Curriculum Theory
for the next decade is to overcome the polarization
between those who put standards and testing to the
forefront in the interest of accountability (control) and
those who see evaluation as a tool for the promotion
of learning.
4.2 Critical Discourse Analysis
Finally, critical discourse analysis is emerging as a
powerful tool for showing how curriculum works,
how it operates politically, how it constructs and
regulates social relations, and how it positions
students, teachers, and others. Allan Luke (1995) has
used critical discourse analysis to show how the
curriculum of the home and preschool orients children
toward family, property, social practices, and own-
ership; how the language of the primary school teacher
constructs identities of children and guides them for
participation in different content areas; and how
textbooks influence students to reproduce, naturalize,
and accept particular forms of cultural logic and social
identity under the guise of transmitting neutral skills.
Similarly, Shirley Grundy (1994) has deepened under-
standing of the contrasting public curriculum policies
in Australia and Canada using this analytic tool.
Essentially, evaluators using discourse analysis
study and interpret the language and language
patterns as found in both written and oral contexts.
The analysis reveals how the curriculum: (a) relates to
the students’ life trajectories—the kinds of futures
portended (field); (b) instills a view of authority and
degree of individual freedom, teaching students where
authority lies, when and how one can speak, what can
be said, and constructing social relations (tenor); and
(c) defines a given subject matter—its purposes and
functions, modeling what it means to learn the subject,
what counts as knowledge in the field, and defining
what the students’ relations to the subject should be
(mode).
See also: Competencies and Key Competencies: Edu-
cational Perspective; Curriculum as a Field of
Educational Study; Curriculum Theory; Educational
Evaluation: Overview; Educational Assessments:
Major Developments; Program Evaluation
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Husen T, Postlethwaite N (eds.) The International Encyc-
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aluation and Policy Analysis 14(4):
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aluation of School Programs, 3rd edn. Macmillan, New
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aluation. Sage, Beverly Hills, CA
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aluating and Selecting Cur-
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aluation Studies Re
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aluation: A
Systematic Approach, 6th edn. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA
Scriven M 1973 Goal free evaluation. In: House E (ed.) School
E
aluation: The Politics and Process. McCutchan, Berkeley,
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aluators in Curriculum De
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M. C. Alkin and J. D. McNeil
Curriculum Theory
The curriculum is defined as programs of teaching and
learning which take place in formal settings. Examples
of formal settings are schools, colleges and universities.
A curriculum may refer to a system, as in a national
3195
Curriculum Theory
curriculum, an institution, as in the school curriculum,
or even to an individual school, as in the school
geography curriculum. The four dimensions of cur-
riculum theory are aims or objectives, content or
subject matter, methods or procedures, and evaluation
or assessment. The first dimension refers to the reasons
for including specific items in the curriculum and
excluding others. The second dimension is content or
subject matter and this refers to the knowledge, skills,
or dispositions which are implicit in the choice of
items, and the way in which they are arranged.
Objectives may be understood as broad general
justifications for including particular items and par-
ticular pedagogical processes in the curriculum, or as
clearly defined and closely delineated outcomes or
behaviors, or as a set of appropriate procedures or
experiences. The third dimension is methods or pro-
cedures and this refers to pedagogy and is determined
by choices made about the first two dimensions. The
fourth dimension is assessment or evaluation and this
refers to the means for determining whether the
curriculum has been successfully implemented.
1. Aims or Objecti
es
Any curriculum is always a selection. Sets of justifi-
cations for curricular inclusion may be divided broadly
into four types: logical delineations between domains
of knowledge, distinctive mental or cognitive opera-
tions, cross-cultural social distinctions, and deliber-
ative activity about the ideal society.
An example of logical delineations is Hirst’s
(1974) forms of knowledge and experience: logico-
mathematical, empirical, interpersonal, moral, esthe-
tic, religious, and philosophical. Each of these forms
has distinctive kinds of concepts and distinctive ways
of determining truth from falsehood. Hirst claimed,
therefore, that each has a separate logical form. An
example of the second type of justification is Gardner’s
(1983) seven forms of intelligence: language or lin-
guistic intelligence, logical–mathematical analysis,
spatial representation, musical analysis, bodily kines-
thetic thinking, interpersonal knowledge, and intra-
personal knowledge. His justification for inclusion of
these forms of intelligence is psychological: individual
learners have cognitive or mental modules which are
separate and act separately from other mental mod-
ules. Individuals have been shown to differ in their
capacity to perform these different types of operations.
A third set of justifications moves us out of the mind
and focuses on the culture we inhabit. Lawton (1989)
argues that all societies have cultural subsystems:
sociopolitical, economic, communication, rational-
ity, technology, morality, belief, esthetic, and matura-
tion. Because these are universal and cross-cultural,
Lawton concludes that curriculum developers should
seek to represent the forms of knowledge which
3196
underpin them. A fourth set of justifications focuses
on the arrangements made by particular societies,
both currently and in the future. The normative needs
of society are given precedence over logical, cultural,
or psychological justifications. This is best exemplified
in relation to the debate about the respective merits of
academic and vocational curricula.
2. Content or Subject Matter
2.1 Relations Between Items
A further concern of curriculum theorists is the
relations between these different items of knowledge.
The two most important types of relations are the
degree of integration between different knowledge
domains and progression within the domain itself. The
first of these is the degree of integration. A curriculum
may be understood as strongly or weakly classified
and as strongly or weakly framed. A strongly classified
curriculum is defined by Bernstein (1990) as clearly
delineated domains of knowledge with strong bound-
aries between them; conversely, a weakly classified
curriculum is understood as having weak boundaries
between the different knowledge domains. A strongly
framed curriculum, on the other hand, is defined as a
program of study in which teacher and student have
limited control over the selection of items and the way
it is organized in respect of the pedagogical relation-
ship. A weakly framed curriculum is characterized by
greater control by teacher and student over the
selection of content, the way it is organized and its
pacing. Bernstein, in relation to the first of these
principles, classification, identifies two types of cur-
ricula: ‘collection codes’ where strong boundaries
between domains are present, and ‘integrated codes’
where weak boundaries are in evidence. Fogarty (1991)
has identified 10 models of curriculum integration and
these range from strongly classified and strongly
framed curricula, as in the traditional approach, to
weakly classified and weakly framed networked
approaches to curriculum planning. Between the two
extremes, traditional and networked approaches, she
identifies eight other points on the continuum: con-
nected, nested, sequenced, shared, webbed, threaded,
integrated, and immersed.
The second dimension is progression within the
domain, or, with integrated curricula, domains.
Underpinning the notion of progression is a rationale
for teaching some aspects of the knowledge domain
before others and a belief that a subject can in fact be
arranged in a reliable hierarchy. Adey (1997) argues
that it is possible to do this and develops a three-
dimensional model comprising conceptual complex-
ity, breadth, and extent. Using only the last of these
two dimensions leads to a naive view of learning. For
Adey, a measure of conceptual complexity is also

needed to provide a fully developed model of cur-
riculum progression. Examples of these frameworks
are Piaget’s (1971) schema comprising progression
from concrete operational to formal operational
thinking and Kohlberg’s (1976) stages of moral
thought, where the subject progresses from premoral
and conventional rule conformity levels to the ac-
ceptance of general rights and standards, and even to
adopting individual principles of conduct. These
hierarchies are based on empirical investigation. The
other way of establishing knowledge hierarchies is
through some form of logical ordering, where com-
plexity comprises both a progressive development of
more items of knowledge and the making of more
complicated connections between these items of know-
ledge.
2.2 Modeling Objecti
es
However, curriculum theorists have also focused on
the way in which those aims and objectives are
expressed. Three models have been developed: cur-
riculum as product, curriculum as process, and cur-
riculum as content. The first model specifies the
development of behavioral objectives, and this ap-
proach has been discussed in a number of classical
commentaries on curriculum (Tyler 1949). Curric-
ulum-making is understood as a linear process which
starts with the development of clear objectives or
goals, proceeds through to the selection of content
which is specified in behavioral terms—that is, its
acquisition must be an observable or testable pro-
cess—and finishes with the evaluation of that process
to see if those objectives have been met. This behav-
ioral objectives model has been criticized (Elliott 1998)
for the following reasons: first, complex and important
learning outcomes of any educational program may be
neglected at the expense of the more trivial and less
important, because it is easier to describe them in
behavioral objective terms. Second, the prespecifi-
cation of behavioral goals may encourage an inflexi-
bility of approach within the classroom, and learning
outcomes which may incidentally flow from classroom
interaction will be deliberately underexploited. Third,
there is a danger of assuming that if something cannot
be measured, then it cannot be assessed and therefore
it should not be a part of the learning process. Fourth,
lists of intended behaviors do not adequately represent
the way individuals learn: this is because logical order
cannot be conflated with pedagogic process.
In opposition to behavioral objectives, it has been
suggested that curriculum theorists should designate
appropriate processes which learners need to go
through—the second model. This avoids the problems
inherent in the designation of prespecified behavioral
objectives noted above and builds into the curriculum
itself a more active and influential role for the teacher.
Curriculum Theory
The third model, curriculum as content, comprises
the transmission of a body of knowledge from the
teacher to the learner and is underpinned by a symbol-
processing view of cognition (see below) and a positiv-
ist\empiricist view of knowledge. The principles which
underpin this view of knowledge are a belief in realism,
a belief that there is a correct way of describing reality,
a belief that scientific theories are superior to com-
monsense understandings of the world, a belief in the
cumulative and progressive nature of scientific knowl-
edge, a belief that it is possible to make a distinction
between observation and theory, and that as a result it
is possible to collect facts about the world, a belief that
language is a transparent medium, that is, words have
fixed meanings and concepts can be defined unambig-
uously, and finally, a belief that the methods which are
appropriate to the natural sciences are equally ap-
propriate to the social sciences. These assertions have
been challenged in the twentieth century by inter-
pretivists, critical theorists, and postmodernists. New
knowledge constructions have implications for, and
are reflected in, new ways of understanding learning
and therefore new forms of pedagogy.
3. Methods or Procedures
Pedagogy is defined as the mode of delivery of the
curriculum. A number of approaches have been
developed. The first of these is imitation. The learner
seeks to copy the actions of the teacher and in the
process incorporate into their behaviors the observed
characteristics of the teacher. Much learning of an
informal nature, especially in childhood, takes this
form. Didacticism, on the other hand, comprises
instruction where the teacher inculcates the learner
into either a knowledge, skill or affective domain by
informing them about what they should do and how
they should behave. This view of pedagogy has been
disputed by constructivists and situationists who
understand learning as contextualized, and thus as
incapable of being understood without reference to
the environment in which it takes place. In its place
they would want to substitute a notion of inter-
subjective interchange in which the learner constructs
knowledge in the light of the experiences they have in
the classroom, and in the process creates meanings for
themselves and others. The fourth pedagogic
approach is apprenticeship, in which learners are
supported in their attempts to gain access to the
culture of the society in which they are being educated.
The two most important learning theories, symbol-
processing and situated approaches, allocate dis-
tinctive roles to learning styles, assessment, and
meta-cognition. Symbol-processing approaches under-
stand the learner and the environment as separate;
learning takes place within the human mind as the
individuals process information they receive through
3197
Curriculum Theory
their senses, assimilate that information and create
new ways of understanding. This theory understands
the individual as a passive recipient of environmental
influences. It separates out mind from body, language
from reality, and the individual from society. Situated
cognition or environmentally embedded learning
understands the relationship between the individual
and the environment in a different way. Situated
learning approaches view the person and the envir-
onment as mutually constructed and as mutually
constructing. Bredo (1999) suggests that this rela-
tionship should be viewed actively and as involving
dynamic modification rather than static matching.
The learners act with and on the environment, shaping
or modifying themselves and at the same time shaping
or modifying the environment. Situated cognitive
approaches stress active, transformative, and rela-
tional dimensions to learning; indeed, situated cogn-
itionists understand learning as contextualized. This
new approach to learning has implications for the last
of the four dimensions of curriculum, evaluation, or
assessment.
4. Assessment or E
aluation
Assessment usually refers to the judgments made by
individuals about their learning or by others about
that learning. Evaluation refers to judgments about
systems, institutions, or curricula, and the same
tensions which can be found in formal assessments are
present here. Notions of reliability and validity which
have informed most of the traditional theories about
assessment are now being reformulated in response to
a number of criticisms (Gipps 1994). The first criticism
is that formal assessments focus on the performance of
the individual at a set point in time and in controlled
conditions, and not to the levels of competence
reached by the learner. The second criticism focuses on
the social dimension of formal assessment. Formal
assessments are designed to produce accurate repre-
sentations of what learners can do and what they
know. Situated cognitivists, on the other hand, argue
that the information collected about an individual is
always context- and culture-bound. Items in a formal
test are chosen by examiners and this process of
choosing reflects their own understanding of the world
and the set of constructs they possess to order it. This
set of constructs may not be shared by the individual
taking the test or being assessed. The third problem
with formal assessments is that they do not, and
cannot, act formatively.
Learning, whether formal or informal, is closely
related to assessment. Learners want and need to
know what they have learnt in order to make a
judgment about what and how they need to learn next.
Learning is therefore always self-reflective and indeed
self-reflexive, in that learning transforms the indi-
vidual’s sense of how they understand themselves and
the world. This is why the word ‘formative’ is used to
3198
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences
describe assessments which are useful to the formation
of the individual through learning. The relationship
between learning and assessment of that learning is
complicated and depends in part on the way summ-
ative and comparative assessments—that is, imposed
descriptions by other people on the individual con-
cerned—impact on the learning situation. If these are
given priority, then the process of formative assess-
ment, indeed the process of learning itself, is im-
poverished.
See also: Curriculum as a Field of Educational Study;
Curriculum Evaluation; Education: Phenomena,
Concepts, and Theories; Educational Evaluation:
Overview; Educational Innovation, Management of;
Educational Institutions and Society; School Outc-
omes: Cognitive Function, Achievements, Social
Skills, and Values; Socialization and Education:
Theoretical Perspectives
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Curriculum Journal 8: 367–92
Bernstein B 1990 The Structuring of Pedagogic Discourse,
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Murphy P (ed.) Learners, Learning and Assessment. Sage,
London, pp. 23–45
Elliott J 1998 The Curriculum Experiment: Meeting the Challenge
of Social Change. Open University Press, Milton Keynes, UK
Fogarty R 1991 The Mindful School: How to Integrate the
Curriculum. Skylight Publishing, Pallantine, IL
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Lawton D 1989 Education, Culture and the National Curriculum.
Hodder and Stoughton, London
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Tyler R W 1949 Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction.
University of Chicago Press, Chicago
D. Scott
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