Guidelines for Curriculum Project
This is the first task you should finish for your culminating experience. Your curriculum
project should include the following components:
1. You should provide an overview of the entire curriculum project with focus on
the targeted student population, the possible sponsoring programs (where this is to
be taught?), the class context (size, setting, facilities) and schedule.
2. A syllabus is recommended but not required.
3. A module of at least 8 lesson plans. Each lesson plan should contain the following
information:
a. Learning objectives: Specific, observable, and behavioral objectives that your leaner will
achieve after a segment of learning experience.
Example:
By the end of this lesson, students will be able to construct a resume (as provided
by the instructor) by using MS Word.
b. Teaching process and strategies: describe specifically how your class will proceed to the extent
that others, as sub-teacher, will be able to follow your plan to implement the curriculum.
c. any materials/resources needed.
d. readings, including online info, full references, or/and hard copy samples of the readings (when
your panelists are unfamiliar with your subject matters, some sample readings will be helpful;
however, if they are familiar with your field, the references of your reading should suffice.)
!
c. Student assessment/evaluation: To describe a form of evaluation used to assess students’
understanding of taught subject; it could be a test (test attached), a final paper (with topic), an oral
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presentation (with topic). You need to describe your specific way for assessment of students’
performance of the taught subject.
d. Teacher evaluation: An evaluation survey used to collect students’ feedback on their entire
learning experience, including the instructors, curriculum, and the environment, required in the
field of adult education. Other areas may indicate how you as an instructor assess and collect
students’ feedback.
While you are developing your curriculum project, you need to begin to identify a group of
experts (4-6) who can evaluate your curriculum. Your need to also decide the venue for
evaluation (usually interview or survey). For either venue, you need to develop your survey
instruments or interview questions. Make sure your questions address your research questions,
which constitute your purpose of study.
Chapter I Introduction
The purpose of chapter I is for you to provide some basic but important information
about your study. It should include the following sections:
Introduction/Background:
Provide the background information of your study, for example, why is such a
curriculum needed? Having taught this curriculum and would like to assess its
effectiveness? … Make sure you provide big picture (national, regional reasons,
or field related to have such a curriculum) and your personal factor. Support your
rationale with updated statistics, personal biography and other description.
Examples:
Ethnic curriculum is one of the most important curriculum reforms that
take place in the education system in the U.S. However, the actual
implementation of such a curriculum is terribly lacking, particularly at the
elementary school level….
Being an adult educator, I have used the dialogical approach of popular
education in many of my adult basic literacy courses. Dialogical approach
is adopted by Paulo Freire in his teaching with peasants in the nationwide
literacy campaign in Brazil. Although it has been documented widely in
the literature, there are limited studies focusing on such an approach and
its impact on the students…..
Problem Statement:
Given what you have provided as “introduction and background” info, explain
what the problem is.
Examples:
Given this culturally and ethnically diverse U.S. society, it is problematic
that many students find their ethnic groups have hardly mentioned in their
school curriculum….
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It is extremely important to begin to conduct not only the literature
review, but also the empirical curriculum-related research on teaching
methods discussed in the popular education….
Purpose of the Study:
What you decided to do in order to address the problem (stated above). You
should be able to describe your purpose in one sentence. For example,” the
purpose of the study is to evaluate the retention program at the community
colleges for students of color from the perspective of the served students.” Or, the
purpose of this study is to develop and evaluate the much needed multicultural
education curriculum at the elementary level.
Research Questions:
You need to develop 2-3 research questions; these are the questions that will
guide your study and fulfill the purpose. These are the questions that you try to
answer by conducting this study. In the curriculum study, you usually try to find
out, for instance, how well your curriculum has addressed its focus?
–How well my students are able to achieve the learning objectives?
These are big questions and need to be consistent with your purpose of study.
Significance of the Study: (theoretically and practically)
You need to describe how this study may contribute to other educators, schools,
and/or programs, who would be interested in this project.
Terms and Definitions (Optional)
Throughout the entire culminating experience project, you need to be consistent
in terms of the terms that you use. Or, if there are multiple common terms,
explain why you choose to use one term instead of others. For example, I would
suggest that you use “students of color”, instead of “minority students”. You may
define the term and explain why you choose to use “students of color”, stick to
that for the entire research.
Chapter 2 Literature Review
The purpose of this chapter is for you to review, summarize, synthesize, organize
and present all the literature in relation to your study in a coherent and
meaningful way.
Introduction
Repeat the purpose of your study and research questions as an opening of this
chapter. You may also discuss the scope of your review (from what sources, the
year span of your search etc, in one or two sentences). Then, briefly explain and
identify the areas of studies that you choose to review and present as literature
that informs your study. You may say, “For this study, I have review and
identified 4 areas of studies that inform my curriculum project. First, I would like
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to present the studies in the area of critical race theory; Secondly, I reviewed the
studies in relation to the history and development on multicultural education;
Thirdly…
Main Body of Literature Review
You identified those areas of research/studies that inform your curriculum
development and evaluation projects:
For example, if you are interested in Dialogical approach in popular education;
You may want to divide your lit review into 1). popular education; (2) Dialogical
approach, particularly empirical studies in this area; (3) Any other concerns, challenge
related to your project. For you the lit review doesn’t need to be very long but you had
better cover all the areas inform your curriculum development project.
Tips: you need good transitions from one study to the next one. Remember, it’s a
narrative that must flow together in a scholarly manner, not a series of unconnected
brief book reports. Do not intertwine several studies together, that is the most
confusing way to summarize and review studies
When describing empirical studies, describe the purpose, briefly how the study done,
and outcomes of the studies in about one or two paragraphs most. Also, do not
reference your current study in relation to those in the literature review; this can be
done in your chapter five.
Key words: Transition, one study after another, how the study is done—these are
the things that I expect to see in your chapter II.
Also, always cite your reviewed studies in proper APA style (multiple resources
available online, library, bookstore etc.)
Conclusion
Brief conclusion given what you have reviewed; combination of summary and
connection to the next chapter. Half to one page.
Chapter 3 Methodology
Open your chapter with again the purpose of the study and research questions,
just to remind your reader what will proceed.
Research Paradigm/Methods
You need to describe why you chose to adopt the type of methodology you use,
either qualitative, quantitative or combination of the two. You may find some good
quotes as rationale for your methodology choice from researchers such as Denzin (1994),
Lincoln and Guba, Merriam (1998, 2002) when you choose to do qualitative study.
Sampling:
Describe why you selected who and how many people.
Usually in the qualitative methods, you will have “purposeful” or “purposive
sampling”; you choose the groups of participants because you can learn most from them
about the proposed research questions (Merriam, 2002).
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Some people also use “convenient sampling” as these are the people they already know
and can provide info needed for the study or “snowball sampling” as some of the
participants recommend others to participants the study. Make sure you discuss the
criteria of your selection and brief description of those selected.
Data Collection
Explain step by step how you collect data? Interview (structured: the same set of
questions for everyone? Most commonly used is semi-structured: most of the same
questions but allow variations to respond to individual differences and non-structured:
maximizing flexibility but most applicable with experienced researchers. Or surveys? For
how long? where? With how many participants? How do you obtain the data?
Transcribe? Tape recording? Video-taping? Attach a copy of your interview questions,
surveys or other instruments as appendices to your culminating experience project.
Data Analysis
How was your data analyzed? Step by step procedure. Make sure the outcomes of
your data analysis can answer your own research questions, which in turn can address
your purpose.
Limitations (optional)
Any things you have done that may limit the reliability or validity of your study.
For example, most of the participants you recruited are of a particular ethnicity, which
may limit the results as your findings were based on a less diverse sample.
Reliability and Validity
Explain ways in which you have increased your reliability and validity. See
Merriam (1998, 2002) for some strategies, which may include “member-check”, check
with your participants to confirm the study outcomes are meaningful and relevant to
them; “triangulation”, using multiple ways to collect data etc.
Chapter 4 Findings
Guess what, In the beginning of the chapter, you describe not only your purpose
and your research questions; you briefly summarize how the study was done in about one
paragraph.
Participant profile
Provide a very brief bio for all the evaluators, one person per paragraph with
focus on their race, gender, the aspect of their identify or experience that is relevant to
the study (i.e. experience of serving as an urban educator), pseudonym name etc.
Findings (in response to Research Questions)
Describe what you have found and organize your outcomes as answer to your
research questions. When you present your outcomes, you can also form headings as
themes that emerge from data collection. This is not an interpretation about what the
findings mean, save that for the next chapter, but a reporting of the details of what you
actually found. If there are additional concerns that do not belong to your research
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questions, do include them. See professional journal articles for ways to present findings.
For instance, Merriam, S., Courtenay, B., & Baumgartner, L. (2003).On becoming a
witch: Learning in a marginalized community of practice, Adult Education Quarterly Vol
53 (3), p, 170-188.
Tips
You are the one who tells your readers the stories of what your experts view your
curriculum, so integrate the voices of your participants into your findings. Use lots of
quotes/raw data to support the themes/ findings you are putting together. Make sure your
findings address your research questions, which constitute the purpose of the study.
Chapter 5
Conclusion, Discussion, and Recommendations
Conclusion
The purpose of this chapter is for you to wrap up your study, directly talk about
what you can conclude given the findings.
Discussion
This section allows you to reflect, compare and contrast what your findings with
the previous studies. Specifically you may talk about how your study is similar to or
different from the previous literature.
Recommendations:
You need to recommend specific types of research need to be done in the future,
also specific curricular/instructional suggestions that you can recommend given your
findings and study.