MOT

Evaluation of Lower Secondary CS Curriculum materials in year 9

This assignment is about the comparison and evaluation between Brunei’s and U.K. secondary computer studies curriculum, its aim and its structure. The information of U.K. curriculum was extracted from a http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/ or more detailed from http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/schemes2/secondary_ICT/teaching?view=get

For my part, the scope of the evaluation is limited to year 3 only.

Table 1: The aims and purposes of ICT
Brunei –
Introduce the use of computer, electronic communications and control systems as tools for information management.
Develop through practical experience, the skills of information management; collecting, manipulating and presenting information and decision making.
Provide a resource of knowledge and skills which can be used in other subjects of the Lower Secondary school curriculum as a form of Computer Aided Leaning (CAL).
Develop awareness in student of the impact of Computer Technology in society and some of the issues attributed to Computer Technology.
Appreciate the way and the speed information is transmitted through carious forms of electronics communication.

U.K.
Provide students with some understanding of the basic computing techniques and computer packages which should to some extent facilitate entry to the next level of computer study.
Prepare them for participation in a rapidly changing world where activities are increasingly transformed by access to ICT.
Develop initiative and independent learning skills.
Gain rapid access to ideas and experiences from a wide range of people, communities and cultures.


Table 2: The objectives of ICT in year 3
Brunei
Further their knowledge and ability of organizing information in the form of database.
Develop logical thinking through simple BASIC computer programming
Recognize the differences between the low level and high level languages.
Appreciate the computers’ role in influencing the change in society and the benefits to the people of Brunei Darussalam
The future of computing in Brunei Darussalam.

U.K.
The quality and reliability of information and how to access and combine increasing amounts of information;
A range of increasingly complex tasks using a variety of ICT tools;
How ICT can help their work in other subjects, developing their ability to judge when and how to use ICT and where it has limitations;
The application and use of ICT in the outside world.

Table 3: The curriculum of ICT in year 3
Brunei
Database management systems(DBMS)
Introduction to computer language
Problem solving
Introduction to ‘BASIC’ programming language

U.K.
Control systems
Global communication – negotiating and communication data
System: managing a project

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As can be seen above in Table 1, 2 and 3, the ICT curriculum designed for students by both departments between Brunei and U.K. are very much different for most of the content.

From the first overview from table 1 and table 2, we can see that the curriculum in U.K is somehow more in-depth when compared to the curriculum in Brunei.

In table 1 and 2, in general, the teaching of ICT in Brunei was more into introducing and basically letting students understand the basics and importance of ICT in society. In a sense, curriculum is based more heavily in theory than practical in Brunei. Whereas what they did in U.K. was to apply more practical side of ICT by stimulating real life environment in their ICT course.

Ever since spiral curriculum was proposed, institutions and schools around the world have acknowledged the importance of it and have since applied it onto their curriculum. One thing that’s in common is that both countries have applied the technique of spiral curriculum. I believe that the students in U.K., does get more benefits from spiral curriculum when comparison is done with the curriculum from table 3.

From table 3, the content of ICT being taught is completely different. According to the site, the curriculum in Brunei such as DBMS was briefly introduced in the primary schools in U.K., such as year 3 to year 6, and then concentrated in year 8. For example, in one of their units in U.K. year 9 such as managing a project, they are able to look back to units learnt in year 8 (such as DBMS) and try to apply the theory of managing a project onto older knowledge. Whereas the students in Brunei are just getting started to know DBMS.

The ICT curriculum being taught overseas is of higher level than the curriculum than the ones in Brunei. Why is that the case? What I believe is that the teachers in U.K. definitely have a few major advantages over the teachers in Brunei.
One of the first advantages is the language itself. Since English itself is the first language in U.K., while it is learnt as a second language in Brunei, the students in U.K. can grasp a better concept when they are learning, especially since they are actually also learning it at a very young age such as year 1( primary 1).
I also feel that U.K., as a developed country, has a lot more population that is competent in the uses of computers and technology is more common and readily available in their daily lives. It is also important to note that often it is the family that can nurture a child interest in a particular subject.
Besides that, the last factor I believe that helped is that the environment is much more dynamic, competitive and also has the willingness to constantly changes and improves the curriculum. For example, the government agency for this website was actually revised and set up just 2 years ago. It is important in the case of ICT as new technology are being invented in a fast pace and needed to be updated in a more frequently interval than other courses.
Because the learning of ICT in U.K. is learnt from a young age, the curriculum is much more spread out throughout the schooling life of the children. In doing so, the allocation of a better timeslot was able to be use for the student.
Besides that, I found that curriculum in U.K. has and encourages more activities that relate with ICT in real life.

For Brunei to achieve the standard being displayed from U.K., it is a long process but nevertheless it is achievable. My suggestion is just simply review and adapts some of the good ideas from the education departments around the world. Besides that, good human resources or professionals can also be hired to teach or upgrade the level of teachers/students in Brunei. Most important of all is the attitude to constantly improving the skills or upgrade the technologies to keep Brunei updated to the pace of the world.







Reference:
Spiral curriculum (http://starfsfolk.khi.is/solrunb/jbruner.htm_3.htm)
“In order for a student to develop from simple to more complex lessons, certain prerequisite knowledge and skills must first be mastered. This prerequisite sequencing provides linkages between each lesson as student spirals upwards in a course of a study. As new knowledge and skills are introduced in subsequent lessons, they reinforce what is already learnt and become related to previously learned information. What the student gradually achieves is a rich breadth and depth of information that is not normally developed in curricula where each topic is discrete and disconnected from each other (Dowding, T.J. 1993).”

http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/ or
http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/schemes2/secondary_ICT/teaching?view=get