formal education, a curriculum (pronounced /kəˈrɪkjʉləm/; plural: curricula, /kə

ˈrɪkjʉlə/) is the set of courses, and their content, offered at a school or university. As an
idea, curriculum stems from the Latin word for race course, referring to the course of
deeds and experiences through which children grow to become mature adults. A
curriculum is prescriptive, and is based on a more general syllabus which merely
specifies what topics must be understood and to what level to achieve a particular grade
or standard.

Core curriculum

"Core curriculum" redirects here. For information about specific core curricula, use the
links in the text below.

In education, a core curriculum is a curriculum, or course of study, which is deemed

central and usually made mandatory for all students of a school or school system.
However, this is not always the case. For example, a school might mandate a music
appreciation class, but students may opt out if they take a performing musical class, such
as orchestra, band, chorus, etc. Core curricula are often instituted, at the primary and
secondary levels, by school boards, Departments of Education, or other administrative
agencies charged with overseeing education.

he Four Steps of Curriculum Development

"The Tyler Rationale"

        1.   What educational purposes should the school seek to attain?  
        2.   What educational experiences can be provided that are likely to attain
these purposes? 
        3.   How can they be organized? 
        4.   How can we determine whether these purposes are being attained?  

#1:  What educational purposes should the school seek to attain?

What Aims, Goals, and Objectives should be sought? 

Educational objectives become the criteria for selecting materials, content

outlined, instructional methods developed, and tests prepared. 

How to write objectives

Objectives often incorrectly stated as activities the instructor must do, rather than
statements of change for students. 

Objectives are also listed as topics, concepts, or generalizations; however, this

approach does not specify what the students are expected to do with these
elements such as apply them to illustrations in his/her life or unify them in a
coherent theory explaining scientific deliberation. 

Objectives can be indicated as generalized patterns (To Develop Appreciation,  

To develop broad 
interests.)  These are more goals than objectives.  It is necessary to specify the
content to which this 
behavior applies. 

Should specify the Kind of Behavior and the Content or Area in which the
behavior is to operate. 

Examples: 

To create a simple web page using a text editor. 

To apply Dewey's theory of the child and the curriculum to the process of
developing a curriculum  module. 

                Or: 

Upon completion of this module, students will be able to: 

...compute the selling price of an automobile given information about list price,
taxes, options, and  destination charges 
...construct a timeline showing the relationship among at least 20 major events in
the Roman empire 
...describe the steps necessary for creating complete Web-based curriculum
modules 

Example nonpreordinate objective:  "Students will attend a Shakespeare play." 

2.   What educational experiences can be provided that are likely to attain these
purposes?

Criteria for selecting experiences; are they: 

 valid in light of the ways in which knowledge and skills will be applied in out-of-
school experiences?
 feasible in terms of time, staff expertise, facilities available within and outside of
the school, community expectations?
 optimal in terms of students' learning the content?
 capable of allowing students to develop their thinking skills and rational powers?
 capable of stimulating in students greater understanding of their own existence
as individuals and as members of groups?
 capable of fostering in students an openness to new experiences and a tolerance
for diversity?
 such that they will facilitate learning and motivate students to continue learning?
 capable of allowing students to address their needs?
  such that students can broaden their interests?
 such that they will foster the total development of students in cognitive, affective,
psychomotor, social, and spiritual domains?

Curriculum Content

Criteria for selecting content: 

 what will lead to student self-sufficiency?

 what is significant?
o Two definitions of "significance":
1. having or conveying a meaning; expressive, suggesting or
implying deeper or unstated meaning 
2. important, notable; consequential 
 what is valid (authentic, "true")?
 what is interesting?
o note:  student may not even KNOW his own interests
 what is useful?
 what is learnable?
 what is feasible?

3.   How can the educational experiences be organized?

Education experiences must be organized to reinforce each other. 

Vertical vs. horizontal organization 

Continuity - refers to the vertical reiteration of major curricular elements. 

Reading social studies materials continued up through higher grades 

Sequence -  refers to experiences built upon preceding curricular elements but in

more breadth and detail. Sequence emphasizes higher levels of treatment. 

Integration - unified view of things.  Solving problems in arithmetic as well as in

other disciplines. 

We aim for educational effectiveness and EFFICIENCY. 

Most institutionalized education is MASS education: we want to be able to teach

GROUPS instead of  individuals. 

Most education is DEPARTMENTALIZED, because we expect someone trained

in a specific topic to be more likely to be able to teach that topic.  (This is based
upon the notion that WORKERS will have higher productivity if they do the same
thing over and over again, related to the "social efficiency" theories of Frederick
Taylor.) 
Generally, we arrange educational experiences from easiest to hardest, and from
most general to more specific.  (There is some evidence that this is not the best
way to teach--that students are more likely to learn if specific skills or topics are
introduced first.) 

4.  How can we determine whether these purposes are being attained?

This question concerns evaluation, which is discussed in WIT 2001's

Assessment of Educational Sites module.

This image summarizes the steps of the Tyler Model.

Different Perspectives on Curriculum Development

These notes are from Craig Cunningham's "Curriculum Development and

Learning Theories" class at Northeastern.
To access the notes for an entire semester, visit his course materials page.

In Ornstein and Hunkins, "development" describes the process of curriculum-

making; "design" describes the end result, or the product of curriculum
development. 

Curriculum development produces curriculum designs.

Development can be articulated as a series of steps, such as: 

 define educational purposes

 construct activities/experiences that can meet these purposes
 organize activities/experiences
  evaluate whether purposes have been met

(These are the "steps" in the Tyler Rationale) 

Designs can be articulated or described as an arrangement of curricular

"elements" or "components," such as: 

 "aim"
 "rationale"
 "audience"
 "objectives"
 etc.

In discussing "development," it is possible to describe several competing

"approaches" to development. 

Ornstein and Hunkins categorize these approaches as technical-scientific,

nontechnical-nonscientific.

Ornstein and Hunkins stress the value of finding a "middle ground" between
these approaches.

Technical-scientific approach

 curriculum as plan or blueprint

 definable process
 activity, or task, analysis
 means/end analysis
 usually "preordinate" (or preordained) objectives
 emphasis on efficiency
 the "Chicago School"
 extremely influential approach
 criticized as too linear, dehumanizing

Tyler approach modified by others, especially Taba, who listed 7 steps:

 diagnosis of needs
 formulation of objectives
 specification of content
 organization of content
 selection of learning experiences
 organization of learning activities
 evaluation and means of evaluation
Taba also wanted TEACHERS to be primary curriculum developers

Hunkins adds initial step of "conceptualization and legitimization, involving

deliberation of the nature of curriculum and its value

Hunkins also adds "feedback loops" among various steps, showing that
curriculum development is an iterative process

This approach has found new life since mid-1980s as "Outcome-based

Education."

Nontechnical-nonscientific approach

 questions some assumptions of technical-scientific approach:

 questions universality, objectivity, logic
 t-s approach abstracts knowledge from context
 t-s approach overemphasizes articulation of aims
 t-s approach too linear
 t-s approach takes modernism too seriously
 stress personal, subjective, aesthetic, heuristic, and transactional nature
of curriculum
 stress focus on LEARNER, not on "products" of education
 view learning as holistic
 student as participant in curriculum development
 denies logical positivism
 may stress "nonpreordinate" objectives (open-ended outcomes: 
"Students will be transformed through their participation in the high ropes
course.")
 Examples:
 Glatthorn's Naturalistic Model
 Assess the alternatives
 Stake out the territory
 Develop a constituency
 Build the knowledge base
 Block in the unit
 Plan quality learning experiences
 Develop the course examination (or other assessment
tools)
 Develop the learning scenarios
 The Deliberation Model
 "deliberation is the essential process engaged in
curriculum development. Through deliberation, individuals
engage in curriculum decision making."
 celebrate social dimension of curriculum work
 acknowledges circularity of development process
 involves acknowledgment of eternal "incompleteness" of
curriculum
  Proceeds generally from PROBLEM to PROPOSALS to
SOLUTION (with CONTEXT)
 Noye's six-phase deliberation model
1. public sharing
2. highlighting agreement/disagreement
3. explaining positions
4. highlighting changes in position
5. negotiating points of agreement
6. adopting a decision
 Hunkins "Conversational Approach"

 Free association
 Clustering Interests
 Formulating Questions or Curricular Focuses
 Sequencing Questions or Curriculum Focuses
 Constructing Contexts for the Focuses
 Post-positivist/post-modern methods
 embraces uncertainty, chaos, allowing order to "emerge"
 curriculum should help students search for "instabilities"
 curriculum should aim for 'dissipative structures' rather
than specific ends
 "Autopoiesis refers to the characteristic of living
systems to continuously renew themselves and to
regulate this process in such a way that the
integrity of their structure is maintained. Whereas a
machine is geared to the output of a specific
product, a biological cell is primarily concerned with
renewing itself." (Jantsch, E [1980]. The Self-
Organising Universe. Oxford:Pergamon, p. 7)
 "But if he invests himself - the most intimate event
of all - in the enterprise, the outcome, to the extent
that it differs from his expectation or enlarges upon
it, dislodges the man's construction of himself. In
recognizing the inconsistency between his
anticipation and the outcome, he concedes a
discrepancy between what he was and what he is.
A succession of such investments and
dislodgements constitutes the human experience."
(Kelly, G. [1970]. A Brief Introduction to Personal
Construct Psychology. In: D. Bannister [ed.]
Perspectives in personal construct theory. London:
Academic Press, p. 18)
 These theories do not result in a specific model (usually),
but emphasize the social, and EMERGENT quality of
curriculum
Participants in Curriculum Development Process

Possible participants 

 teachers
 students
 principals
 curriculum specialists
 associate superintendent
 superintendent
 boards of education
 lay citizens
 federal government
 state agencies
 regional organizations
 educational publishers
 testing organizations
 professional organizations
 other groups

Curriculum Design

What are the "parts" of a curriculum, and how do they interrelate? 

Most curricula include: 

 aim, goals, objectives

 subject-matter
 learning experiences
 evaluation approaches

Some curricula also include: 

 needs assessment
 rationale
 audience
 prerequisites
 materials
 discussion of learning theory

Relationship between "curriculum" and "instruction" 

Doll:  instructional planning is part of curriculum design concerned with learning

experiences 
Horizontal and Vertical Organization 

 Horizontal deals with scope and integration: side-by-side arrangement of

activities
 Vertical deals with sequence and continuity: longitudinal placement of activities
 Notion of "spiral curriculum"

Design Dimensions 

 Scope: breadth and depth of content

 Sequence: how do experiences ensure continuity?
o issue of whether to get sequence from subject field or developmental
stages
o sequence principles:
 simple to complex
 prerequisite learning (part to whole)
 whole to part (overview followed by specifics)
 chronological learning (world-related)
 content-related
 learning-related
 learner-related
 utilization-related
 Continuity: recurrence, repetition
 Integration (linkages among subject-matters)
o takes place "only" within learners
o driving focus on "theme-based" schools
 Articulation: interrelated of aspects of curriculum (vertical or horizontal), including
assessment
 Balance between:
o child-centered and subject-centered curriculum
o needs of individual Vs those of society
o needs of common education Vs specialized education
o breadth and depth of content
o traditional vs. innovative content
o needs of unique range of pupils regarding learning styles (added by
CAC:  balanced with need for teachers to have consistent expectations
for all)
o different teaching methods and educational experiences
o work and play
o community and school

Types of Curriculum Designs

In developing specific learning activities for a given set of objectives, curriculum

designers need to decide whether they want to place the subject-matter, the
learners, or problems at the center.  The following sections discuss each
category of activity. 
Subject-centered

Many learning activities in schools emphasize subject-matter or academic

disciplines. Either a particular subject-area, the broader themes of a discipline,
interdisciplinary concepts or themes, the coronations among two or more subject
areas, or particular processes can serve as this organizing center.  In each case,
the characteristics of the subject-matter, and the procedures, conceptual
structures or relationships which are found within or among the subject-matter,
dictate the kinds of activities that will be selected. 

In centering activities on subject-matter, designers have to avoid the possibility

that activities will not “fit” with a given learner or set of learners. This possibility
results from the fact that subject-matter, at least as formulated my subject-matter
or discipline experts, is often highly abstract. Experts tend to utilize schemas and
categorizations (taxonomies) which have little apparent relationship to the
experiences of the uninitiated. Trying to teach 10 year olds about insects utilizing
the schemas utilized by entomologists may be counterproductive. Therefore,
curriculum designers need to look for ways of linking subject-matter to students
own experience, and concentrate on the developmental structure of the subject-
matter (that is, the sequence in which the subject-matter is most easily and
naturally learned). 

Designers who are developing a curriculum organized around a given subject-

area (for example, World War II) will look at the facts, concepts, and skills related
to, or encompassed by, that subject area, and plan activities that will lead
students from their prior experiences into mastery of the elements of the subject
area. 

A variant of the subject-area-centered curriculum is one that is focused on a

discipline.  In this case, the center of the curriculum is the conceptual structures
and processes that define the discipline and inform the work of people within the
discipline.  Students engage in activities that imitate the activities of scholars in
the field.  For example, history or sociology students may write research papers
that utilize primary source materials; chemistry students will perform key
experiments from the history of chemistry; or literature students will write, edit,
and perform their own plays.  (cf. Bruner). 

The problem with discipline-centered curriculums is that they are likely to ignore
the knowledges and skills that lie between and among the various disciplines but
which may be central in the lives or futures of the students. For example,
students need to learn the relationship between science, technology, and culture;
these relationships are usually ignored by the sciences themselves.  One way
around this problem is to center activities not on a given discipline but on a
broad field including several disciplines.  Obvious examples are “social studies,”
general science, and integrated mathematics, which merge several separate
“fields” into an interdisciplinary subject area. These broad fields, or
interdisciplinary subject areas, allow for more correlation, integration, and holism
than strict disciplinary studies. 

Broad fields can also be defined around conceptual clusters, such as “Science,
Technology, and Society,” Darwinism, The Renaissance, Ancient Greece, or
Political Economy, or overarching themes, such as “Colonialism” or “Rituals.” The
various concepts, skills, and attitudes related to these clusters of concepts can
be “mapped” utilizing a concept map or “web” (O+H p 248) which can then serve
as the template for the development of a web site. The interrelationships among
the subject areas and topics involved in the broad field or in the specific
implications of an overarching theme can be the basis for activities in which
students compare and contrast related areas, developing interdisciplinary
understandings and metacognitions which can serve to organize the complexity
of real-world knowledge. 
Web sites designed to support interdisciplinary or thematic units might include a
wide selection of resources, along with a menu of activities or essential questions
designed to foster student inquiry into relationships the exist among these
resources. 

A final way that subject-matter can be the organizing center of a curriculum is to

focus on certain processes, such a “problem-solving,” “decision-making,”
“computer programming,” or “questioning.” Each of these processes can involve
a wide variety of subject-matters or specific problems and issues. A variety of
activities can guide students toward increasingly sophisticated models of the
process—models that include the ways in which the process is varied to meet
differing goals. 

Learner-centered

Dewey’s emphasis on native impulses of the child (socialize, construct, inquire,

create) 
Negotiated curriculum 
Interest-centered curriculum 
Freierian dialogic education 
Hunkins: disrupt the status quo of students’ understanding 
Humanistic

Can emphasize development of fully-functioning students, through focus on

subjective, feeling, perceiving, becoming, valuing, growing (Maslow); curriculum
encourages the tapping of personal resources of self-understanding, self-
concept, personal responsibility (Carl Rogers) 
Confluent education: strive to blend subjective and intuitive with the objective 
Curriculum should provide students with alternatives from which they can choose
what to feel 
Participation, nonauthoritarian 
Development of self as most important objective 

Transcendent education

Concept of wholeness of experience 

Give students opportunity to take a journey, to reflect on that journey, and to
relate that journey to others, past, present, future, emphasizes dispositions of
humans for hope, creativity, awareness, doubt and faith, wonder, awe, and
reverence (O+H p. 257) 

Problem-centered

Planned prior to arrival of students, but willing to adjust to fit needs of students 
Problem can be interdisciplinary 
Life situations 
core designs 
social problem/reconstructionist designs 
Social problems, social reconstructionism; educators potentially affect social
change through curriculum development 
Engages learner in analyzing severe problems facing mankind 
Furthering the good of society 

Example problems (Clift and Shane, quoted in O+H p 262).:

What policies shall govern our future use of technology? 

At a global level, what shall be our goals, and how can we reach them? 
What shall we identify as the “good life”? 
How shall we deploy our limited resources in meeting the needs of various
groups of people? 
How shall we equalize opportunity, and how shall we reduce the gap between
the “haves” and “have-nots”? 
How can we maximize the value of mass media, especially television? 
What shall be made of psychological, chemical, and electronic approaches to
behavioral modification? 
What steps can we take to ensure the integrity of our political, economic, and
military systems? 
What, if anything, are we willing to relinquish, and in what order? 
And, what honorable compromises and solutions shall we make as we
contemplate the above questions? 
 

Issue for discussion:

Ornstein and Hunkins write (p. 237-38): 

Even though design decisions are essential, it appears that curricula in schools
are not the result of careful design deliberations. In most school districts, overall
curricular designs receive little attention.  Curriculum often exists as disjointed
clusters of content organized as particular items that frequently duplicate and/or
conflict with other items.  Robert Zais has noted that many courses in the schools
curricula are really the result of current 'educational' fashion and not careful
deliberations about design. 

FOUR TWENTIETH CENTURY THEORIES OF EDUCATION

Major themes identified by George F. Kneller in chapter three of Introduction to the

Philosophy of Education

PROGRESSIVISM (John Dewey, William H. Kilpatrick, John Childs)

1. Education should be life itself, not a preparation for living.

2. Learning should be directly related to the interests of the child.

3. Learning through problem solving should take precedence over the inculcating of
subject matter.

4. The teacher's role is not to direct but to advise.

5. The school should encourage cooperation rather than competition.

6. Only democracy permits - indeed encourages - the free interplay of ideas and
personalities that is a necessary condition of true growth.

PERENNIALISM (Robert Hutchins, Mortimer Adler)

1. Despite differing environments, human nature remains the same everywhere; hence,
education should be the same for everyone.

2. Since rationality is man's highest attribute, he must use it to direct his instinctual nature
in accordance with deliberately chosen ends.

3. It is education's task to import knowledge of eternal truth.

4. Education is not an imitation of life but a preparation for it.

5. The student should be taught certain basic subjects that will acquaint him with the
world's permanencies.

6. Students should study the great works of literature, philosophy, history, and science in
which men through the ages have revealed their greatest aspirations and achievements.

ESSENTIALISM (William Bagley, Herman Horne)

1. Learning, of its very nature, involves hard work and often unwilling application.

2. The initiative in education should lie with the teacher rather than with the pupil.

3. The heart of the educational process is the assimilation of prescribed subject matter.

4. The school should retain traditional methods of mental discipline.

RECONSTRUCTIONISM (George Counts, Theodore Brameld)

1. Education must commit itself here and now to the creation of a new social order that
will fulfill the basic values of our culture and at the same time harmonize with the
underlying social and economic forces of the modern world.

2. The new society must be a genuine democracy, whose major institutions and resources
are controlled by the people themselves.

3. The child, the school, and education itself are conditioned inexorably by social and
cultural forces.

4. The teacher must convince his pupils of the validity and urgency of the
reconstructionist solution, but he must do so with scrupulous regard for democratic
procedures.
5. The means and ends of education must be completely re-fashioned to meet the
demands of the present cultural crisis and to accord with the findings of the behavioral
sciences.