One Model for Curriculum Development.

The Taba Curriculum Development Project at San Francisco State College developed a 1-8 social studies curriculum organized around teaching-learning units. In the process, a curriculum model evolved that organizes and interrelates five major components--objectives, content, learning activities, teaching strategies, and evaluative measures--so that a system of teaching and learning is represented. The model contains a number of innovative aspects. Several problems emerged as a result of the dual process of, on the one hand, basing the social studies curriculum on this model, and, on the other hand, the model evolving as the project staff developed the curriculum. Problems were also encountered in disseminating the model: (1) Getting teachers to understand the interactive relationships within the model, (2) keeping teachers flexible and innovative, (3) keeping resources up-to-date, (4) retraining teachers starting to use the Taba curriculum, (5) maintaining inservice training, (6) developing evaluation techniques to measure student attainment of the curriculum objectives, and (7) realizing that more research is necessary. (HW)