Curriculum Development and Instructional Design

Curriculum development and instructional design is the systematic process of turning educational aims into a coherent programme of learning. It moves from identifying a problem and the needs of learners, through goals and objectives, to the selection of teaching methods and the alignment of assessment, and finally to implementation and evaluation that feed back into revision.

Definition

Curriculum development is the planned, iterative process of defining educational needs and objectives, selecting and organising learning experiences and assessments to meet them, and evaluating and revising the result; instructional design is the component concerned with structuring the learning experiences themselves.

Scope

This topic covers structured approaches to designing health education and training, including needs assessment, the writing of learning objectives, the alignment of objectives with teaching methods and assessment, and the cyclical evaluation of programmes. It treats curriculum design as a methodological topic and does not prescribe the content of any particular course.

Core questions

• What problem and whose learning needs does the curriculum address?
• How are broad goals translated into specific, assessable objectives?
• How are teaching methods and assessment aligned with those objectives?
• How is the curriculum evaluated and revised over time?

Key concepts

• Needs assessment
• Goals and learning objectives
• Constructive alignment
• Educational strategies and content selection
• Implementation and resources
• Programme evaluation and revision
• Outcomes- and competency-based design

Key theories

Tyler rationale

A classic curriculum framework organised around four questions - what purposes to pursue, what experiences attain them, how to organise those experiences, and how to evaluate attainment - which still underlies many structured design models.

Kern six-step approach

A widely used model for curriculum development in the health professions comprising problem identification, targeted needs assessment, goals and objectives, educational strategies, implementation, and evaluation and feedback as a continuous cycle.

Mechanisms

Structured models translate aims into programmes through ordered steps. Kern's six-step approach (Thomas et al., 2016) begins with problem identification and a targeted needs assessment of learners, then derives goals and measurable objectives, selects educational strategies matched to those objectives, plans implementation with attention to resources and barriers, and closes the loop with evaluation and feedback. This ordering operationalises the older Tyler rationale (Tyler, 1949) and the principle of constructive alignment, in which objectives, teaching methods, and assessment are deliberately made consistent so that what is assessed is what was intended to be learned.

Clinical relevance

The design of curricula determines what health educators and professionals are prepared to do, so understanding curriculum-development models helps in appraising and improving training programmes. It describes how educational programmes are constructed and evaluated and is not guidance for individual clinical care.

Evidence & guidelines

Curriculum-design practice in the health professions is anchored in structured models such as Kern's six-step approach (Thomas et al., 2016) and in outcomes- or competency-based frameworks such as CanMEDS (Frank & Danoff, 2007). Educational theory informs the choice of strategies and the alignment of assessment with objectives (Kaufman, 2003). Much of the evidence base is descriptive and theory-informed rather than experimental.

History

Modern curriculum theory is often traced to Ralph Tyler's 1949 articulation of four guiding questions, which framed curriculum as a purposeful, evaluable design problem. In the health professions this evolved into structured, cyclical models - notably Kern's six-step approach - and, from the late twentieth century, toward outcomes- and competency-based education exemplified by frameworks such as CanMEDS.

Key figures

• Ralph Tyler
• David Kern
• Patricia Thomas
• Jack Frank

Seminal works

• tyler-1949
• kern-2016
• frank-2007

Frequently asked questions

What is constructive alignment?

It is the principle that learning objectives, teaching and learning activities, and assessment should all be deliberately matched, so that the assessment measures exactly the outcomes the curriculum set out to achieve.

Why is curriculum development described as a cycle?

Because evaluation feeds back into revision: programmes are implemented, evaluated against their objectives, and then refined, so design is continuous rather than a one-time event.