"How we conceive of curriculum and curriculum making is important because our conceptions and ways of reasoning about curriculum reflect and shape how we see, think and talk about, study and act on the education made available to students. Our curriculum conceptions, ways of reasoning and practice cannot be value free or neutral. They necessarily reflect our assumptions about the world, even if those assumptions remain implicit and unexamined. Further, concern with conceptions is not "merely theoretical". Conceptions emerge from and enter into practice." Cornbleth (1990).
"A curriculum can be defined as the planned educational experiences offered by a school which can take place anywhere at any time* in the multiple context of the school, e.g. public schools as caring communities.**"
*This curriculum definition was stated by Todd in 1965 (Todd, E. A. Curriculum Development and Instructional Planning. Nederland, TX.: Nederland Ind. School District, pg. 2.)
**This curriculum approach of schools as multiple communities was presented as a comceptual framework in course syllabi beginning with the Fall 1992 semester. Prior to the 1992 fall semester schools were conceptualized as multiple institutional faces.
1. Tyler (1949). In 1949 Tyler identified four questions as the parameters for curriculum study: What educational purposes should the school seek to accomplish? How can learning attaining these objectives? How can earning experiences be organized for effective instruction? How can the effectiveness of learning experiences be evaluated?
2. Schubert (1986). "A quick survey of a dozen curriculum books would be likely to reveal a dozen different images or characterizations of curriculum. . . To analyze and discuss all of the images that have been advanced would be a massive undertaking, since more than eleven hundred curriculum books have been written in the present century. . . What can be done more economically is to categorize major conceptions of curriculum:" (a) curriculum as content or subject matter, (b) curriculum as a program of planned activities, (c) curriculum as intended learning outcomes, (d) curriculum as cultural reproduction, (e) curriculum as discrete tasks and concepts, (f) curriculum as an agenda for social reconstruction, and (g) curriculum as "currere" (interpretation of lived experience)."
3. Ornstein and Hunkins (1988). "A curriculum approach reflects a holistic position, encompassing the foundations of curriculum, domains of curriculum, and the theoretical and practical principles of curriculum. Five curriculum approaches are (a) behavioral-rational approach, (b) systems-managerial approach, (c) intellectual-academic approach, (d) humanistic-aesthetic approach, and (e) reconceptual approach."
4. Cornbleth (1990) "Curriculum construction is an ongoing social activity that is shaped by various contextual influences within and beyond the classroom and accomplished interactively, primarily be teachers and students. The curriculum is not a tangible product but the actual, day-to-day interactions of students, teachers, knowledge and milieu. The curriculum encompasses what others have called curriculum practice or the curriculum -in-use. Curriculum as product or object, the conventional view, is seen as one aspect of the context that shapes curriculum practice. . . .
. . . Curriculum as contexualized social process encompasses both subject matter and social organization and their interrelations. Social organization, including teacher and student roles (and their attendant rights and obligations) and patterns of interaction, provides a setting for academic activities that can extend or constrain students' learning opportunities. Recitation activities, for example, reflect the super and subordinate roles to teachers and students respectively, and the limited communication patterns found in many classrooms. Learning opportunities are constrained by the recitation organization insofar as students are discouraged from pursuing ideas, raising questions, or offering personal observations. Social organization and academic activities also communicate normative messages including the meaning of knowledge, authority, responsibility, work and success as will be illustrated in subsequent chapters.
The curriculum knowledge or subject matter of interest here is primarily but not solely academic (e.g., mathematics, history). It also includes the personal, social, and world knowledge that is communicated or otherwise made available to students and what might be characterized as knowledge about knowledge - Its nature, sources, limits and change. While knowledge typically is treated as an object or commodity to be acquired, that is not the intention here. Curriculum knowledge as the knowledge made available to students refers to opportunities to construct, reconstruct, or critique knowledge. Knowledge selection and organization refer both to the information that is communicated directly and the opportunities that are provided for students to create and critique knowledge. The selection and organization of curriculum knowledge can be purposeful or tacit as seems to be the case when teachers and students follow a textbook. Knowledge treatment refers to what others have distinguished as pedagogy or instruction; it also includes the playing out of assumptions about the nature of knowledge. Knowledge distribution refers to the kinds of knowledge opportunities made available to different groups of students."
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"A curriculum can be defined as the planned educational experiences offered by a school which can take place anywhere at any time* in the multiple context of the school, e.g. public schools as caring communities.**"
*This curriculum definition was stated by Todd in 1965 (Todd, E.A. Curriculum Development and Instructional Planning. Nederland, TX.: Nederland Ind. School District, pg. 2.)
**The curriculum approach of schools as multiple communities was presented as a conceptual framework in course syllabi beginning with the Fall 1992 semester. Prior to the 1992 fall semester schools were conceptualized as multiple institutional faces.