Didactic planning: what it is and how it is developed in education

In every academic year, it is essential that the teacher think, before classes begin, how the course will be. You should think about the objectives to be achieved, the strategies and content to be taught, the evaluation method, among other aspects.

All of this is taken into account during didactic planning, the process in which the teaching program is developed and it is predicted, more or less accurately, how the course will progress. Next we will see more in depth what it is and how it is made.

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What is didactic planning?

Didactic planning, or teaching programming, is the process in which the teacher makes a series of decisions regarding the educational content that he has to teach, transforming them into specific activities and specific, in order to establish knowledge among their students.

During the didactic planning, a program is developed in which it is intended to incorporate all the knowledge that you want to look at. The objectives, the 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 clearly and specifically described, 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. Namely, Depending on how the course is progressing, 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 missed.

Key features

Didactic plans must meet a few fundamental characteristics in order to be effective, adaptable to how learning develops throughout the academic year and useful for both teachers and their student body.

The first of these resources is that must be in writing, whether on paper or digitally. In the document, the strategies and objectives to be achieved will be placed 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 they work, that is, what standard contents the center wants the students to assimilate.

These goals 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 was them. They will also be asked if they consider the teaching of such content appropriate, 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 shorten the duration of the topics and advance exams. Likewise, the proposed program must be realistic in both objectives and strategies, and its application must be conceived as something viable.

Fundamental parts

Didactic planning seeks to answer various questions regarding how students will learn. Among these questions we have:

• What skills do you want students to acquire?
• What must be done to get them to acquire them?
• How should they be planned? What activities to do?
• How to evaluate if the proposed activities have fulfilled the aims?

Based on all this, in all didactic planning there should be the following well-specified elements:

1. Objectives and contents

The objectives are the achievements that are 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 established in the written program, written in the infinitive and be as specific and concrete as possible. For example, if we are writing the didactic planning of the biology subject of the second year of high school, 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 above objective would be "Cellular Function and Reproduction."

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2. Tasks and activities

The didactic activities are the practical part of the academic year. Are those actions that are planned in order for students to settle the knowledge imparted in the classroom.

3. Learning Assessment

Finally we have the learning assessment. It's fundamental design assessment tools to measure the extent to which students have assimilated knowledge that have been seen in class. It should be described what is going to be evaluated, how it is going to be evaluated and at what moment.

However, the application of the evaluation is not only intended to determine which students have learned and who have not, but also to measure whether the program developed and applied so far has actually served as something.

Steps to develop the didactic planning

Taking into account the elements that all didactic planning must have, now we go on to the essential steps to be able to develop it properly.

1. Establish the content to be taught

This is the first point to start with in didactic planning. Establish the contents to be taught in a conscientious way it is the way to ensure that materials capable of informing the students are given, 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, in a conceptual way. Later, will be oriented to learning in the way of knowing how to do. Finally, emphasis will be placed on making the students know how to learn to be.

To understand it better, we will put the case of the fourth year high school mathematics subject, where we want to teach trigonometry:

The first point to begin with will be the conceptual one, that is, defining what trigonometry is, what the concepts of sine, cosine and tangent are, and their mathematical formulas. Once this part is seen, we will go on to the procedural part, making the students solve mathematical problems in which the trigonometric rules have to be used.

Finally, either in the exam or in later mathematics courses, having assimilated these trigonometric rules, students will be able to use them in all kinds of arithmetic problems in which, for example, heights have to be calculated based on the degree of inclination of the shadow cast by the object.

2. Investigate the needs of the students

Deciding what content to teach does not make much sense if the needs of the students are not taken into account. These same students may have previously had problems learning knowledge that we assume they should already have. well assimilated. If the above 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, as well as knowing if there is knowledge from previous years that should be reviewed.

You must also know the wishes of the students, what they would like to learn, what goals do they have in life if it is about very advanced courses, such as 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 with phrases and vocabulary related to the world of hospitality, bars, stores...

3. Define goals and final objective of the classes

The goals and the 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 he goes through the didactic planning, see if he is in tune with them.

4. Make it flexible

It will not always be possible to comply with the didactic planning, since all kinds 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 alterationsIdeally, leaving spaces between content and content to be able to include new content if necessary, or to reformulate objectives and goals.

It may also be necessary to make changes because the students request it. To the extent that their criticisms are just 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 a too exaggerated departure from the objectives initials.

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, being a virus with such importance, the opportunity to explain it in the classroom cannot be missed, making students aware of the risks that this implies for health. The second has to do with the fact that it has had to go from face-to-face classes to online, something that implies having to change the evaluation methodology.

5. The evaluation

The ways in which students can be evaluated are different, all of them depending on the subject that is being taught or the content that has been seen. During the didactic planning, and provisional mode, the evaluation dates will be established, either exams or deliveries of important work, or alternative activities depending on the situation.

Bibliographic references:

• Alonso Tejada, M. AND. (2009). "Didactic planning". Teacher Training Notebooks 3: 1-10.