Question Matrix for Instructional Design

This is a Question Matrix I created to help to explore the curriculum based on important questions we need to be asking ourselves when designing our programs. It was inspired by the work of Dillon (2009). It is very big and complicated – perhaps quite impractical – but it is also very organized and comprehensive. A cumbersome, yet reflective tool to use while planning and designing your curriculum.

The same questions are along each axis, but interconnect in different ways:

Teacher – who?

Student – Who?

Subject – What?

Milieu – Where and When? 

Goal – Why? What is the point?

Activity – How?

Result – When? 

Please find a printable version here: Question Matrix

Deborah McCallum

c 2016

Reference:

Dillon, J. T. (2009). The questions of curriculum. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 41(3), 343-359. doi:10.1080/00220270802433261
What are the basic things that compose curriculum, and what are the questions that may be posed about these things? Joseph Schwab’s conception of curriculum is used to introduce a scheme of questions concerning the nature, elements, and practice of curriculum. Formulations of questions by other curriculum theorists are reviewed and analysed in light of this scheme, and the various uses of such questions are described. How far the questions prove to enhance thinking and acting in the domain of curriculum is the ultimate criterion of the usefulness of the questions. The answer to this final test question, as to the others, is to be found in the circumstances of practice