| dc.description.abstract | This study is about curriculum development in higher education. Previous studies have shown that curriculum development today is exposed to different pressures to respond to demands in labour markets and in society at large. Less is known about how faculty members engage in curriculum development and how their ways of engaging are related to their understandings of curriculum, and their teaching and research experiences. This research investigates how curriculum is understood in history as a discipline and how the faculty members engage themselves in its development. It also seeks answer of how faculty members understandings of curriculum, and their teaching and research experience influence their curriculum development work. History is an interesting discipline in this regard because there are debates in history about chronological and thematic organization of content; political history vs. social, economic history; local history vs. world history; and inclusion of new fields in history, i. e., gender history, environmental history etc. Moreover, history curriculum is likely to change according to the changes happen in the state and society. This research adopts a case study design. The case in focus is the Department of History in the University of Dhaka (DHDU), Bangladesh. The data is mainly derived from open-ended interviews of the faculty members at DHDU. Six faculty members were interviewed considering their expertise in three periodic lines – ancient history, medieval history and modern history. An interview guide was prepared to address the concepts used in the analytical framework based on insights and questions developed through the literature review. Interview data is supplemented by the documents and online resources. Data were analyzed thematically. The findings of this study show that the faculty members in this history department mainly understand curriculum as syllabus. Thus, the curriculum development in history is centered to the content of the curriculum. It also seems to be a barrier for developing curriculum as an Academic Plan that includes purposes, content, sequence, learners, instructional resources, instructional processes, evaluation and adjustment. This study also reveals that in a university with an autonomous status, faculty members understandings of curriculum and experiences significantly influence the ways of their curriculum development work. The study underlines the importance of stimulating wider and varied pedagogical experiences among faculty members to support fruitful curriculum development for future. | eng |