Date of Graduation

2001

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between Saudi teachers' curriculum perspectives and their preference of curriculum development models. The sample of the study consisted of science, math, and social studies teachers who taught in elementary, middle, and secondary schools in the Riyadh District of Saudi Arabia. The data were randomly collected from 423 teachers by utilizing a questionnaire. The questionnaire was composed of three parts. The participants were asked to determine their preference of the three curriculum perspectives and the three curriculum development models that were based on: Essentialism-Behaviorism, Pragmatism-Cognitivism, and Existentialism-Humanism. Frequencies, percentages, and means were computed to describe the demographic characteristics and to locate the sample's position in each curriculum perspective and in each curriculum development model. A One-Way (ANOVA) was utilized to calculate the difference among subsets of the sample. A linear regression was utilized to compute the weight of the relationship between each curriculum perspective and curriculum development model that were based on the same philosophy and psychology. For the open-ended question, responses were coded and grouped according to similar themes. The result showed that the participants were often inconsistent with themselves in regard to the curriculum perspectives. There were significant differences among teachers regarding their positions in the three curriculum perspectives when compared according to their academic specialization. There were no significant differences among teachers when compared according to their teaching levels or their years of experience. Also, the study displayed that the majority of respondents preferred respectively the curriculum development models that were based on Essentialism-Behaviorism, Pragmatism-Cognitivism, and Existentialism-Humanism. There were significant differences among teachers regarding their preferences of curriculum development models when compared according to their academic specialization, teaching level, or years of experience. Finally, the findings revealed that there were no correlations between types of curriculum perspectives and curriculum development models as rated by the groups. However, a few groups showed a consistency between curriculum perspective and curriculum development models. The study concludes with implications and recommendations for future research and practice.

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