Foundations of Teaching and

Learning
Course 1: Introduction
Week 2: Thinking About Learning
Lecture 2.4: Thinking about Curriculum
The sabre tooth curriculum
 Curriculum as process

Where people still equate curriculum

with a syllabus they are likely to limit
their planning to a consideration of
the content or the body of knowledge
that they wish to transmit. It is also
because this view of curriculum has
been adopted that many teachers have
regarded issues of curriculum as of no
concern to them, since they have
regarded their task as being to
transmit bodies of knowledge.
(Kelly, 1985: 7)
Five key trilogies: 1

Formal

Informal

Hidden
Five key trilogies: 2

Romance

Precision

Generalisation
Five key trilogies: 3

Enactive

Iconic

Symbolic
Five key trilogies: 4

Knowing

Doing Feeling
 THE INTENDED CURRICULUM
- expectations about learning outcomes
and standards to be achieved
- content and skills to be taught and learned
 THE INTENDED CURRICULUM
- expectations about learning outcomes
and standards to be achieved
- content and skills to be taught and learned

THE IMPLEMENTED CURRICULUM

- what teachers do in classrooms
- teaching and learning practices
- pedagogy
 THE INTENDED CURRICULUM
- expectations about learning outcomes
and standards to be achieved
- content and skills to be taught and learned

THE IMPLEMENTED CURRICULUM

- what teachers do in classrooms
- teaching and learning practices
- pedagogy

THE ATTAINED CURRICULUM

- demonstration of learning by students
- actual achievement of students in
relation to standards
Curriculum: In planning

Principle 1 Selection of content – what is to be

learned and taught

Principle 2 Development of a teaching strategy –

how it is to be learned and taught

Principle 3 Decisions about sequence

Principle 4 Diagnosing the strengths and

weaknesses of individual students,
differentiating principles 1, 2 and 3 to
meet individual cases
 Curriculum: In action

Principle 1 Studying and evaluating student

progress

Studying and evaluating the progress

Principle 2
of teaching

Reviewing adaptability of curriculum

Principle 3 in varying school contexts, pupil
contexts, environments and peer-
group situations.

Evaluating variations in effects in

Principle 4 differing contexts, on different pupils
and causes of the variation
 From delivery to partnership

• Delivering the curriculum

• Discussing purposes and objectives of learning
• Pupils devising indicators of achievement
• Pupils as assessors their own and others’ work
• Pupils as determiners of learning
• Pupils as learning partners
 How will we know?
Since the real purpose of
education is not to have the
instructor perform certain
activities but to bring about
significant changes in the
students’ pattern of behaviour, it
becomes important to recognize
that any statements of objectives
of the school should be a
statement of changes to take
place in the students. 
(Tyler 1949: 44)
Foundations of Teaching and
Learning
Course 1: Introduction
Week 2: Thinking About Learning
Lecture 2.4: Thinking about Curriculum