• curriculum theory and practice

   

  The  organization of schooling and further education has long been associated with  the idea of a curriculum.  But what actually is curriculum, and how might  it be conceptualized? We explore curriculum theory and practice and its relation  to informal education.
• dispute as to meaning
• It has its origins in the running/chariot tracks of Greece. It was, literally, a  course. In Latin curriculum was a racing chariot; currere was to run
• John Kerr and taken up by Vic Kelly in  his standard work on the subject. Kerr defines curriculum as, 'All the learning  which is planned and guided by the school,
• Learning  is planned and guided.
• The definition refers to schooling.
• 1.   Curriculum  as a body of knowledge to be transmitted.
• 2.   Curriculum  as an attempt to achieve certain ends in students - product.
• 3.   Curriculum  as process.
• 4.  Curriculum as  praxis.
• Many people still equate a curriculum with a syllabus.
• Basically it means a concise statement
• the subjects of a series of  lectures
• What we can  see in such documents is a series of headings with some additional notes which  set out the areas that may be examined. 
• A syllabus will not generally indicate the relative importance of its topics or  the order in which they are to be studied.
• In some cases as Curzon (1985) points  out, those who compile a syllabus tend to follow the traditional textbook  approach of an 'order of contents', or a pattern prescribed by a 'logical'  approach to the subject, or  - consciously or unconsciously - a the shape  of a university course in which they may have participated.
• Thus, an approach to  curriculum theory and practice which focuses on syllabus is only really  concerned with content.
• Curriculum is a body of knowledge-content and/or  subjects. Education in this sense, is the process by which these are transmitted  or 'delivered' to students by the most effective methods that can be devised (Blenkin  et al 1992: 23).
• many teachers in primary schools', Kelly (1985: 7) claims, 'have  regarded issues of curriculum as of no concern to them, since they have not  regarded their task as being to transmit bodies of knowledge in this manner'.
• Curriculum as product
• productive form
• Education is most often seen as a technical exercise.  Objectives are set,  a plan drawn up, then applied, and the outcomes (products) measured. 

• It is the work of two  American writers Franklin Bobbitt (1918; 1928) and Ralph W. Tyler (1949) that  dominate theory and practice within this tradition.  In The Curriculum   Bobbitt writes as follows:

   

   

  The central theory  [of curriculum] is simple.  Human life, however varied, consists in the  performance of specific activities.  Education that prepares for life is  one that prepares definitely and adequately for these specific activities.   However numerous and diverse they may be for any social class they can be  discovered.  This requires only that one go out into the world of affairs  and discover the particulars of which their affairs consist.  These will  show the abilities, attitudes, habits, appreciations and forms of knowledge that  men need.  These will be the objectives of the curriculum.  They will  be numerous, definite and particularized.  The curriculum will then be that  series of experiences which children and youth must have by way of obtaining  those objectives.  (1918: 42)
• management thinking and practice.
• 'scientific management
• an extension of managerial control over all elements  of the workplace; and cost accounting based on systematic time-and-motion study
• one of the attractions of  this approach to curriculum theory was that it involved detailed attention to  what people needed to know in order to work, live their lives and so on.  A  familiar, and more restricted, example of this approach can be found in many  training programmes, where particular tasks or jobs have been analyzed - broken  down into their component elements - and lists of competencies drawn up. 
• One telling criticism that was made, and  can continue to be made, of such approaches is that there is no social vision or  programme to guide the process of curriculum construction.  As it stands it  is a technical exercise.
• Ralph W. Tyler
• His theory was  based on four fundamental questions:
• Since the real  purpose of education is not to have
• bring about significant changes in the students' pattern of
• certain activities  but t
• behaviour, it  becomes important to recognize that any statements of
• bjectives of the school  should be a statement of changes to take place in the students.  (Tyler  1949: 44

• We can see how these  concerns translate into a nicely-ordered procedure:  one that is very  similar to the technical or productive thinking set out below.

   

   

  Step 1: Diagnosis of  need

   

  Step 2: Formulation  of objectives

   

  Step 3: Selection of  content

   

  Step 4: Organization  of content

   

  Step 5: Selection of  learning experiences

   

  Step 6: Organization  of learning experiences

   

  Step 7:  Determination of what to evaluate and of the ways and means of doing it. (Taba  1962)
• The attraction of this way  of approaching curriculum theory and practice is that  it is systematic and has considerable organizing power.  Central to the  approach is the formulation of behavioural objectives - providing a clear notion  of outcome so that content and method may be organized and the results  evaluated.
• The problem here is that such programmes  inevitably exist prior to and outside the learning experiences.  This takes  much away from learners.  They can end up with little or no voice.   They are told what they must learn and how they will do it.  The success or  failure of both the programme and the individual learners is judged on the basis  of whether pre-specified changes occur in the behaviour and person of the  learner
• (the meeting of behavioural objectives)
• It also can deskill educators in another way.   For example, a number of curriculum programmes, particularly in the USA, have  attempted to make the student experience 'teacher proof'.
• The logic of  this approach is for the curriculum to be designed outside of the classroom or  school, as is the case with the National Curriculum in the UK.  Educators  then apply programmes and are judged by the products of their actions.  It  turns educators into technicians. 
• In order to measure, things  have to be broken down into smaller and smaller units.  The result, as many  of you will have experienced, can be long lists of often trivial skills or  competencies.
• When all the items are ticked,  the person has passed the course or has learnt something.  The role of  overall judgment is somehow sidelined.
• • I find this particularly frustrating with online courses, in terms of students not participating in weekly activities that demonstrate competency and help build essential knowledge. I think it is common for people to do the course for the grade and not the learning. Which is a shame for educations sake.
• lack of impact on  actual pedagogic practice of objectives (see Stenhouse 1974; and Cornbleth 1990,  for example).   One way of viewing this is that teachers simply get it  wrong - they ought to work with objectives. 

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• Curriculum as Process

• Lawrence Stenhouse (1975) produced one of the  best-known explorations of a process model of curriculum theory and  practice. He defined curriculum tentatively: "A curriculum is an attempt  to communicate the essential principles and features of an educational  proposal in such a form that it is open to critical scrutiny and capable of  effective translation into practice."

  He suggests that a curriculum is rather like a recipe in  cookery. A curriculum, like the recipe for a dish, is first imagined as a  possibility, then the subject of experiment. The recipe offered publicly  is in a sense a report on the experiment. Similarly, a curriculum should be  grounded in practice. It is an attempt to describe the work observed in  classrooms. Finally, within limits, a recipe can be varied according to  taste - so can a curriculum.
• Curriculum as Praxis
• • Praxis is my educational mantra. Why?, Which? How? and What? drive my practice. The destination is effective student centred teaching, the journey is exploring, arguing and debating the directions to get there as people.
• practice
• should not focus exclusively on  individuals alone or the group alone, but pays careful attention to the  way in which individuals and the group create  understandings and practices, as well as meaning.
• First, this notion holds that
• commitment expressed  in action to the exploration of educators' values and their practice. Are  they, for example, able to say in a coherent way what they think makes for  human well-being and link this with their practice? We could also be looking  for certain values - especially an emphasis on human emancipation.
• Third, we could expect practitioners committed to  praxis to be exploring their practice with their peers.
• Curriculum as Context
• as practice
• cannot be  understood adequately or changed substantially without attention to its  setting or context.
• Many  educationalists believe that curriculum,
• Curriculum is contextually shaped. Of special  significance here are examinations and the social relationships of the  school - the nature of the teacher-student relationship, the organization  of classes, tracking, and so on. These elements are sometimes known as the
• hidden curriculum

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