EDU 4203 Assessment 1 - Curriculum Comparison by Moaza Mohammed

Overview of the Australian Curriculum

h00350620 — 2021-10-19 15:07:49 UTC

The Australian curriculum aims to develop successful learners with confident and creative minds. It offers a modern curriculum for every student in Australia. The curriculum has eight learning areas that help the students in learning whatever they need to learn to progress in their school life. The eight learning areas are English, Mathematics, Science, Humanities and Social Sciences, The Arts, Technology, Health and Physical Education, and languages. As well as having seven general capabilities to help prepare students to learn. According to the curriculum, these seven learning capabilities are Literacy, Numeracy, ICT Capability, Critical and Creative Thinking, Personal and Social Capability, Ethical Understanding, and Intercultural Understanding. The capability encompasses knowledge, skills, behavior, and dispositions. The curriculum also offers three cross-curriculum priorities that are the focus across the learning areas. The three cross-curriculum priorities are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures, Asia and Australia's Engagement with Asia, and Sustainability.

The Australian curriculum is a flexible curriculum that allows teachers to add their tweaks to it to properly cater to all students' needs. The curriculum is designed to target children from 1-10 years. Students learn through teacher-student interactions, exploring, experimenting as well as playing.

Overview of the Australian Curriculum's Unit Plan

h00350620 — 2021-10-19 15:17:05 UTC

The unit plan is a science unit plan about The Great Barrier Reef. This unit plan is catering to 4-8-year-olds. It has its focus on identifying the geographic features of a reef and identifying the different food chains in the reef's ecosystem. Ultimately, there are seven lessons in this unit plan and they are sequenced perfectly to ensure a fun and smooth lesson flow and delivery. Each lesson is 30 minutes long. This unit plan is for the Science learning area however it integrates English, Mathematics, and Visual Arts.

The lessons in this unit plan are planned significantly to ensure the most benefit to the learners. The lesson plan did not abandon the fact that learners' prior knowledge should be activated and engaged for new knowledge. They have created activities to spike learners' prior knowledge before introducing new knowledge. Researchers have found that activating learners' prior knowledge is a huge benefit to improve comprehension skills. (William, Thomas, 1991).

Australian Curriculum Overview

h00350620 — 2021-10-19 16:09:32 UTC

Australian Curriculum Unit Plan

h00350620 — 2021-10-19 16:10:21 UTC

h00350620 — 2021-10-19 19:44:47 UTC

Overview of the MOE Curriculum

ohoodfaisal123 — 2021-10-19 19:53:13 UTC

Since the United Arab Emirates foundation, education has witnessed a continuous development, especially the MOE curriculum. Ridge (2009) stated that the first Emirati curriculum was created in 1979 where the language of instructions was Arabic. Later in 1990s, the MOE worked with the UAE University to develop a curriculum that is based on English language (N. Ridge, S. Kippels,& S. Farah, 2017). Kindergarten has benefited from the promotion that occurred in this domain to assure nonstop development of skills and knowledge of both children and teachers in UAE (quality education in UAE, 2020). Nowadays skills such critical thinking and practical abilities were encouraged to be applied in classrooms more that memorizing. The kindergarten students were given a chance to get engaged in active learning contexts. The learning goals target the social and emotional growth of the children, their ability to understand and communicate with others, their ability to explore their surrounding and physical movement (the national educational system, 2020). Kindergarten subjects are based mainly on science, mathematics, Arabic, Islamic, English, moral education and physical education. The children acquire the subjects through themes which related to the kids experiences. All the themes are related to humans, earth, animals and the things that kids are familiar with in their environment (MOE Kindergarten, 2021).

h00350620 — 2021-10-20 17:59:50 UTC

A well-integrated curriculum combines skills and concepts from several curricular areas and intentionally links them together. Children's natural curiosity, a driving force of inquiry, can be incorporated within a series of subjects that are combined. (Krogh & Morehouse, 2020).

Integrated curriculum planning provides teachers with the overall structure of all the components required to develop a teaching plan. Integrated planning is necessary when aiming for complex outcomes and objectives. As part of an integrated curriculum, specific goals, objectives, expected results, activities, methods, and tools are designed according to contemporary teaching and learning concepts. By using an integrated curriculum, they will gain more experience and knowledge and will be more confident when making arrangements for each teaching unit. Using this system, teachers will start at their students' level and work up from there based on the students' knowledge and skills. (Ristevska & Sivakova, 2016)

Curriculum integration is all about implementing a diverse learning experience through themes and projects that pique children's interests. According to (Bredekamp, 1992), themes are an important tool to enhance a learning experience. As features of an integrated curriculum, there are several essential elements to consider. Among these characteristics are planning differentiated activities that are age and level appropriate and providing opportunities for the children to improve their cognitive skills, including critical thinking abilities. (Schwartz, 1991).

Student-centered activities must be balanced with teacher-centered activities in an integrated curriculum. However, the emphasis should be on child-centered activities since the purpose of an integrated curriculum is to allow children to develop skills through exploration, experimentation, and investigation. (Schwartz, 1991)

ohoodfaisal123 — 2021-10-20 18:41:14 UTC

h00350620 — 2021-10-20 19:34:45 UTC

In the MOE curriculum, the outcomes were not mentioned. This missing part will affect the delivery of the lesson because the main goals will not be identified. However, in the Australian curriculum, there were four outcomes mentioned for the entire unit. Secondly, in the MOE curriculum, objectives are categorized as whole-class, small-group, and learning centers. In both whole-class and small-group, there are three objectives mentioned and six mentioned for learning centers. In the Australian curriculum, the objectives are categorized as lessons and there are seven of them. The objectives in both curricula relate heavily to the content to be taught in the unit.
Thirdly, the content and scope in both curriculums are extremely similar. They both focus on what the students need to learn about in-depth and the activities and experiments they need to engage in for the main topic of the unit. Fourthly, Sequencing in the MOE curriculum is divided into five lessons and three steps, whole-class, small-group, and learning centers. The MOE curriculum has no mention of prior knowledge activation activities or strategies for the students. In the Australian curriculum, they have sequenced in seven lessons with prior knowledge activation activities or strategies. Prior knowledge activation is important to ease the learners' way into acquiring new information. Fifthly, Both curricula have assessment strategies. However, in the MOE curriculum, the assessment strategy solely depends on observation which is an essential assessment tool yet insufficient. In the Australian curriculum, they depend on questions which is also an essential assessment tool yet still insufficient. Both curriculums should use more assessment tools to accurately assess the learners. Sixthly, Timing is a huge part of curriculum planning as well because it helps teachers understand and plan their lesson according to the time at their availability. The MOE curriculum has not mentioned anything related to the time need for every lesson. The Australian curriculum specified 30 minutes for every lesson. Seventhly, one of the most important components was missing from both curriculums. Evaluation is not mentioned in either of the curriculums which is an important aspect the teachers need to ensure their plans are beneficial to the learners. Eighty, Methodology in both curriculums focuses on teacher-centered and student-centered activities. Both curricula have specified the activities that will incorporate teacher-centered and student-centered activities. Ninthly, there were a sufficient amount of resources mentioned in both curriculums. Resources varied from online materials to hands-on activity materials. Resources are a major help in conveying information and especially to young minds. Tenthly, Tasks in the MOE curriculum are provided to be completed with every lesson. The tasks differ depending on the learning objectives and each task is meant to strengthen children's critical thinking and problem-solving skills. In the Australian curriculum, the task setting is similar to the MOE curriculum. It differs depending on the learning objectives for the lessons and it differs to focus on the children's developmental domains.

ohoodfaisal123 — 2021-10-20 19:47:25 UTC

The MOE curriculum was criticized for many factors. First, the quality of students’ attainment is seen as weak; the students’ skills in literacy, math, and technology aren’t at a high level as they can’t work dependently. Only a limited number of students are able to acquire the knowledge that they are exposed to on a daily basis. Second, most of the students fail to make connections between what they learn in school and real life. Third students’ critical thinking is not well developed as they depend most of the time on memorization of the curriculum contents. They can’t solve the problems themselves (school inspection framework, 2020).

ohoodfaisal123 — 2021-10-20 19:48:01 UTC

The students are encouraged to gain interest in learning through increasing the student’s role and decreasing the teacher’s role. The students should be responsible for their learning while the teacher plays a guiding role. Furthermore, teachers have to support students to acquire skills, knowledge, and understanding to be confidents and responsible learners. Enhancing students to move out of their comfort zone is another important factor that would build sociable individuals. The student would cooperate with their classmates to do the group work. The students participate in class discussions instead of just listening to others (Regional Center for Educational Planning to integrate citizenship values in the academic curriculum, 2020).

Overview of the MOE Curriculum's Unit Plan

ohoodfaisal123 — 2021-10-20 19:49:57 UTC

Weather, sky, and space unit plan include speaking, emergent reading, and emergent writing as the learning outcomes. By the end of the unit, the students are expected to demonstrate good listening behaviors, speak clearly and audibly, Handle books appropriately, turn pages and look at illustrations and other print and express thoughts and ideas through mark-making, drawing, and writing using a variety of tools and media. The unit plan includes various details like the vocabulary and sentence structure of the topic,

ohoodfaisal123 — 2021-10-20 19:51:48 UTC

ohoodfaisal123 — 2021-10-20 19:53:48 UTC

h00350620 — 2021-10-20 20:13:42 UTC

Sharifa and Thuraya's Group Comment

2021-10-28 06:50:31 UTC

They introduce what is curriculum very well with clear evidence, how it’s work. Also, they explain the MOE, Australian and Al Warda curriculum and they implement the unit plan of each curriculum. They give clear information while comparing the curriculums to the 11 components of an integrated curriculum. Identifying the most important similarity and differences between the two selected curriculums, exploring the critical gaps with giving their suggestion to avoid and improve the curriculum. They implement a lot of references which make the report very academic and strong evidence. In our opinion it was very structured and detailed report so it will be easy to understand the curriculum comparison.

Our Comment on Sharifa and Thuraya's Group

h00350620 — 2021-10-29 11:13:01 UTC

Your introduction of an integrated curriculum is very clear and understandable. You have covered thoroughly what an integrated curriculum focuses on. You have mentioned vaguely and briefly some suggestions on how teachers can plan an integrated lesson and what factors should be considered while planning. The introduction was well written and coherent for the readers. However, the rationale of the integrated curriculum was sort of ambiguous. Some sentences and ideas you had did not articulate well as written text which resulted in your text not making sense. Some vocabulary was used in incorrect forms that ended up making the sentences puzzling. Personally, the rationale left us questioning.

Moving on to your introduction of the MOE Al Warda Curriculum. It was sufficient and accurate. The history of the establishment of this curriculum was mentioned in sufficient detail and manners. I respected the fact that you mentioned how teachers used to struggle in the past with the restricted curriculum and the reasons for that. The curriculum's three key components were mentioned which adds more depth into the explanation of how this curriculum works. Well done.

For your international curriculum, you have chosen the US curriculum. You have explained briefly what the curriculum is and what it focuses on. The overview was very simple and short yet I think it explained everything it needed to explain. Some examples could have been added about the "real-world applications" mentioned in the overview. You have made a mention of inquiry learning, a brief explanation of what inquiry learning is would have been great to add. Overall, the overview was simple and covered the main points.

Your overview of the MOE Al Warda curriculum was lacking the mention of what it focuses on and what are the subjects that are focused on in the curriculum. It lacked the mention of the types of themes and how it relates to the children. You mentioned "The main six steps to create a comprehensive management development curriculum" but you did not mention what are the six steps and why are they important. Both the Al Warda curriculum and the US curriculum lacked some aspects that should have been mentioned to make it more coherent. There was no attachment of the unit overview of the curriculum for both curricula which would have made the readers understand where the comparison is coming from.

The comparison of the 11 elements of curricula for both curriculums was clear and recognizable. Each element was discussed fairly in both curriculums. However, when it came to discussing the similarities and differences between both curriculums, it was very vague. The comparison could have had more details than what was given.

The critical gaps found in the MOE Al Warda curriculum were explained well enough for readers to understand the points made. Yet, in the suggestions for improvements part, there was a lack of suggestions. You have mentioned "improve the curriculum by using different types of evaluation" yet did not mention any examples of the different types of evaluation strategies that could be used.

Overall, in our opinion, the assignment had enough details to meet the requirements and I hope you won't take our comments on it to heart and take it as a friendly way of helping you improve for future assessments <3