View of curriculum experts and postgraduate students regarding the quality of students' participation in curriculum development

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the postgraduate students' views regarding their current and desired participation in curriculum development and compare their views with the curriculum experts' opinions. This study is a descriptive-analytical and both qualities and quantitative methods were used/ the population consisted of two groups. The first group consists of all curriculum experts and members of curriculum policy committee in University of Isfahan. The second group consists of postgraduate students at the University of Isfahan and Isfahan University of Technology. For the first group, purposive and network sampling methods were used. Stratified random sampling method was used to select postgraduate students. Tools for data collection was semi structured interview and a researcher made questionnaire. To determine the validity of interview and questionnaire, content validity was used and Cronbach's alpha coefficient was used to estimate the reliability of the questionnaire. Qualitative data was analyzed with qualitative data analysis spiral and quantitative data has analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Findings showed that postgraduate students believe that they do not have majority participation in curriculum development in the current situation and for some of them there is only minimal participation, that is be informed of the decisions taken. In the ideal situation, students are believed to be involved in curriculum development. However, they want the indirect participation by representatives of the students and outstanding graduated and do not want the maximum participation of all students in curriculum development. In the ideal situation, comparing the views of experts and members of Curriculum policy committee at the University of Isfahan with student's views revealed many similarities and non-similarities are few.

Keywords

• University
• participation
• Curriculum development
• Postgraduate Students
• Curriculum experts