2012-2017

Student Name

Jessim

Jante

Sanita

Sue

Performance level

1.Poor

2-Below Average

3-Average

4. Excellent

1

2

3

1

Gender

1.Male=M

2.Female=F

M

M

F

F

Teachers Support

• Good
• Excellent
• Average
• Low

3

4

3

1

Learning Preference among students

1.Alone

2. Team Learning

2

2

1

2

Stress level/fatigue caused by the program

• Low
• Average
• High Extremely high

1

4

4

4

Class Output

1.High

2.low

3. Average

2

1

3

2

Based on learner’s profile chart above it is clear that most students are not satisfied with the current instructional program in our school. Most of them feel fatigued, and their performance in the school tends to be extremely low. Besides, teachers tend to lack motivation; they only work hard to finish the syllabus and not to ensure students understands key concepts being taught. The support levels offered by teachers to the students are extremely low as most teachers rush to cover the syllabus as required by the instructional program. The aggregate result is poor students’ performance as shown in the profile.

Section 4: Vertical or Horizontal alignment of curriculum

Curriculum issues involve problems that are directly attributed to the school instructional programs that hinder students and teacher to deliver the best results. One of such issues is the problem of an overcrowded curriculum that tends to overload learners with a lot of complex information. Such overcrowding makes students become fatigue and hence lose concentrations. On the other hand, the teacher focuses more on delivering to complete the syllabus and not for the student to understand and hence a curriculum issue. On the contrary, alignment issues occur when there is no proper connection between the curriculum and kind of teaching and assessment. An alignment issue may occur where are no appropriate standards to ensure that whatever is being taught to pupils is in line with their capacity to understand. For example, the complex concept should not be taught to students in the lower levels grades because they may not understand and hence there is a need to ensure that whatever is being taught to students is in line with their level of understanding (Bridges, Yiu, & Botelho, 2016).

Horizontal alignment involves alignment work done at one grade level, in discrete content areas, or across content areas. Horizontal alignment entails the degree in which the assessment corresponds to the set content standard in a certain grade level. Horizontal alignment focuses on ensuring that the standards and assessment used helps to bring up clarity in the entire education systems. It also makes it easier for a school to achieve the desired level of outcomes at the end of each term. On the contrary, Vertical alignment focuses on aligning curriculum in a discrete content area, for example, mathematics across grades within a school and across schools, including elementary, middle, and high schools. Vertical alignment also involves integrating together different components and stakeholders to ensure that education system realizes desired goals. An example of vertical alignment includes coordinating teachers, students, parents, and all stakeholders within the education systems to ensure that a school curriculum is set in such a way that students can achieve the desired results. Based on the problem identified in the school it is evident that there is an issue of horizontal alignments because the content and the assessment used are wrong. For instance, the current instructional program in our school tends to overload students with a lot of complex material which consequently leads to poor performance of students in different grades (Bridges, Yiu, & Botelho, 2016).

Section 5: Graphic Representation

Below is a graphic representation showing a flow chart of the curriculum audit process. From the diagram, it is evident that curriculum audit process begins with auditing planning and selection of the kind

of audit type that needs to be executed as shown in the diagram below.

Based on the curriculum audit flow chart it can be scrutinized that each auditing step has a different activity that tends to be executed up to a point where an auditing problem is fully identified. The parties to carry out the audit must be selected and audit schedule prepared. The selected persons must have extensive knowledge pertaining the school so that they can be able to quickly identify areas that heighten audit risk within the school curriculum. Scheduling is essential because it helps the auditor to know the exact time frame that the curriculum auditing process should take. Such schedule contributes to minimize time wastage and ensure that minimum resources are used to conduct curriculum audit.

Section 6: Proposed Solution Strategies

Three proposed curriculum strategies can help to address the instructional problem and contribute to solving the instructional problem. The three key strategies curriculum adaptation strategies include curricular plans, instructional strategies, and ecological strategies. The curricular strategy is the first approach that can utilize to address the instructional problem. It involves conducting an evaluation of the students learning goals to find out whether the available instructions need adjustments to realize these aims. The curriculum adaptation strategy may be utilized whereby some parts of learning and teaching process may be amended (Bofferding, & Kloser, 2015).

During the amendments, some components of the learning and teaching process may be adjusted. For example, the methods and instructions used by the teacher may be amended. Also, the method of assessing students and learning activities may also be modified to ensure that the instructional problem such as overcrowded curriculum problem is addressed. The curriculum adaptation strategies also involve three other essential components that may help to solve instructional problems. The three components that the team responsible for amending instruction should consider include identification of difficulties in the curriculum, incorporating students’ interest in the curriculum, and incorporating activities that learners find meaningful in the curriculum. Task difficulty components involve identifying that work within the curriculum that students find challenging and providing alternative activities that may help learners to understand challenging concepts easily. Also, a difficult task within the curriculum can be simplified by shortening assignments that learners perceive as difficult. The second component of curriculum adaptation strategy that may be utilized to solve instructional problems is including learner’s interest in the learning activities. By capturing the interest of learning by includes, their preference can help to increase the level of learners’ engagement. Also, removing meaningless activities and include those activities that learners consider meaningful may help greatly towards addressing instructional problems (Bofferding, & Kloser, 2015).

Section 7: Initiation and Implementation

There are eight key steps necessary for project initiation and implementation. The first step involves preparing infrastructure. The step focuses on reviewing the entire infrastructure including machines hardware and software to ensure that they are in good condition to begin project implementation. The second phase is coordinating all the activities including ensuring proper flow of information. Thirdly, implementation training may be carried out so that the persons involved can now how they can effectively implement the project. The fourth step entails production solution installation; this is where the system is fixed so that it can begin production. The fifth implantation step is the conversion of data from a given format to the other. The sixth step entails conducting final production verification to find out whether the project systems are capable of delivering the anticipated results. The seventh steps involve procedure and process implementation including IT setups. The last step involves monitoring the project and identifies the problem so that it can be fixed (Glatthorn, Boschee, Whitehead, & Boschee, 2016).

Section 8: Evaluation of outcome

Outcome evaluation is crucial because it helps the organization or the project team members to know whether they are moving towards the right direction. Six steps can be used to evaluate implementation outcomes. Among the six steps include a definition of project stakeholders, describing the program, establishing the evaluation design, collecting evaluation evidence, making inferences and finally the presentation of finding for use by the concerned parties (Glatthorn, Boschee, Whitehead, & Boschee, 2016).

Conclusion

The instructional problem identified in my school is overcrowded curriculum which has led to overworking teachers and performance in our school. Learner's profile has also been established to show how the instructional problem has been affecting the performance of students in the school. Also, Vertical and Horizontal curriculum alignment have been discussed and found out that our school is facing horizontal curriculum issues. A flow chart has been presented to show how curriculum audit can be carried out to identify the problems. The proposed strategies for addressing curriculum issues have been identified as well as steps involved in project implantation and evaluation.