Study of state and problems of school-based curiculum development of science strand at keystage three and four in pilot schools implementing basic education curriculum
Abstract:
To study state and problems of schoolbased curriculum development of science strand at key stage three and four in pilot schools in basic education curriculum implementation. The samples used in this research were 40 responsible persons in developing school-based curriculum and 224 science teachers. The research instruments were questionnaires and interview guideline concerning state and problems of school-based curriculum development of science strand at key stage three and four. The collected data were analyzed by means of arithmetic mean and standard deviation. The research findings were as follows 1. State in developing school-based curriculum : It was found that 72.50% of schools developed science curriculum on both key stages at the same time and finished it within 1-3 months. The feature and structure of the curriculum, at key stage 3, 92.11% of schools designed the curriculum that students had to learn at least 120 hrs per year and 3 hours per week. At key stage 4, 67.50% of schools designed the same structure for students in the emphasis and non-emphasis science learning program, that was students had to register at least 6 credits for the period of 6 semesters. The assignment of the subject content, it was found most schools had the same direction in arranging the content for both key stage 3 and 4 by categorizing 7 science strands into 4 subject groups, group 1 (strand 1, 2), group 2 (strand 3), group 3 (strand 4, 5) and group 4 (strand 6, 7) and strand 8 was integrated into those 4 groups. 71.05% and 78.95% of schools prepared the teachers by sending representative to be trained by the department of academic, Ministry of Education and provided curriculum document for self-study respectively. 42.50% of schools assigned assistant principle on academic to be responsible and to be the ones who distributed the work as well as supervising and monitoring. In writing details of each part of the curriculum, 75.00% of schools did it by referring to the previous curriculum and the new handbook on instruction activity of science strand. 54.29% of schools evaluated the curriculum before implementation by using the check list for checking the completeness of the components and using the assembling among the experts and the science teachers to evaluate the subject content. 2. Problems in developing schoolbased curriculum : The responsible persons appraised that the issues concerning the curriculum document for teachers to study, the training by various organizations, assigning work to teachers, supervising and monitoring and curriculum evaluation before implementation, the working of teachers and time for curriculum development were moderate problems. Meanwhile, science teachers self appraised themselves that their ability in, experience of curriculum development and the depth of curriculum content arrangement were the moderate problems. That was conformed to the opinions of responsible persons in appraising teachers. Concerning the opinion towards the curriculum development, it was found that both responsible persons in curriculum development and science teachers agreed with the responsible of school to develop school-based curriculum, and they were satisfied with curriculum document the schools developed at moderate level. The responsible persons thought that their teachers were ready, had confidence and interest in school-based curriculum development at moderate level. However, science teachers themselves still thought that curriculum development were rather difficult task for them