A Study On Curriculum Organization: From Content To Experience

Curriculum organization is an old problem as well as a new one .It is old because it has been existing since ancient times ;It is new because as time goes on, some new issues of curriculum organization emerges, which takes on a new shape . From the perspective of the ideology of relation my thesis makes a reflection and summing up of the content curriculum and experience curriculum in the past analyses why we should transform the content into learning experience.Curriculum organization can be defined in a broad sense and in a narrow sense . In a narrow sense curriculum organization is the process to change the content into students' learning experiences intentionally , and make learning experiences sequential ,integral, successive after curriculum ideology has been determined, curriculum goal been set, curriculum content been selected. Curriculum organization is a link element in the process of curriculum development.If we make a study of the curriculum historically there were content curriculum and experience curriculum in the light of relation of the child and the curriculum. Content curriculum took the stand of substance mode of thinking which is an objective mode. The relation of the teacher and the knowledge , and the teacher and the child is in the control of the teacher. The teacher passes the content, without any consideration of the students' needs and interests ,which leads to the contradiction of the child and curriculum ,and the child and the teacher. Experience curriculum emerged due to the development of educational psychology as an antithesis in the needs of the time . The sponsors of experience curriculum which considered the child as the center, make the child and the curriculum interact and integrate with the teachers guiding the students. At the beginning of 20th century Dewey changed from substance mode of thinking to relative thinking on the basis of the concept of experience and growing . Starting from the ideology of relation he established a fresh relation between the child and the curriculum .Experience acted as a link between the child and the curriculum, which removed the antagonistic relations between the childand the curriculum, as well as the child and the teacher.The ideology of relation focuses on the integrity, the reliability, the interation of the relation and the idea of functional essence. The nature of the student is learning which is the link between the child and curriculum ; Relation is the condition which the object comes into being . Experience as a relational entity is the media between the child and curriculum and also the condition which the curriculum takes shape; Curriculum as the child's existing mode requires the intimate relation from the child's past, present to his future . Only in the interactive relation can the curriculum takes form . According the ideology of relation the teacher should not pass on the content to the child , rather he should be the guide who arranges learningexperience.How to transform the content into child's learning experience in curriculum development is an essential prolem which is simply solved in chapter four in my thesis . In view of relation the relation of the child and the curriculum can be viewed as the relation between the child and the environment. In curriculum development we can transform the content into the conditions of the environment so as to make the curriclum an integral part of the environment . In one word we must construct the climate of the environment concerning the experienced and experiencing. This is the important way for the child to acquire learning experience.