Basic didactic concepts

A curriculum is a didactic document that defines the scope, depth, and sequence of teaching content. It prescribes, usually in tabular form, educational areas, the order in which these areas are taught, and the weekly number of hours allocated to each area. The curriculum serves as a tool for achieving established external educational goals at a specific level of education, representing the path that teachers and students follow to attain these goals. In higher education, the curriculum is referred to as an implementation plan and, unlike a study program, it plans the delivery of teaching in a specific academic year.

An implementation plan, or implementation curriculum with its associated course implementation curricula, is a document according to which a higher education institution organizes teaching for a given academic year. The implementation plan is developed by the higher education institution and establishes a list of compulsory and elective courses, along with the names of the teachers and associates responsible for delivering them in accordance with the study program. It also defines the types of instruction, such as lectures, seminars, exercises, consultations, fieldwork, and knowledge assessment. In addition, the plan specifies the language of instruction and the locations where teaching will take place. Furthermore, the implementation plan determines the mode of delivery—whether face-to-face, online, or hybrid—as well as the start and end dates and the timetable of teaching activities. It also outlines the methods of assessment and the fulfillment of study obligations, exam periods and criteria, a list of required and recommended literature, and other information necessary for the orderly and high-quality delivery of teaching. Based on the implementation curriculum for a specific study program, each course instructor develops their own course implementation curriculum.

Examples of implementation plans from different universities, one detailed for an individual course, and the other with general, shorter information for all undergraduate and graduate studies at a single HEI:

• University of Zadar, Department of Teacher Education, implementation plan of the course Introduction to pedagogy
• University of Zagreb, Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences, implementation plan of full-time university undergraduate and graduate studies for the academic year 2025/2026.

Curriculum

A curriculum is a document that prescribes the scope, depth, and sequence of teaching content in a particular subject. It is broader than a syllabus, as it outlines not only the topics to be covered but also the extent, depth, and order in which they are presented and taught.

The internal objectives of a course are derived from the established external educational objectives for a specific qualification level. In accordance with these internal objectives, course content is derived from a defined occupational standard. Together, they determine what knowledge, skills, and competences students are expected to acquire and what they should be able to do by the end of the course.

Poljak emphasizes that subjects within a curriculum follow a specific order during schooling. In primary and secondary education, this order is organized by grade level, while in higher education it is organized by years of study.

The arrangement of subjects may be successive, simultaneous and combined. 
A successive arrangement means that subjects are studied gradually, one after another, in a fixed sequence. In this model, one subject is completed before moving on to the next. This arrangement has both advantages and disadvantages. Its advantage lies in the fact that learners can focus on a single subject at a time, which simplifies the organization of teaching. However, its disadvantage is that a subject must be studied with full intensity over a certain period, which can be demanding for students. In addition, scientific fields are interconnected, and a better understanding often requires studying concepts and knowledge from the perspectives of multiple subjects. A strictly successive arrangement does not allow for such interdisciplinary perspectives. In contrast, a simultaneous arrangement involves studying several subjects at the same time. This approach reduces some of the disadvantages of the successive arrangement, which is its main advantage. However, it also presents challenges, as it can be difficult to maintain the same level of concentration and engagement across multiple subjects. For this reason, a combined arrangement seeks to integrate the strengths of both approaches while minimizing their weaknesses and is therefore considered the most effective option.