Key Concepts for Understanding Curriculum

Colin Marsh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781135265526
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Key Concepts for Understanding Curriculum is an invaluable guide for all involved in curriculum matters. Now fully updated, this revised and enlarged fourth edition provides not only a solid grounding in the subject but also covers the latest trends and issues affecting the field. Written in Marsh's clear and accessible style, the book details the strengths, weaknesses and controversies around major concepts in curriculum, including

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• curriculum planning and development

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• curriculum management

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• teaching perspectives

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• collaborative involvement in curriculum

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• curriculum ideology.

Now updated with new chapters on curriculum models, school-based curriculum development, learning studies, ICT developments in assessment, the new edition includes extra detail on standards and essential learning factors that have recently been introduced in a number of countries, including the UK, USA and Australia.

This up-to-date edition of a definitive text will be essential reading for anyone involved in curriculum planning or development. It will be especially useful to students training to be teachers, and practising teachers following professional development programmes.

Part I
Introduction

Chapter 1
What is curriculum?

Introduction

Defining the word curriculum is no easy matter. Perhaps the most common definition derives from the word’s Latin root, which means ‘racecourse’. Indeed, for many students, the school curriculum is a race to be run, a series of obstacles or hurdles (subjects) to be passed. It is important to keep in mind that schools in Western civilization have been heavily influenced since the fourth century BC by the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle and that the word curriculum has been used historically to describe the subjects taught during the classical period of Greek civilization. The interpretation of the word curriculum broadened in the twentieth century to include subjects other than the classics. Today, school documents, newspaper articles, committee reports and many academic textbooks refer to any and all subjects offered or prescribed as ‘the curriculum of the school’.

In the 1970s Pinar (1974) produced a different term, ‘currere’—the Latin infinitive of curriculum, because he wanted to highlight the running (or lived experience). He has subsequently elaborated on this term (Pinar et al., 1995; Pinar, 2004) and has emphasized its value in self-study via an autobiographical method.

One useful starting point when studying what is curriculum is to consider three levels, namely the ‘planned curriculum’, the ‘enacted curriculum’ and the ‘experienced curriculum’ (Marsh and Willis, 2007).

The planned curriculum is all about what knowledge is of most worth—the important goals and objectives. Campbell (2006) refers to this as ‘curricular authority’—the legitimacy of standardized curricular guidelines.

The enacted curriculum deals with professional judgements about the type of curriculum to be implemented and evaluated. Teachers have to judge the appropriate pedagogical knowledge to use. As noted by Campbell (2006), teachers’ professional authority in enacting the curriculum may cause conflicts with the planned curriculum. Harris (2005) describes some of the contestation that can occur between a curriculum plan (for example a history syllabus) and how it is implemented (enacted).

The experienced curriculum refers to what actually happens in the classroom. As noted by Smith and Lovat (2003), lived experience defies complete description either before or after it happens—it is individual, ongoing and unpredictable (Marsh and Willis, 2007). Kennedy (2005) notes that curriculum experiences are no longer confined to the classroom. There is an increasing gap now between “‘official’ school knowledge and real-world knowledge to which students have access through information technology” (p. 37). He suggests that a major issue for school curriculum in the twenty-first century is how to ‘create a sense of community and common values in a context where knowledge cannot be restricted in any way and where individual control is much more powerful’ (p. 37).

McNeil (2003) concentrates upon the enacted curriculum but takes it further by highlighting the live curriculum rather than the inert, dead curriculum. He contends that the live curriculum is when teachers and students engage in classroom activities that are meaningful.

Much earlier, Whitehead (1929) used the metaphor of romance to characterize the rhythm of curriculum. As reported in Walker and Soltis (2004), he argued that ‘we should begin an engagement with any subject in a romantic way, feeling excitement in its presence, being aroused by its attractiveness, and enjoying its company’ (p. 44).

Tomlinson and Germundson (2007) elaborate on the rhythm of curriculum by comparing teaching to creating jazz. The enacted curriculum for these authors is characterized by a teacher blending musical sounds: ‘blue notes for expressive purposes and syncopation and swing to surprise … to create curriculum with the soul of jazz—curriculum that gets under the skin of young learners’ (p. 27).

Some definitions of curriculum

Many writers advocate their own preferred definition of curriculum, which emphasizes other meanings or connotations, particularly those the term has taken on recently. According to Portelli (1987), more than 120 definitions of the term appear in the professional literature devoted to curriculum, presumably because authors are concerned about either delimiting what the term means or establishing new meanings that have become associated with it.

Hlebowitsh (1993) criticizes commentators in the curriculum field who focus ‘only on certain facets of early curriculum thought while ignoring others’ (p. 2).

We need to be watchful, therefore, about definitions that capture only a few of the various characteristics of curriculum (Toombs and Tierney, 1993), especially those that are partisan or biased.

Oliva (1997) also points out that definitions of curriculum can be conceived in narrow or broad ways. He suggests that differences in the substance of definitions of curriculum are largely due to whether the emphasis is upon:

• purposes of goals of the curriculum (for example a curriculum is to develop reflective thinking);
• contexts within which the curriculum is found (for example a curriculum is to develop the individual learner in all aspects of growth); or
• strategies used throughout the curriculum (for example a curriculum is to develop problem-solving processes).

Portelli (1987), drawing on a metaphor developed by Soltis (1978), notes: ‘Those who look for the definition of curriculum are like a sincere but misguided centaur hunter, who even with a fully provisioned safari and a gun kept always at the ready, nonetheless will never require the services of a taxidermist’ (p. 364).

The incompleteness of any definition notwithstanding, certain definitions of the term can provide insights about common emphases and characteristics within the general idea of curriculum. Consider, for example, the following definitions of curriculum:

• Curriculum is the ‘permanent’ subjects that embody essential knowledge.
• Curriculum is those subjects that are most useful for contemporary living.
• Curriculum is all planned learnings for which the school is responsible.
• Curriculum is the totality of learning experiences so that students can attain general skills and knowledge at a variety of learning sites.
• Curriculum is what the students construct from working with the computer and its various networks, such as the Internet.
• Curriculum is the questioning of authority and the searching for complex views of human situations.

Definition 1

Curriculum is such ‘permanent’ subjects as grammar, reading, logic, rhetoric, mathematics, and the greatest books of the Western world that best embody essential knowledge.

An example is the National Curriculum enacted in the United Kingdom in 1988, which prescribed the curriculum in terms of three core and seven foundational subjects, including specific content and specific goals for student achievement in each subject.

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation introduced into the US in 2001 requires tests in reading and maths annually for students in grades 3–8 and once in high school. This is an unprecedented focus on two traditional subjects, reading and maths. What is not tested are subjects such as history, art, civics, music and physical education and these are deemed by many students as not worth knowing (Guilfoyle, 2006).

Problems posed by the definition This definition suggests that the curriculum is limited to only a few academic subjects. It assumes that what is studied is what is learned. It does not address questions such as: does the state of knowledge change? If so, shouldn’t the subjects making up the curriculum also change? What makes learning such subjects essential? Goodson and Marsh (1996) point out that the National Curriculum in the United Kingdom is simply a reconstitution of the subjects included in the Secondary Regulations of 1904, suggesting that ‘historical amnesia allows curriculum reconstruction to be presented as curriculum revolution’ (p. 157). Griffith (2000) contends that a knowledge-based curriculum such as the National Curriculum does not exist independently of space and time. It should not be considered ahistorically, for it is neither neutral, factual nor value free.

Definition 2

Curriculum is those subjects that are most useful for living in contemporary society.

The subjects that make up this curriculum are usually chosen in terms of major present-day issues and problems within society, but the definition itself does not preclude individual students from making their own choices about which subjects are most useful.

According to Rothstein, Wilder and Jacobsen (2007) a balanced curriculum should be concerned about contemporary living skills such as critical thinking, project-based learning and social skills.

Wilson (2002) argues that curriculum must include higher-order skills such as teaching students to think critically and to communicate complex ideas clearly.

Problems posed by the definition This definition seems to imply that what is contemporary has more value than what is long-lasting. It encourages schools and students to accommodate themselves to society as it exists instead of attempting to improve it. It leaves open questions such as: what accounts for stability in the curriculum? What is useful knowledge? If useful practical skills are increasingly emphasized, what becomes of intellectual development?

Definition 3

Curriculum is all planned learnings for which the school is responsible.

‘Planned learnings’ can be long written documents specifying content, shorter lists of intended learning outcomes, or simply the general ideas of teachers about what students should know. Exponents of curriculum as a plan include Saylor, Alexander, and Lewis (1981), Beauchamp (1981) and Posner (1998).

Problems posed by the definition This definition seems to assume that what is studied is learned. It may limit ‘planned learnings’ to those that are easiest to ach...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of illustrations
• Preface
• PART I Introduction
• PART II Curriculum planning and development
• PART III Curriculum management
• PART IV Teaching perspectives
• PART V Collaborative involvement in curriculum
• PART VI Curriculum ideology
• Bibliography