Curriculum Design Requirements and Challenges of the Learning Society Approach

Abstract

Entering the twenty-first century with the development of communities, they are faced with the necessity of moving towards a learning society. University must extend the learning opportunities and improve the quality of them with curriculum design by learning society approach to respond to the necessity. Researchers believe that some conditions for success of this curriculum are required. Present article answers to this question: "Which requirements and challenges university faces with to design a curriculum with learning society approach?" To answer it in a qualitative-quantitative research, the viewpoints of 24 higher education experts through interview and comments of 153 faculty members through a questionnaire were evaluated. The content validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by experts and the reliability was estimated by Cronbach's alpha (0.96). Finally, the results showed that the university faces with these challenges: The non-substitution of learning instead of education; Incomplete identification of the real needs of students and society and non-revision the curriculum to suit the changing needs; Poor communication between levels of higher education curriculum and the previous degrees; Centralization in curriculum planning; Lack of flexibility in curriculum; Inadequate use of curriculum experts and disregarding role of faculty and student to develop the curricula. Statistical analysis of survey findings also indicated that there is no significant difference among the viewpoints of faculty members about these challenges, based on the variables of gender, education, academic ranking, type of university and experience in teaching and management (p>0.05).