Trying to understand curriculum in the new millennium

AuthorRodica Mariana Niculescu
PositionFaculty Of Psychology And Science Of Education, Transilvania University Of Brasov
Pages105-112

Page 105

Curriculum as a controversial concept

It will be clear that the curriculum can be considered a controversial concept and my concerns begin with the reality that there is no common agreement around which (key issue(s)/ dimension or component) curriculum should be designed. Some definitions consider "content' to be the core issue of curriculum, others hinge around learning experience, social context or defined goals or outcomes.

No matter what core issue is at stake, curriculum theory and curriculum reforms often begin by recounting the corpus of existing models or theories and then beginning a new proposal from the one that is deemed to be superior to existing alternatives. The term curriculum is thus applied to a whole variety of structures and can be made to carry a range of classes of meaning.

One class of meaning concerns the breadth of the area of curriculum reference. The same term can concern a classroom, a specific university faculty or even a national program. It is applied to formal structures and to informal education. It is applied equally to youth- clubs, to pre-schools and even to industrial training

A second class of meaning concerns time-frames for curriculum and can refer to a moment in life, an entire life or to a cycle of activity. It can refer to a three year degree program or a single week of specialized field-work.

The term curriculum is also used to refer to the actual material that comprises curriculum. Curriculum in these terms can be a syllabus to be transmitted or it can be a product or an intention. The material can be concerned with praxis or a manual of detail. It can refer to something that is supported by research or an on-going process guided by the preferences of the user. Some scholars have even talked about the take-away curriculum or the Page 106MacDonald's curriculum to describe what is actually taken away by the student. This is the amalgam of the effects of formal activity within a school as it is mediated to a child who for instance, has been persistently bullied. What is then taken from the institution is far from the declared curriculum. Equally a university graduate may be crippled by a take away curriculum that has been the result of experiences that have induced a low sense of self-worth or an obsession with personal appearance.

Each manifestation of curriculum claims somewhere a supporting model which lays claim to a fundamental philosophy about the learning process or the nature of education. We can see examples of this in work by Franklin Bobbitt (1918; 1928); Ralph W. Tyler (1949); Lawrence Stenhouse (1975); Grundy (1987); Newman & Ingram (1989) and Smith, M. K. (1996, 2000).

Typically a teacher in a pre-university system is confronted with a package of syllabus and support materials provided by a higher educational authority. However good these materials, this curriculum is not the one received by pupils. A teacher- perception process intervenes, turning these official materials into something that is personal to the teacher, but which is never identical to the received materials. This perceived curriculum is the reality of curriculum that is implemented in the classroom. Thus we could talk about the perceived curriculum as an important regulatory mechanism in turning the ideal curriculum (that is the curriculum as it was originally designed), into real curriculum.

Because of this teacher-perception mechanism there have been examples of innovative curriculum activity that have "failed" because it was impossible to include a clone of a charismatic innovator with every resource booklet!

There are comparable situations at university level. Here it is the academic staffs that are charged with the design and implementation of curriculum. As they make their plans, staffs is aware of pressure from political sources, international innovation and concern as well as the establishment view of how a graduate should be. There are further pressures from the real and imagined processes of intra and extra-institutional peer-review.

There is some common ground among the many definitions and manifestations of curriculum. All hold the main players to be the student and teacher and there is generally a reference to the educational context in which the curriculum is to be applied. Normally, there is also reference to the content that has to be delivered and in consequence, the "content' that needs to be learned.

I have also noticed that almost all definitions of curriculum seem to use the term learning experience. Whilst this can be a useful term I am concerned that it is generally used without definition both at the "design level' of curriculum and at the same time to day-to- day curriculum realization. I want therefore to consider the term learning experience alongside its near conceptual neighbor, learning situation.

Inside the formal education, people normally experience quite distinct and different learning situations as they progress through schooling and then higher education. At the same time those same people are asked, or choose to put themselves in many different non-formal learning situations. Indeed, life itself frequently places us in non-formal...

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