Curriculum Development
The Increase Association offers TEE and other church-based training organisations help to develop a curriculum that works for the needs of their students in their context. We also work alongside accreditation agencies like ATA to help with accrediting TEE courses. The resources on this page are here to help you think through some issues. Increase Equippers can offer tailored help to members.
Curriculum development
When planning a holistic, integrated curriculum consider your students as ‘whole people in community’. Every student has:
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head (knowing and thinking)
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heart (being and feeling)
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hands (doing)
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and is in community (relating).
Some courses focus only on knowing and thinking and have limited transformational impact. Being, doing and relating are so vital for whole-life discipleship, including preparation for ministry.
Patricia Harrison presents a basic model for curriculum design. Patricia has been closely involved with the TEE movement since the 1970s and speaks from enormous experience.
Adapting an Existing Curriculum
Most of us already have a curriculum of one kind or another, so we are not starting from the beginning. And most curricula need updating or revision as situations change, so this talk is especially relevant for most programs!
We will use our Interactive Linear Model of Curriculum Design again here. It is really a cycle, which allows us to evaluate our programs and update or improve them from time to time as needed.
The Hidden Curriculum
Students are learning from all the experiences they have in any college, school, or TEE program. The context and the structures of our program convey their own messages, alongside the official curriculum. We always have both an explicit and an implicit curriculum. The question is whether we are aware of our implicit, or ‘hidden’ curriculum, and whether this supports or undermines our explicit curriculum.
The importance of Contextualization
Freda Carey is one of the Increase Equippers and works with the Open Theological Seminary, which runs TEE programs in Pakistan. She talks about the importance of contextualizing the curriculum to make it relevant for the local context people live and work in. She gives practical tips for understanding all aspects of the context.