46 • THE EDUCATIONAL IMAGINATION

References
Cronbach, L. (1975, February). Beyond the two disciplines of scientific psychology.
The American Psychologist, 30(2).
3
Department of General Services, Documents Section. (1976). California education
code: Statutes. Sacramento, CA: Author.
Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York: Macmillan.
Schwab, J. (1969, November). The practical: A language for curriculum. School Curriculum Ideologies
Review, 78(5).

"There are as many worlds as there are ways to describe them."

NELSON GOODMAN

Because educational practice is concerned with the achievement of certain

desired end-states, it relies on a larger value matrix to identify and justify
the directions in which it moves. That values matrix is the subject of this
chapter: the ideologies that give direction to one of the school's major
means for addressing the aims it values. We call that means the curriculum.
The term ideologies, rather than ideology, is used here to indicate that
there is no single ideology that directs education. Values, particularly in
America, proliferate, and these values find their educational expression in
the ways in which schooling, curriculum, teaching, and evaluation are to
occur. Curriculum ideologies are defined as beliefs about what schools
should teach, for what ends, and for what reasons. Insofar as an ideology
can be tacit rather than explicit, it is fair to say that all schools have at least
one ideology—and usually more than one—that provides direction to their
ctions.

The Significance of Ideologies in Education

logies in general are belief systems that provide the value premises
from which decisions about practical educational matters are made. For
example, a conception of the aims of education rooted in the desire to help
This is a revised version of an essay originally published in Handbook of Research on
urn, Philip W. Jackson, Editor, pp. 302-326. Copyright 0 1992 by American nal
Research Association. Used by permission of The Gale Group.

47