Curriculum design: a practical guide for teachers, with a worked unit example
Curriculum design is the deliberate planning of what pupils will learn, in what order, how they will show what they have learned and how teaching will get them there, across a unit, a year or a whole phase of school. It sits above lesson planning: a lesson plan decides what happens on Tuesday, while curriculum design decides why Tuesday’s lesson exists and what it builds on. This guide explains what curriculum design is, why it matters, the main approaches and models, and gives an eight-step method with a worked example for teachers in multilingual international schools.
Table of contents
What is curriculum design?
Most definitions agree that curriculum design covers four connected decisions: the aims, the content and experiences chosen to reach them, how those are organised and sequenced, and how learning will be assessed. Those decisions echo the four questions Ralph Tyler set out in 1949, summarised in a University of Texas at Austin library guide to curriculum design:
- What educational purposes is the school seeking to attain?
- What educational experiences can be provided that are likely to attain these purposes?
- How can these experiences be effectively organised?
- How can we determine whether these purposes are being attained?
Classroom teachers do more curriculum design than the term suggests. Even in schools that follow an external British, American, IB or Indian curriculum, someone has to decide how content is sequenced, which examples are used, where assessment points fall and how pupils revisit earlier learning. That is curriculum design.
Curriculum design, development, instructional design and lesson planning
| Term | Scale | Main question |
|---|---|---|
| Curriculum design | A unit, a year or a phase | What should be learned, in what order, and how will we know? |
| Curriculum development | A whole school or programme, over time | How is the curriculum written, trialled, reviewed and improved? |
| Instructional design | A course, unit or learning resource | How should this learning experience be built so learners reach the outcomes? |
| Lesson planning | One lesson or a short sequence | What exactly will happen in this lesson? |
Why curriculum design matters
- Coherence. Knowledge builds when later lessons depend on earlier ones. Without design, a unit becomes a list of topics that do not connect.
- Sequencing. Some ideas are prerequisites for others. Design puts them in an order pupils can follow.
- Fewer gaps and repeats. Mapping across year groups shows where content is taught twice and where it is never taught at all.
- Alignment. Assessment measures what was intended and taught, not something else.
- Continuity when staff change. In international schools, where teachers often move on after a few years, a well-documented curriculum keeps the thinking behind it when its author leaves.
- Language progression. A designed curriculum can plan how pupils’ academic English develops across a year, not just which topics they meet.
Three approaches to curriculum design
| Approach | Organised around | Strength | Watch out for | Example |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subject-centred | The knowledge and structure of a discipline | Clear progression and depth | Can feel remote from pupils’ lives | A history unit taught in chronological order |
| Learner-centred | Pupils’ interests, needs and choices | Motivation and ownership | Can leave gaps in essential knowledge | An inquiry unit in which pupils choose the question they investigate |
| Problem-centred | Real-world problems | Application and transfer | Needs secure knowledge first | A unit on reducing waste in the school |
Most school curricula combine the three: a subject-centred spine of essential knowledge, problem-centred tasks that apply it, and some pupil choice within those tasks.
Backward design: a practical curriculum design model
One widely used model is backward design, from Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe’s Understanding by Design framework. It has three stages:
- Identify desired results. What should pupils know, understand and be able to do, and what should they be able to transfer to new situations?
- Determine assessment evidence. What will count as evidence that pupils have achieved those results?
- Plan learning experiences and instruction. Only then: which activities, sequence and resources will get them there?
Wiggins and McTighe argue that planning in this order avoids the “twin sins” of activity-oriented and coverage-oriented design: units full of engaging tasks with no clear purpose, and units that march through the textbook without checking what has been understood. Their framework also warns against treating the textbook as the curriculum rather than as a resource.
How to design a curriculum unit: eight steps
- Write the end point first. In one or two sentences, describe what pupils will be able to do at the end of the unit that they cannot do now.
- List the essential knowledge. Separate what every pupil must know from what is interesting but optional. There is always more content than time, so choose.
- Map the prerequisites. For each essential idea, ask what pupils need to know first. The answers decide the order.
- Design the assessment. Plan the end-of-unit task and two or three checkpoints before planning any lessons.
- Plan the language. Identify the subject vocabulary, the general academic words and the kind of talk or writing the unit requires, such as explaining, comparing or arguing. Decide when each will be taught.
- Sequence the lessons. Order lessons so each builds on the last, and mark where earlier content will be revisited.
- Choose examples that fit your pupils. Use contexts familiar to your pupils, including local ones, rather than assuming a British or American background.
- Review with evidence. After teaching, look at checkpoint results and pupil work, and note what to change before the unit is taught again.
Worked example: designing a Year 8 geography unit on water
The following is an illustrative example of the eight steps applied to a six-lesson unit for a Year 8 class in an international school in the Gulf, where pupils have come from several curricula and many use English as an additional language.
End point: pupils can evaluate different ways a city in a dry climate could secure its water supply, and justify a recommendation using evidence.
Essential knowledge: the water cycle; why some regions are short of water; groundwater and aquifers; desalination; water reuse; the idea of trade-offs between environmental, economic and social factors.
Assessment: a final written recommendation of one to two pages, with two checkpoints along the way: a labelled water-cycle diagram in lesson 2 and a comparison table of supply options in lesson 4.
Language: subject words (desalination, aquifer, groundwater, brine), academic words (evaluate, whereas, however) and a sentence frame for justifying a choice: “The most sustainable option is… because… However…”.
| Lesson | Focus | Checkpoint or language focus |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Where does our water come from? The water cycle, starting from pupils’ own water use | Vocabulary: evaporation, condensation, precipitation |
| 2 | Why some places are short of water | Checkpoint: labelled diagram |
| 3 | Groundwater and aquifers | Explaining cause and effect: “…because… so…” |
| 4 | Desalination and water reuse | Checkpoint: comparison table |
| 5 | Weighing trade-offs | Comparing: “whereas”, “however” |
| 6 | Writing the recommendation | Final task, with success criteria and a model paragraph |
Two design choices matter here. The unit starts from a context pupils live in, which makes abstract ideas concrete. And the language is planned alongside the content, so pupils who are new to English are taught how to write the final task, not only what to write about.
Curriculum design tips for teachers in multilingual international schools
- Plan for mid-year arrivals. Pupils join from different systems and may have met topics in a different order, or not at all. A short diagnostic task at the start of each unit shows what they bring.
- Make prerequisites explicit. Do not assume that content taught in a given year group elsewhere was taught in the same year here.
- Write down the reasoning. Record why a unit is sequenced as it is, so a new colleague can teach it as intended.
- Explain the curriculum to families. Parents who went to school in a different system often ask why content is taught in a particular order. A one-page unit overview in plain English helps.
- Use varied contexts. Examples from the region and from pupils’ home countries make content more accessible and more interesting than examples that assume one background.
Common curriculum design mistakes
- Treating the textbook as the curriculum rather than as one resource.
- Planning activities first and adding assessment at the end.
- Covering content once without revisiting it, so it is forgotten by the next year.
- Assuming the language demands of a unit will take care of themselves.
- Designing a unit once and never reviewing it.
Reviewing a curriculum well means reading evidence carefully: pupil work, assessment results and research. Teachers who want to develop that evidence-informed approach can study it in an MA in Education online, which includes a module on evidence-informed practice.
Frequently asked questions
What is curriculum design and development?
Curriculum design is the planning of what pupils will learn, in what order and how learning will be assessed. Curriculum development is the wider, ongoing process of writing, trialling, reviewing and improving a curriculum over time. Design produces the plan; development keeps it working. In most schools the two overlap, and teachers contribute to both through their departments.
What is the purpose of curriculum design?
Its purpose is to make learning coherent: to make sure pupils learn what matters most, in an order that builds understanding, with assessment that checks the intended learning. Good design also reduces gaps and repetition across year groups, supports pupils who are new to the language of instruction, and keeps teaching consistent when staff change.
Can classroom teachers do curriculum design?
Yes, and most already do. Even with a prescribed syllabus, teachers decide the sequence within units, the examples used, the checkpoints and the language support. Designing a single unit well, using backward design, is a practical place to start. Larger decisions, such as whole-school curriculum maps, are usually made collaboratively by departments and school leaders.
How is curriculum design different from instructional design?
Curriculum design decides what should be learned and in what order across a unit, year or programme. Instructional design focuses on how a particular learning experience is built, such as a lesson sequence, an online course or a resource, so that learners reach the intended outcomes. In schools the two are closely linked: instructional choices put a designed curriculum into practice.
Curriculum design is a central focus of the master’s in curriculum and instruction online offered through Taito Education: the Master of Education in Curriculum and Instruction, awarded by Guglielmo Marconi University, Italy. It runs for one year, is studied fully online and includes a module on curriculum, instruction and assessment design.