Two faces of same coin: Curriculum VS Instruction
- Gul Chaudhary
- Oct 27, 2024
- 2 min read
The building of education system is standing on three main pillars including curriculum, instruction and assessment. The term curriculum is defined as the content that should or must be taught to the students while the instruction is the process that will be used to teach that content. In other words, the curriculum deals with “what” component of the learning process, and instruction deals with ‘how’ component of the curriculum.
These two components are so indispensable from each other that their relationship is being considered as intimate, they are two sides of same coin. Content is nothing without its delivery and delivery is nothing without its content.
These are sometimes pronounced as single word “curriculumandinstrcution’, in 2000 Yates coined a morphed term curstruction OR instriculum, to explain integrity of these two terms.
Both of these share a large number of strings, for example both are influenced by social, political and educational objectives. Curriculum decided aims, goals, objectives and standards of education, while instruction will decide how these goals will be achieved.
The curriculum is standard set of content to be taught at certain school level, it is highly structured and there is zero to no role of teacher or student while setting the standards or content. The instruction on the other hand give freedom to teachers and students to some extent based on approach of instruction. These approached range from teacher-centered to student centered.
Though there is a fine boundary between two concepts, but there dependence on each other makes it important to teach these two concepts together. While preparing for my course of Curriculum and Instruction, I found following resources useful. You are welcome to add your point of view after reading.
Happy learning
Comments