TAFE Curriculum Research

📖 The Scoop

The issue of how to react quickly to the educational needs arising from technological change has been deemed a central problem facing Technical and Further Education (TAFE) in Australia. Therefore, a national study examined various curriculum research methods that hold promise for speeding up the curriculum research and development process. The first phase of the study consisted of a description and analysis of group process methods. The following methods were analyzed: the Nominal Group Technique, the Developing a Curriculum Process (DACUM), the critical incident technique, Force Field Analysis, and brainstorming. It was concluded that the Search Conference, Delphi and exploratory methods, and, to a lesser extent, the Nominal Group Technique hold promise for providing data for adapting curriculum to occupational structural change. DACUM, while a promising method of obtaining data in the cognitive domain, may need to be linked to other methods that are more sensitive to change when used as a curriculum research procedure on occupations undergoing structural change. The critical incident technique can be advantageous in curriculum research for short courses, and Force Field Analysis appears best suited for use as an adjunct to other group process methods. In addition to describing the research project and its findings, this report includes several chapters of practical guidelines on using and blending the various group process curriculum research methods. Appendixes include descriptions of some questionnaire methods used and a sample search conference, observational studies, and a DACUM chart. Four pages of references and figures and tables are included. (MN)

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