‘Curriculum refers to the means and materials with which students will interact for the purpose of achieving identified educational outcomes.’
(www.education.com)
A curriculum can vary depending on the type of course you are teaching and the resources that you have to teach with; with what I believe all leads to a similar ending; a qualification for your learners. Through this I am going to analyse my own teaching context with another type.
Context 1
I am currently teaching at East Berkshire College; a further education college. It is a large establishment with two main campuses; one in Windsor and one in Langley offering over 800 part time and full time students with a wide range of …show more content…
I teach at all levels that we offer on the City and Guilds qualification; diplomas in Level 1, 2 and 3. The courses vary in length depending on the level of the course; level 1 and 2 being 1 year and the extended level 3 diploma being 2 years long. Depending on the level of course the number of units and credits that the learner must achieve will vary. I am going to focus on the Level 3 Extended Diploma in Travel and Tourism.
The extended diploma is a 105 credit award and has 949 guided learning hours. The qualification has 2 mandatory units plus a number of optional units to provide a combined total of 105 credits. This allows for us as staff to choose units that are best suited to their experience and knowledge as well as the unit’s best suited to prepare students for employment and the facilities that we have to teach in.
The units can be covered at any time during the 2 year course. We tend to begin with the more basic units in year 1 and build on this in year 2; whereby the units require more depth and knowledge. This is known as the spiral curriculum. In the first year of study learners will begin with more basic customer service units and Worldwide travel related units; this will then lead into year 2 where students focus more the marketing and creation of a travel and tourism organisation and the more technical features such as running an event and air cabin …show more content…
Aside from studying the main travel and tourism programme all our learners attend either functional skills lessons or GCSE Maths and English and also additional subjects such as Aviation on the ground. It is important that the learners feel that they are getting the most out of their college day.
I feel that the course presents a variety of curriculum models and theories in order to run as it does. There is a mixture of theory and practical assignments throughout; therefore some units are much more tutor led where as others are more learner centred. For the extended diploma I would say that there is an aspect of behaviourist, cognitive and humanistic teaching styles; depending on the unit being