Revising Curriculum Development

Disengaged Year 9 Program

Year 9 has been placed as an influential year for the young individuals in schools. It is apparent that most of the young individuals become underachieving and disengaged in the middle years of education. It is in the Year 9 that students are regarded as having varied learning needs. According to the recent record of schooling, young individuals have been conceived as experimenting, deficient, deviant, disobedient, and under the pressure of hormone-affected feelings. This brings about the tribulations of underachievement and engagement to be accredited to the shortages and health problems of individuals, neighbors and families. This is the year that is extensively considered as a problem, a time during which young individuals disengage from school as well as when the identity of the curriculum and student frequently fail to fit together (Smylie, 1995)

It is clear that students are well into the stage of adolescence by the time they reach Year 9 and are attaining freedom from both parents and teachers while building up more accommodating interactions with the fellow peers. Most of the students in Year 9 possess similar characteristics as those students in the previous years and the years after Year 9 in school. Year 9 generally represents a stage in early adolescence in which students get in and move through over a number of years. Indubitably, the recognition of middle years like a separate stage in schooling originated from interests that arrangements of schooling did not give adequate consideration to the requirements of young adolescents (Mohnsen, 1997).

Moreover, as students make advancement through education, their levels of interest, motivation, and aptitude become more varied. Nevertheless, it is usually not until Year 9 that disengaged or fraught students realize that their thoughts and abilities can not meet expectations altogether. Still they are engaging in a program that can expose them to a full assortment of curriculum while becoming ever more conscious about their social and academic inadequacies and strengths as well as their individual wishes and disapprovals. It is during this phase that most of the students understand a mid-school predicament and start seeking ways to get out of it (Knepper, 2007).

Students react positively to that curriculum which is significant in their lives, both inside and outside the classroom, and this kind of curriculum is referred to as an authentic curriculum. Students take into consideration those opportunities by which they discover new ideas in detail and by doing so in situations of co-operative learning whereby they feel unafraid and are capable of taking scholarly risks. They associate well with those teachers whose mode of teaching is focused on a healthy acquaintance of students and their expectations and needs. On the other hand, students do not react well to that curriculum which is competitive and that does not provide for their collection of interests, futures and skills. They as well do not respond positively to those situations of learning in which their life experiences and views are disregarded, where chances to decide on how and what they learn as well as the manner in which their learning is evaluated are denied (Mohnsen, 1997).

The following are literature reviews regarding the problems faced in the Year 9 Program as well as the strategies involved in reforming this school curriculum program.

In the research article by Knepper (2007), the following factors are suggested to contribute to adolescent students' disengagement and disenchantment with schooling:

Lack of purpose  

Most of students in both primary school and Years 7 and 8 are more ready to give attention to authority figures for example parents and teachers. As a result, even when students are unaware about the reason to why they engage with the school work, most of them will just do it for the reason that they are ordered to do it. However, during Year 9, a big fraction of students establish rebelling or disregarding authority figures.

In Years 7-10, students are anticipated to show an excellent concentration in a broad assortment of subjects. It is consequently comprehensible that in most of the subjects, student attention will not correspond to the teacher level of attention.

For the duration of the middle years of schooling, various subjects like mathematics are characteristically administered as skills with no provision of a context, whereas other disciplines like history are usually administered as content with no provision of transferable skills. Because of this the subject must be seen as not meaningful and appropriate.

It is during the middle years that most students become extremely conscious regarding to what they don't know and this is when most students perform poorly in terms of class work. Students belonging to the middle years are very susceptible socially and instead of demonstrating that they have no capability they make sure that they are not just by making no attempt, being troublesome and mocking those who are careful.

It is apparent that young adolescents do not show up eagerness to being inactive receivers of the education delivered to them. Trying to forcefully be in charge of their behavior and choices at this particular age is very hard and is of uncertain efficacy as control has an unlucky influence on inspiration.

In the research article by Rudduck, & Flutter (2004), it is suggested that to make sure the needs of young adolescents are met adequately, the middle schools must have to be provided with teachers who are well-informed about and dedicated to young adolescents and must have to assume wide-ranging organization planning and the strategies for administering instructional. It also suggested that the curriculum is supposed to be balanced, incorporate a full investigative program, and that assessment measures should be companionable with the personality of young adolescents.

It was found that to improve the young adolescents schools' education, there is a need to form small communities and use them for learning, instruct on a major academic program, making sure that all students succeed, give power to administrators and teachers to come up with decisions regarding the knowledge of students in the middle grade, recruit those teachers who are proficient at instructing young adolescents in the middle grade schools, progress on the academic performance by encouragement of the fitness and health of young adolescents, involve families in the process of imparting education to the young adolescents, and unite communities with schools.   

It was also concluded that the components of the middle level program should be established around: curriculum that is demanding, investigative, and integrative; diverse learning and teaching approaches; evaluation and assessment that encourage learning; organizational structures that are easy to change; policies and programs that promote health, safety, and wellness; and comprehensive guidance and support services.

Relative to the young adolescents' curriculum it has been concluded that the curriculum should be diverse and unique, apart from being a little more complex than that in preceding years of school or slightly less complex than that in the following secondary years. It has also been recommended that the level to which adolescents show commitment with the curriculum relies on whether they believe they can conform to the educational challenges, distinguish purpose and value in the activities, and experience safety and being cared for. So that to build superior commitment with learning suggestions have been made regarding the need of teachers to: provide students with choices and be in charge of their learning; build up lessons which can be related by students to significant events, experiences, and questions in life that are of importance to them; formation of smaller environments of learning and encouragement of team works; and take action to get rid of bias practices that may be disenfranchising definite student groups.

This paper has given a wide overview of a variety of initiatives that schools are embarking on in order to deal with the particular requirements of Year 9 students. There is a reasonably extensive agreement that Year 9 introduces as a difficulty year for most of the students. In this year students' motivation and self-assurance is frequently destabilized and this is the time when many students start to actually disbelieve the importance of continuing with their education. Nevertheless, this model can be altered and schools are more and more eager to reorganize the manner in which their Year 9 programs are planned as well as the way they should be staffed and the appropriate place of location.