Educational Planning and Development: External Influences - Research Paper Example

Educational Planning and Development: External Influences Planning is a great educational tool that assists in proper allocation of funds in the institutions, career progress of students, and great innovations in education. Educational planning includes tuning the educational development through rational thinking and systematic approach to increase efficiency and effectiveness of the system to respond to the needs of the students and the society. This paper examines external influences in the process of educational planning and development.

Education planning is a simple process, which is concerned with better future decisions and actions and the best route to these changes. According to Coombs, it is quite tasking to maintain internal and external relationships of the educational system in reasonable balance under dynamically changing circumstances and to bend them constantly in the required direction (Coombs, 1970, p. 17). For instance, funds needed for educational planning at times come from donors a thing that makes them intervene on the educational policies to put in place.

While most apply to the entire country, some educational policies in planning are for individual institutions. It is possible to encounter difficulties when developing a new programme or upgrading a new one either internally or from the outside (Dubois, 2008).As a middle school teacher in Louisiana, at K-12 district I encountered some difficulties at one time when I tried to upgrade the current system of career guidance. The current career guidance module was not up to date and the idea was to make it online to enable students select careers that align with their aptitudes, interests, and strengths.

The second product was a new one that involved offering some motivational courses to improve student’s morale to read. According to US department of Education, citizens must be prepared for the 21st century jobs through quality education (US Department of Education, 2012). Motivating students to study is part of this training. I needed some money to have the programmes in place and this was my first challenge. On sharing my views with my fellow teachers, I realised that I was a big threat to some of them who thought that I was seeking promotion and they could in no way support the ideas.

I decided to take it easy, move on with the few who supported the programme. I realised that this is an ethical dilemma since the program might overly expose the students to career choices at a time when they have not yet developed strong decision-making skills.Every new project requires enough personnel to take off, which was limited in this case but we decided to move on for the future good of community and the students. In our preliminary, research that involved students, we tried to be as unbiased as possible to keep good relationships with our fellow teachers and the students.

The government curriculum stipulates what is to be taught in different institutions. More importantly, the government is more vigilant on how the students are exposed to external influences and how such influences might affect their learning. It was hard for the principal to approve the programmes based on this but since the research proved that it was for the welfare of the students and their future careers, he eventually approved it.ReferencesCoombs, P. (1970) “What is Educational Planning” UNESCO.

Retrieved from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0007/000766/076671eo.pdfUS Department of Education (2012) “Advancing Civic Learning and Engagement in Democracy” Retrieved from http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED528611.pdfOakland Schools Public Notices (2012) “Educational Development plan” Retrieved from http://www.oakland.k12.mi.us/Departments/CareerFocusedEducation/EducationDevelopmentPlan/tabid/530/Default.aspxDubois, J. (2008) “Ethics in mental Health research” New York, University Press.