Importance of Curriculum Relevance

Today more than ever, it is important for teachers to present a curriculum that is relevant to the students. Not only is relevance vital, context also has to be taken into account during the development of a lesson. This coupled with the understanding of the knowledge, skills and competencies that students need to master in order to move to the next level in their studies make lesson planning more challenging every day. Toss into the mix the idea that students want contextually relevant curriculum, but they want it presented in an interesting and stimulating way. 

Though we can blame social media for this challenge, I believe the challenge has always been there. As society has developed, lesson design has had to evolve. The teacher that is still presenting a lesson with which they used 25 years ago when they started teaching, is not being effective. The content, the delivery, and the method probably is all wrong. That would signify to a supervising administrator or mentor teacher that lessons need to be reworked.

The process for doing this is to begin with a learning goal. Clearly, an outcome must be determined. Once developed, relevant and appropriate learning activities can be added that are based on the skills, knowledge, and competencies that are outlined in the goal. As planning continues, the end result should be a formative assessment that will enable the student and teacher to reflect meaningfully on whether or not the learning goal was achieved. This becomes the ongoing process of developing curriculum that is contextually relevant. 

Until next time...