The Need for Analyzing Culture in Planning Curriculum

Abstract

The need for considering cultural elements in the curriculum has been an important issue in many countries. Even though, there is a will to consider culture in the curriculum, the way.how it should be put into practice is one of the bottlenecks. Obviously, cultural consideration in curriculum requires a theoretical framework. To do so, reviewing curriculum practices and theories/models in relation to a particular culture of a country is very helpful for better undersfunding and action. Hence, the purpose of this article is to review the practices of plar+lmng curriculum particularly in relation to culture and come up with some suggestions and recommendations that take in to account cultural elements in a curriculum. In this study, qualitative study particularly literature review and personal experiences were ' used. The findings indicate that although emphasis is given for culture, there is no systematic way of incorporating it in t~ curriculum. Furthermore, there is a lack of common understanding on the concept of culture and selection criteria among curriculum developers. The main body of this article includes concepts of culture, Curriculum planning, Cultural analysis and practices of this analysis 'to plan curriculum in Ethiopia.