Didactic Planning: What It Is And How It Is Developed In Education
In every academic year it is essential that the teacher thinks, before classes begin, what the course will be like. He must think about the objectives to be achieved, the strategies and contents to be taught, the evaluation method, among other aspects.
All this is taken into account during didactic planning, the process in which the teaching program is developed and how the course will progress is predicted, more or less accurately. Below we will see in more depth what it is and how it is made.
Didactic planning, or teaching programming, is the process in which The teacher makes a series of decisions regarding the educational content that he or she has to teach, transforming them into concrete activities and specific, in order to establish knowledge among their students.
During didactic planning, a program is prepared in which it is intended to incorporate all the knowledge that we want to look at. The objectives, characteristics of the students and the contents that have already been seen in previous training are also taken into account. Based on this, during this process All the activities that will be seen throughout the course are described clearly and specifically in addition to indicating what strategies will be followed to achieve the objectives and how progress will be evaluated.
Although these programs are intended to be applied in their original and total form throughout the academic year, they are not closed programs. That is to say, Depending on how the course goes, new content can be incorporated throughout it This is because things can happen that change the context and the particular reality, aspects that cannot be ignored.
Key Features
Teaching plans must meet a few fundamental characteristics so that they can be effective, adaptable to how learning develops throughout the academic year and useful for both teachers and their students.
The first of these resources is that They must be in writing, whether on paper or in digital format The document will contain the strategies and objectives to be achieved in a structured way, detailing everything that is necessary and making it as clear and concise as possible. These strategies should not ignore the training framework of the institution with which we work, that is, what standard content the center wants the students to assimilate.
These objectives and strategies cannot be decided individually. The teacher must go to other teachers who have taught the same subject in other courses, to ask them how they have approached a certain content or what strategy they used at that time and how it went. They will also be asked if they consider it appropriate to teach such content, or if they consider that there are other better alternatives.
Didactic planning must be flexible, given that throughout the course events may occur that require changing part of the syllabus, or shortening the duration of the topics and advancing exams. Likewise, the proposed program must be realistic in both objectives and strategies, and its application must be conceived as something viable.
Fundamental parts
The didactic planning seeks to answer several questions regarding how students will learn Among these questions we have:
Based on all this, in any didactic planning there must be the following well-specified elements:
1. Objectives and contents
The objectives are the achievements that have been planned to be achieved at the end of the educational process. In other words, what you want that students have learned through teaching and learning experiences which were previously planned.
These objectives must be well stated in the written program, written in the infinitive and be as specific and concrete as possible. For example, if we are writing the teaching plan for the second year of high school biology subject, an example of an objective of the teaching plan would be:
“Learn the functioning of cells, the organelles that compose them and their functions, extending this knowledge to learning the phases of the mitotic and meiotic processes.”
The contents are the set of concepts, procedures, skills, abilities and attitudes that will serve to achieve the proposed objectives. An example of content related to the previous objective would be “Cellular function and reproduction.”
2. Tasks and activities
Didactic activities are the practical part of the academic year. They are those actions that are planned in order for students to assimilate the knowledge taught in the classroom
3. Learning evaluation
Finally we have the learning evaluation. It’s fundamental design evaluation tools to measure the extent to which students have managed to assimilate knowledge that they have seen in class. It must describe what is going to be evaluated, how it is going to be evaluated and at what time.
However, the application of the evaluation not only aims to determine which students have learned and those who have not, but also to measure whether the program developed and applied so far has really been of any use.
Taking into account the elements that all didactic planning must have, we now move on to the essential steps to be able to develop it properly.
1. Establish the contents to be taught
This is the first point from which you should start in didactic planning. Establish the contents to be taught conscientiously It is the way to ensure that materials capable of informing students will be provided in addition to preparing them so that they can make their own decisions or be more independent in future courses.
These contents will follow three phases. In the first, learning will focus on concepts and theories, that is, conceptually. Subsequently, will be oriented towards learning in the form of knowing how to do Finally, emphasis will be placed on ensuring that students know how to learn to be.
To understand it better, we will consider the case of the fourth-grade mathematics subject, where we want to teach trigonometry:
The first point to start with will be conceptual, that is, defining what trigonometry is, what the concepts of sine, cosine and tangent are and their mathematical formulas. Once this part has been seen, we will move on to the procedural part, making the students solve mathematical problems in which trigonometric rules have to be used.
Finally, whether in the exam or in subsequent mathematics courses, having assimilated these trigonometric rules, students will be able to use them in all types of arithmetic problems in which they have to calculate, for example, heights based on the degree of inclination of the shadow cast by the object.
2. Investigate the needs of the students
Deciding what content is going to be taught does not make much sense if the needs of the students are not taken into account. It is possible that these same students have previously had problems learning knowledge that we assume they should already have well assimilated. If the previous is not known, it is difficult for them to learn the new correctly.
It is for this reason that it is very necessary for the teacher to investigate what he considers appropriate to teach the students, about what is really worth acquiring. It is not only enough to know what they have given and what they have not given in previous years, in addition to knowing if there is knowledge from previous years that should be reviewed.
You must also know the desires of the students, what they would like to learn what goals do they have in life if they are very advanced courses, such as the end of secondary education or higher education.
For example, if we are English teachers in a place with a lot of tourism and we know that a large part of our students want to dedicate themselves to this sector, it will be essential to incorporate an English topic into the syllabus with phrases and vocabulary related to the world of hospitality, bars, shops…
3. Define goals and final objective of the classes
The goals and final objective of the classes will be established. It is very important to take into account the time in which it is believed that they will be achieved and, as the didactic planning is carried out, see if it is in tune with them.
4. Make it flexible
It will not always be possible to comply with the didactic planning, given that all types of unforeseen events can occur during the course of the course. It is for this reason that It is very important that the methodology is prepared for alterations the ideal being to leave spaces between content and content to be able to include new content if necessary, or reformulate objectives and goals.
It may also be necessary to make changes because the students request it To the extent that their criticisms are fair and founded, the teacher must be prepared to be able to incorporate changes in the program, appropriate to these demands and that do not represent too exaggerated a departure from the initial objectives.
To give an example, surely, in the biology subjects of all institutes, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced part of the syllabus to change, basically for two reasons. The first, since it is a virus of such importance, the opportunity to explain it in the classroom cannot be missed, raising students’ awareness of the risks it implies for health. The second has to do with the fact that we have had to move from face-to-face classes to online, something that implies having to change the evaluation methodology.
5. The evaluation
There are different ways in which students can be evaluated, all of them depending on the subject being taught or the content that has been viewed. During the didactic planning, and in a provisional manner, the evaluation dates will be established, whether they are exams or deliveries of important work, or also alternative activities depending on the situation.
