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The Curriculum and the Study of the Curriculumwe see statements of the curriculum for the teaching of the most basic coursesin many different contexts. And we shall also see that much of the advice whichhas been offered for curriculum planning is effective only at the most simplisticlevels, for teaching of a largely unsphisticated and usually unproblematickind.For this kind of definition fails to take account of the educational or moraldimensions of the school curriculum. To take an extreme view, this kind ofmodel could be used to help us plan a curriculum which most people wouldregard as being quite immoral – to limit the pupil’s scope for criticism, forexample, to ensure political conformity and obedience or even to promoteracist or religious intolerance.Throughout this book, however, the concern will be with what we will beadvocating as the educational curriculum. The focus will be not just on howone might plan any kind of curriculum, but on what it is that will ensure thatour curriculum is justifiable in educational terms.It is important, therefore, that at the outset we briefly define what we willmean by the term ‘educational’, because in all the many different dimensions ofthe curriculum which we will be exploring the concern will be to identify thosewhich are acceptable educationally, i.e. those which satisfy our educational criteria,and, perhaps more importantly, those which do not.It is not the intention here, or at any stage, to debate these criteria in detail.It is important, however, that they be clearly stated. There is a sense in whichthe adjective ‘educational’ is as problematic as the adjective ‘moral’; indeed,this is because the educational principles we are propounding are fundamentallymoral principles, so that it must be accepted that they must be open todebate. There is also a sense, however, in which, if we accept that the curriculumwe are discussing is a curriculum for education in a democratic society, itsproblematic nature, along with that of its moral base, begins to evaporate or atleast to become less complex.For few would wish to argue – at least openly – with the claim that, within ademocratic society, an educational curriculum at all levels should be concernedto provide a liberating experience by focusing on such things as the promotionof freedom and independence of thought, of social and political empowerment,of respect for the freedom of others, of an acceptance of variety of opinion, andof the enrichment of the life of every individual in that society, regardless ofclass, race or creed.Conversely, it is also the case that few would be prepared to argue – again atleast openly – against the claim that the opposites of these principles have noplace in an educational curriculum. Some of them, such as, for example, thepromotion of intolerance, must be positively excluded from it. Others,however, such as that vocational focus which has become increasingly in evidencein recent years, while not meriting exclusion from the curriculum, mustbe recognized as not fitting appropriately with this definition of education, so3
The Curriculumthat, to the extent that the emphasis of the school curriculum is on its vocationalconcerns and dimensions, to that extent it will fail to meet our criteriafor an educational curriculum.The rest of this book will be concerned to discuss and explore many dimensionsof curriculum from this kind of educational perspective and to identify inall of these dimensions those aspects of them which satisfy these educationalprinciples and those which do not.With this in mind, there are several important aspects of the curriculumwhich we should immediately note.The total curriculumIt will be helpful if, from the start, we distinguish the use of the word to denotethe content of a particular subject or area of study from the use of it to refer tothe total programme of an educational institution. Many people still equate acurriculum with a syllabus and thus limit their planning to a consideration ofthe content or the body of knowledge they wish to transmit or a list of the subjectsto be taught or both. The inadequacies of this view of curriculum ascontent will be explored more fully in Chapters 2 and 3. It will be immediatelyclear, however, that this kind of definition of curriculum is limiting in morethan one way and that it is likely to hamper rather than to assist the planningof curriculum change and development. Indeed, some of the inadequacies ofprevious attempts at curriculum planning can be attributed to the fact that ithas tended to proceed in a rather piecemeal way within subjects rather thanaccording to any overall rationale.This dimension of curriculum development is, of course, important, but it is therationale of the total curriculum that must have priority. ‘Schools should plan theircurriculum as a whole. The curriculum offered by a school, and the curriculumreceived by individual pupils, should not be simply a collection of separate subjects’(DES, 1981:12). At the very least, the total curriculum must be accordedprior consideration, and a major task that currently faces teachers and curriculumplanners is to work out a basis on which some total scheme can be built.Any definition of curriculum, if it is to be practically effective and productive,must offer much more than a statement about the knowledge-content ormerely the subjects which schooling is to ‘teach’ or transmit or ‘deliver’. It mustgo far beyond this to an explanation, and indeed a justification, of the purposesof such transmission and an exploration of the effects that exposure to suchknowledge and such subjects is likely to have, or is intended to have, on itsrecipients – indeed it is from these deeper concerns, as we saw in the previoussection, that any curriculum planning worthy of the name must start.These wider concerns will be the focus of our discussions in this book, andwe will understand by the term ‘curriculum’ the overall rationale for any educationalprogramme. Much of what is said about curriculum development will,4
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The CurriculumHowever, it is clear
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It is because of this fundamental i
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The Curriculumonly in the United St
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The Curriculumlum planning is that
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The Curriculumthe use of this model
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The CurriculumIt is easy to see why
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The Curriculumcurriculum planners w
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The Curriculumfor their own sake, a
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The CurriculumOne major reason, the
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The Curriculumbe broken down into
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objectives, and even, perhaps espec
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4Curriculum as Process and Developm
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the basic principles of democratic
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The first of these, the rejection o
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The Curriculumprinciples inherent i
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Education as developmentIt is worth
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The Curriculumsupports this kind of
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The Curriculummodel of curriculum r
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What the developmental model offers
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The Curriculumwhich we discussed in
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The CurriculumThere are aspects of
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God-given status of certain kinds o
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The Curriculumpractice, it is impor
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Key issues raised by this chapter1
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The CurriculumFirst of all we will
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The Curriculummain significance of
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The CurriculumTake-Up Project (Scho
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The Curriculumrelated sources. Firs
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The Curriculumthat this is not a mo
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The Curriculumand for providing the
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The Curriculumopposition and hostil
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extending and otherwise reordering
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The Curriculumwhich arose, then, wa
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The CurriculumThese were among the
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The Curriculumabout the major chang
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The CurriculumChapter 8 that a nati
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6Assessment, Evaluation, Appraisal
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The Curriculumous assessment forms
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The CurriculumThe realities of Nati
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The Curriculumargued (Nuttall, 1989
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The Curriculumlinked to a curricula
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Testing and curriculum controlFinal
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The Curriculumproduces. And so diff
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The Curriculuming (Stenhouse, 1975)
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The Curriculumbut which nevertheles
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The Curriculumuation procedures see
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The CurriculumThis clearly leads us
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The Curriculumthe innovation, not m
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The Curriculuminto play after someo
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The CurriculumThe intrinsic, democr
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The Curriculumwe must note here the
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The Curriculumpolitically grounded
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The Curriculumprofessional judgemen
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of educational research, have becom
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The CurriculumDirect and indirect p
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that of increased political control
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The Curriculumof subjects (humaniti
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The Curriculumintellectual impoveri
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The CurriculumIn short, one can det
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The Curriculumclearly defined, ‘t
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The Curriculumdirected towards what
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The Curriculumprovision, and the 19
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The CurriculumImpact on the trainin
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The Curriculumhalf the members of s
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The Curriculumtraditonal moral valu
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context, it is clearly not appropri
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The Curriculumthe pursuit of profit
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The Curriculumchanges or can be cha
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The Curriculumthe what of the curri
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8A Democratic and Educational Natio
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The CurriculumKingdom was an except
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The Curriculumapproach such as this
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The Curriculumthe inclusion of thos
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The Curriculumof the piecemeal appr
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The Curriculumchapters, but the maj
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of Education, 1931) and reinforced
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The Curriculumas ‘one of the soci
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The Curriculumforward the approach
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The CurriculumAgain, therefore, we
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The CurriculumThe implications of t
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The Curriculumbut every attempt mus
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The Curriculumimplemented in such a
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The Curriculumcontent but on common
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The Curriculumtion must be planned
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A Chronology of Curriculum Developm
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1965 Circular 10/65 requires all lo
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BibliographyAlexander, R.J. (1984)
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The CurriculumPhiladelphia: Open Un
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The CurriculumFoot, P. (1999) ‘Th
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The CurriculumJames, C.M. (1968) Yo
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The Curriculumstudy’. PhD thesis,
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The CurriculumSimon, B. (1985) Does
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The CurriculumGoverment reports and
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Author IndexAdelman, C., 118, 120,
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The Curriculum165, 167, 171, 175, 1
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Subject Indexability, 22, 196, 206a
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The Curriculumconditioning, 47Confe
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The CurriculumEducation Act (1944),
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The Curriculum172, 180-181see also
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The Curriculumpsycho-motor, 57see a
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The Curriculumscientific approaches
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