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© Proceedings of the Ruhuna Quality Assurance Sessions 2021 (RUQAS 2021)
st
21 September 2021

Process of Curriculum Development

The process started with appointing a faculty sub-committee which was later upgraded to the
Curriculum Development Committee (CDC). After reviewing relevant literature and a series of

discussions with stakeholders, the curriculum development committee first formulated a philosophy

for the task of curriculum revision. As such, the faculty had a philosophical background for revising
the curricula: adhering to all the guidelines and directives, addressing the issue of unemployability and

under employability of arts graduates, but not compromising the core of the discipline, the faculty
would revise its syllabi with the aim of producing graduates who would succeed in the current job

market not by merely transforming into "operators'', but by adding values to the world of work with the

core of the humanities and social sciences with which they are deeply enriched.

In other words, the philosophy of the curriculum revision of the faculty was not just to add some
"needs" of the market highlighted by the surveys. On the contrary, while addressing those issues and

adhering to the guidelines and directives, the faculty also wanted to find out and bring forward what
humanities and social sciences demand in the present job market. Furthermore, it also committed not

to compromise the core of the discipline, the spirit that only the humanities and social sciences engulf,

which is essentially needed for the well-being of the society and required immensely for a just
society—the core of human civilization valued beyond the immediate market value.

Philosophy,
Theory &
Application
of
Disciplinary
Knowledge

Values and
Attributes

of a
Graduate
Social
Communicat
ion & Responsibilit

Engagement y & Mindset
Paradigm

Figure 1: Values and attributes of graduates

After sharing this philosophical standpoint with the academic staff of the faculty, the curriculum
development committee developed a model of proportion for curriculum development based on the

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