A cybernetic model for curriculum development

Abstract

The task of the curriculum developer is to design instructional systems which will produce consistently high levels of learning despite wide variation in pupil characteristics. This can be viewed as a cybernetic question of regulating variety in a system to produce stable and high level output. Six cybernetic principles -goal orientation, limitation of input, monitoring, control decisions, restoration of equilibrium, and positive feedbackare described, and their application to curriculum discussed. It is concluded thata cybernetic model can guide curriculum developers in designing effective learning systems. Curriculum as an Applied ScienceThe last decade has seen enormous advances in curriculum develoPment. The field is currently characterized by a sense of optimism and confidence which is the more striking when compared with the gloom and defeatism that prevailed in the "schools make no difference" aftermath of the Coleman Report.It is only a decade since Schwab described the curriculum field as moribund, mad ascribed its moribundity to "inveterate, unexamined, and mistaken reliance on theory" (Schwab, 1969: 1). Schwab was half-right. The field of curriculum was not moribund: even as he wrote, the most significant advance of a generation, Mastery Learning, was well under way. But the search for a "curriculum theory" was, as it remains, a false trail. Curriculum, like such applied sciences as engineering or medicine, does not generate theory of its own. Curriculum development is usually pragmatic, discovering by experience what works. Sometimes curriculum derives operating principles from theory in the sciences; more commonly it first develops a practice and subsequently seeks its theoretical basis.Curriculum development -the process of planning instructional systems -has successfully adopted many operating principles from such 0020-4277/82/0000-0000/$2.75 © 1982 Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company fields as philosophy, measurement, and psychology. Cybernetics -which might be defined as the science of self-regulation in systems -has enriched many disciplines, from biology and ecology to political science and psychiatry. But although educators have adopted (somewhat loosely) such cybernetic terms as "feedback", the richness of cybernetics does not appear to have been fully described or utilized in curriculum thought. Yet the central concerns of curriculum developers -how to help all students learn, and how to maximize individual growth -can be viewed as cybernetic questions.This paper will describe six basic principles from cybernetics which have a direct application to curriculum development. They constitute a model which helps to explain the success of certain curriculum practices, and increases the capacity of practitioners to design effective curricula. Cybernetic SystemsBefore examining cybernetic principles, the basic cybernetic model should be described, and one example provided of a cybernetic system. Figure 1 illustrates the cybemetic model in its simplest form, in which there is a control system and ...

Analysis of the Subjects and Reasons of Curriculum Studies

“…Öz düzenleme bilimi olarak tanımlanan bu kavramın program araştırmalarında yer edinebileceği düşünülmektedir. Öz düzenleme ilkeleri, öğrenmeyi öğrenme gibi çalışma konuları sibernetiğin içinde yer almakla birlikte geribildirim gibi terimlerin de eğitim bilimlerinde kullanıldığı görülmektedir (Pratt, 1982). Bu nedenle sınırlı sayıda araştırmanın olduğu tespit edilen sibernetiğin salgın sürecinde, uzaktan eğitim ile öz düzenleme ve öğrenmeyi öğrenme becerilerinin sorgulandığı mevcut durumda program araştırmalarına farklı bir boyut getireceği öngörülmektedir.…”

Curriculum design as humanistic technology

“…The multidisciplinary science of cybernetics has shown that feedback is essential to the health and growth of all open and dynamic systems, from organic life to organizations and interpersonal relations. 42 Humanistic educators have often charged educational evaluators with bias in their attention to assessing acquisition of information and in norm-referenced judgements that aim to separate students as much as possible. Contemporary approaches emphasize diagnostic evaluation, the assessment of learning in relation to goals rather than relative to other learners, and qualitative as well as quantitative judgements.…”