Session Information
03 SES 06 B, Cultural Influences on Curriculum Design Practices
Paper Session
Contribution
As national contexts vary from each other and educational designers are also challenged to collaborate with various local stakeholders and practitioners e.g. teachers, a context-sensitive approach to curriculum and professional teacher development is necessary to fit the local context and to support local teachers in the adaptation of the curriculum (Rogan & Grayson, 2003). According to Barab and Luehmann (2003) well-intentioned, well-designed curriculum reform programmes have often failed because of a lack of clearly thought-out implementation strategies that take into account the local context. Rogers, Graham, and Mayes (2007) express the need to broaden and deepen our perspective as to changes in models and methods that are needed to facilitate more sensitivity and responsiveness to cultural differences. This study aims to identify the effective characteristics of cultural factors that influence curriculum design activities.
To effectively identify these characteristics, a framework was developed to analyse curriculum design processes on cultural aspects. In a previous study, we analyzed curriculum design models and their sensitivity on cultural influences. Four aspects of curriculum development approaches were identified which reflect recent insights in the role of contextual forces: (1) the creation of a better understanding of the context; (2) design by iterations; (3) sustainable implementation; and (4) the creation of ownership. The relevance of two cultural dimensions described by Hofstede (1980, 2001) and two dimensions described by Hall (Hall, 1959, 1966; Hall & Hall, 1990) were indicated that seem to have their influence on curriculum design processes: (1) Power distance; (2) Collectivism (versus its opposite, individualism; (3) High context (versus its opposite, low context; and (4) Polytime (versus its opposite, monotime). In the study described in the ECER paper, we further elaborate on the use of the framework in the context of polytechnic education in Ghana. Since the upgrading from secondary level to tertiary level education, middle managers (in this study restricted to Heads of department) in the polytechnics face problems related to time, resource, and change management which result in the absence of departmental goals, problems of recruitment and retention of staff, no review of course curricula for the past ten years, and resistance to change (Nsiah-Gyabaah, 2005). By collaboratively designing a professional development program for heads of department from all the polytechnics in Ghana, it was intended to support the heads of department to improve leadership in the core academic management processes in the polytechnics (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 2005). Based on the outcomes of our analyses to identify cultural factors influencing the design process of the development program, the reliability of the framework will be tested. Therefore, two questions are pertinent for this study: (a) What components of curriculum and professional teacher development are sensitive to cultural factors?; and (b) What is the reliability and generalizability of the framework developed in a previous study for addressing influence of culture in curriculum and teacher development in Ghanaian Polytechnics? In this way, effective characteristics of cultural factors that influence curriculum design activities in international contexts are identified.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Barab, S.A.& Luehmann, A.L. (2003). Building sustainable science curriculum: Acknowledging and accommodating local adaptation. Science education, 87(4), 454-467. Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture’s consequences: International differences in work-related values. Beverly Hills: Sage. Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture's Consequences: comparing values, behaviors, institutions, and organizations across nations (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. Hall, E.T. (1959). The Silent Language, New York: Doubleday Hall Hall, E.T. (1966). The Hidden Dimension, New York: Doubleday Hall, E. T. & Hall, M.R. (1990). Understanding Cultural Differences: Germans, French and Americans. Yarmouth: Intercultural Press Nsiah-Gyabaah, (2005). Polytechnic education in Ghana: The past, the present and the future. Conference proceedings of the NPT/UCC project Building managerial and leadership capacity in Ghana. 20-22 May 2005 Cape Coast Ghana Rogan, J.M. & Grayson, D.J. (2003). Towards a theory of curriculum implementation with particular reference to science education in developing countries. International journal of science education, 25(10), 1171-1204. Rogers, P.C., Graham, C.R. & Mayes, C.T. (2007). Cultural competence and instructional design: Exploration research into the delivery of online instruction cross-culturally. Education technology research development, 55 (2), 197-217. Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. (2005). Application for the award of the project “Building managerial and leadership capacity in polytechnics in Ghana”. Unpublished manuscript. Yin, R.K. (2003). Case study research: Design and methods. London: Sage.
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