A Brief Introduction to Curriculum Theory

a relatively young field

one field unique and particular to education

draws from many theoretical frameworks in order to studying teaching and learning in general and to study the particular challenges of teaching and learning specific disciplines

We will develop the habits of mind that develop curriculum theorizing—that is we will draw from different theoretical frameworks—and use those frameworks to investigate the questions of learning and teaching that interest us and the subject areas in which we work.

The main thrusts in curriculum development and reform over the years have been directed at microcurricular problems to the neglect of macrocurricular problems.

--Tanner and Tanner, 1975

Early discussions of curriculum (specifically) are traced to Franklin Bobbitt’s The Curriculum in 1918 along with Jesse Newlon’s use of teachers in curriculum development in the early 1920s.

This work was aimed at administrative convenience rather than intellectual necessity. Newlon developed curriculum in specific subject areas at the same grade level (horizontal integration) and across grade levels (vertical integration).

He invited teachers trained in different academic backgrounds to develop the courses of study.

Our schools are, in a sense, factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned into products to meet the various demands of life. The specifications for manufacturing come from the demands of twentieth-century civilization, and it is the business of school to build its pupils according to the specifications laid down. This demands good tools, specialized machinery, continuous measurement of production to see if it works according to specifications, the elimination of waste in manufacture, and large variety in the output.

conducted a curriculum study for Stephens College of Columbia, Missouri

developed program to train young women to be women

95,000 women answered survey asking what they did during a typical week

7300 categories such as food prep

Four questions were important:What educational purposes should the school

seek to attain?How can learning experiences be selected that

are likely to be useful in attaining these objectives?

How can learning experiences be organized for effective instruction?

How can the effectiveness of learning experiences be evaluated?

He depoliticized issues and removed them from an historical context

Dewey was part of a reform movement early in the 20th C entitled the “Progressive education movement.”

Dewey criticized the classical curriculum.He insisted that the child’s experience must

form the basis of the curriculum.

sparked curriculum reform projects

curriculum specialists were bypassed and experts such as scientists, mathematicians, humanists, etc. were called on

Brunerpublished The Process of Education

Understanding curriculum as symbolic representation. That is, as institutional and discursive practices, structures, images, and experiences that can be identified and analyzed in a variety of ways.

poststructural

politicalrace

gender

postmodernism

queer theorydeconstruction

phenomenology

hermeneutics(auto)biography

aestheticecology

complexity

[I]nternationalizing curriculum inquiry might best be understood as a process of creating transnational “spaces” in which scholars from different localities collaborate in reframing and decentering their own knowledge traditions and negotiate trust in each other’s contributions to their collective work.

-Noel Gough (2003)