The Curriculum

Theory and Practice

A V Kelly

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781446245545
• Edition: 6
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Curricula

?This book will be of interest to educational practitioners, and many other professionals concerned with the education and development of the young? - ESCalate

`A very well-respected book [and a] Curriculum classic...[which offers] balance to current official publications...One of its strengths is the coherent argument that runs throughout. It is very much a product of the wide knowledge and experience of the author.? - Jenny Houssart, Senior Lecturer, Department of Learning, Curriculum & Communication, Institute of Education, University of London, UK

Praise for previous editions:

`I use this book as an essential course text for a module on curriculum theory. It is an excellent text for the whole course?

`Vic Kelly?s writing is always concise and informative, but also at times challenging?

`A most comprehensive text that takes the reader beyond content/balance issues values, beliefs and assumptions on the curriculum?

This is the sixth edition of a book that has been regularly revised and updated since it was first published in the mid-1970s. A V Kelly?s now classic work focuses on the philosophical and political dimensions of curriculum, and especially on the implications for schools and societies of various forms of curriculum.

The book outlines what form a curriculum should take if it is concerned to promote a genuine form of education for a genuinely democratic society. Kelly summarises and explains the main aspects of curriculum theory, and shows how these can and should be translated into practice, in order to create an educational and democratic curriculum for all schools at all levels.

The book also seeks to show that the politicization of the school curriculum has led to the establishment of policies and practices which demonstrate a failure to understand these principles of curriculum theory and practice. As a result, policies and practices have been implemented which fall short of being adequate.

In view of the rapid pace of educational change imposed by various governments over the last 35 years, including New Labour, this book is more relevant than ever.

1	The Curriculum and the Study of the Curriculum

Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten

(B.F. Skinner, 1964: 484)

It is stating the obvious to assert that education has changed drastically in the last twenty or thirty years. Both in the United Kingdom and elsewhere many important modifications have been made to all aspects of the education system. Nor is it surprising that the nature and structure of our education system should have been changing so extensively at a time when we have been experiencing social change of an equally dramatic kind, much of it prompted by rapid technological advance. The education system is a social institution which should be expected to change along with other such institutions. It would be more surprising, not to say disturbing, if the education system were to stand still while all else changed. And it is the need to ensure that it continues to develop, and that it responds appropriately not only to other changes in society but also to our increasing understanding of the educational process itself, which is, or should be, the central concern of Educational Studies and especially of Curriculum Studies.

One feature that characterized curriculum change in the latter part of the last century was the increased incidence of planning and preparation in curriculum development. Most of the curriculum change we saw before that was of a kind best described as unplanned ‘drift’ (Hoyle, 1969a). However, when in 1957 Russia launched its Sputnik 1 space rocket, the West, in particular the United States, fearing that it was falling behind in the race towards increased technological capability, began to look closely and deliberately at the curriculum, particularly its technological and creative dimensions. It was this which led soon after, in 1964, to the establishment of the Schools Council in Britain. Thus educationists began to see the need for planned innovation, to recognize that if educational change is to keep pace with and match changes in society, if it is at the same time to maintain those standards and values which may be seen as transcending particular times and particular societies, it must be deliberately managed rather than merely left to happen. To recognize this is not, of course, to be committed to a totally revolutionary approach to curriculum development. The advantages of evolution over revolution are at least as evident in education as elsewhere. It is, however, to acknowledge that the process of evolution can be smoother, quicker and more effective, if it is not left to chance but implemented according to carefully thought-out strategies.

Recent experience has reinforced the case for curriculum evolution rather than revolution. For the shift we have seen towards central political control of the school curriculum has sometimes been revolutionary in its effect, so that it has often been far from smooth and thus less effective than it might have been.

One reason for this has been that there has been a failure to recognize that the changes which have occurred in society have been social, moral and political as well as, indeed as a consequence of, technological and economic developments. The natural evolution of the curriculum was reflecting this, especially in terms of attempts to overcome privilege and inequality and to move towards a more truly egalitarian system. Direct political intervention, by concentrating on the economic functions of the educational system, has largely ignored that dimension of educational provision along with its responsibility for promoting the personal development of the young, thus activating all of the consequences which that omission has for the quality of life in society.

It has also led to a technicist approach to the study of education by ignoring all or most of the insights which had been derived from explorations which had sought to go beyond concerns of mere methodology, to ask the ‘why’ questions concerning educational provision as well as those restricted to the ‘how’. These insights have thus been placed at risk, and it is the central concern of this book, as has already been pointed out, to regain those insights and to reaffirm this kind of study of education and curriculum.

It is the aim of this chapter, then, to identify what is involved in this, to outline some of the essential ingredients both of the practice of curriculum planning and development and the study of curriculum. All or most of these points will be examined in greater detail in the chapters that follow, but an overall framework, a rationale, a cognitive map offered at the outset may help to establish and maintain the interrelationship of the many factors involved in curriculum planning.

What is the curriculum?

The first need is to achieve some clarity over what we are to understand by the term ‘curriculum’. It is a term which is used with several meanings and a number of different definitions of it have been offered, so that it is important that we establish at the beginning what it should be taken to signify throughout this book, and, perhaps more importantly, what it should not be taken to mean.

The educational curriculum

From much of what follows in this book it will be clear that the term ‘curriculum’ can be, and is, used, for many different kinds of programme of teaching and instruction. Indeed, as we shall see, quite often this leads to a limited concept of the curriculum, defined in terms of what teaching and instruction is to be offered and sometimes also what its purposes, its objectives, are. Hence we see statements of the curriculum for the teaching of the most basic courses in many different contexts. We shall also see that much of the advice which has been offered for curriculum planning is effective only at the most simplistic levels, for teaching of a largely unsophisticated and usually unproblematic kind.

For this kind of definition fails to take account of the educational or moral dimensions of the school curriculum. To take an extreme view, this kind of model could be used to help us plan a curriculum which most people would regard as being quite immoral – to limit the pupil’s scope for criticism, for example, to ensure political conformity and obedience or even to promote racist or religious intolerance.

Throughout this book, however, the concern will be with what we will be advocating as the educational curriculum. The focus will be not just on how one might plan any kind of curriculum, but on what it is that will ensure that our curriculum is justifiable in educational terms.

It is important, therefore, that at the outset we briefly define what we will mean by the term ‘educational’, because in all the many different dimensions of the curriculum which we will be exploring the concern will be to identify those which are acceptable educationally, that is, those which satisfy our educational criteria, and, perhaps more importantly, those which do not.

It is not the intention here, or at any stage, to debate these criteria in detail. It is important, however, that they be clearly stated. There is a sense in which the adjective ‘educational’ is as problematic as the adjective ‘moral’; indeed, this is because the educational principles we are propounding are fundamentally moral principles, so that it must be accepted that they must be open to debate. There is also a sense, however, in which, if we accept that the curriculum we are discussing is a curriculum for education in a democratic society, its problematic nature, along with that of its moral base, begins to evaporate or at least to become less complex.

For few would wish to argue – at least openly – with the claim that, within a democratic society, an educational curriculum at all levels should be concerned to provide a liberating experience by focusing on such things as the promotion of freedom and independence of thought, of social and political empowerment, of respect for the freedom of others, of an acceptance of variety of opinion, and of the enrichment of the life of every individual in that society, regardless of class, race or creed.

Conversely, it is also the case that few would be prepared to argue – again at least openly – against the claim that the opposites of these principles have no place in an educational curriculum. Some of them, such as, for example, the promotion of intolerance, must be positively excluded from it. Others, however, such as that vocational focus which has become increasingly in evidence in recent years, while not meriting exclusion from the curriculum, must be recognized as not fitting appropriately with this definition of education, so that, to the extent that the emphasis of the school curriculum is on its vocational concerns and dimensions, to that extent it will fail to meet our criteria for an educational curriculum.

That the curriculum for schools in England and Wales has become increasingly vocational, almost to the exclusion of all considerations of education, is apparent from three related recent developments. First, the British government has decided that qualifications, claimed to be equivalent to A-level passes, are to be awarded by such commercial organizations as McDonald’s. Secondly, schools have been warned that they must not attempt to direct their pupils away from the newly devised vocational diploma towards more academic A-level subjects. And, thirdly, parents are being addressed by television advertisements suggesting that they think again about encouraging their off-spring towards academic study. These developments amount to a clear statement that the school curriculum is to be thought of in terms of its vocational rather than its educational content and purposes – at least for some pupils. It thus represents a return to the tripartite philosophy of the era prior to the 1944 Education Act with its promise of education for all, according to age, aptitude and ability. It also has implications for the role of state schooling in society and for the future of society’s democratic base.

The rest of this book will be concerned to discuss and explore the many dimensions of curriculum from a genuinely educational perspective and to identify in all of these dimensions those aspects which satisfy these educational principles and those which do not.

With this in mind, there are several important aspects of the curriculum which we should immediately note.

The total curriculum

It will be helpful if, from the start, we distinguish the use of the word ‘curriculum’ to denote the content of a particular subject or area of study from the use of it to refer to the total programme of an educational institution. Many people still equate a curriculum with a syllabus and thus limit their planning to a consideration of the content or the body of knowledge they wish to transmit or a list of the subjects to be taught or both. The inadequacies of this view of curriculum as content will be explored more fully in Chapters 2 and 3. It will be immediately clear, however, that this kind of definition of curriculum is limiting in more than one way and that it is likely to hamper rather than to assist the planning of curriculum change and development. Indeed, some of the inadequacies of previous attempts at curriculum planning can be attributed to the fact that it has tended to proceed in a rather piecemeal way within subjects rather than according to any overall rationale.

This dimension of curriculum development is, of course, important, but it is the rationale of the total curriculum that must have priority. ‘Schools should plan their curriculum as a whole. The curriculum offered by a school, and the curriculum received by individual pupils, should not be simply a collection of separate subjects’ (DES/WO, 1981: 12). At the very least, the total curriculum must be accorded prior consideration, and a major task that currently faces teachers and curriculum planners is to work out a basis on which some total scheme can be built.

Any definition of curriculum, if it is to be practically effective and productive, must offer much more than a statement about the knowledge-content or merely the subjects which schooling is to ‘teach’ or ‘transmit’ or ‘deliver’. It must go far beyond this to an explanation, and indeed a justification, of the purposes of such transmission and an exploration of the effects that exposure to such knowledge and such subjects is likely to have, or is intended to have, on its recipients – indeed it is from these deeper concerns, as we saw in the previous section, that any curriculum planning worthy of the name must start.

These wider concerns will be the focus of our discussions in this book, and we will understand by the term ‘curriculum’ the overall rationale for any educational programme. Much of what is said about curriculum development will, of course, be of relevance to the problems of developments within individual subject areas, but the prime concern must be with the totality.

The ‘hidden’ curriculum

A further question that needs to be resolved is whether we are to place any limit on the kinds of school activity that we will allow to count as part of the curriculum when it is defined in this way.

For example, some educationists speak of the ‘hidden curriculum’, by which they mean those things which pupils learn at school because of the way in which the work of the school is planned and organized, and through the materials provided, but which are not in themselves overtly included in the planning or sometimes even in the consciousness of those responsible for the school arrangements. Social roles, for example, are learnt in this way, it is claimed, as are sex roles and attitudes to many other aspects of living. Implicit in any set of arrangements are the attitudes and values of those who create them, and these will be communicated to pupils in this accidental and perhaps even sinister way. This factor is of course of particular significance when the curriculum is planned and imposed by government.

Some would argue of course that the values implicit in the arrangements made by schools for their pupils are quite clearly in the consciousness of teachers and planners, again especially when the planners are politicians, and are equally clearly accepted by them as part of what pupils should learn in school, even though they are not overtly recognized by the pupils themselves. In other words, those who design curricula deliberately plan the schools’ ‘expressive culture’. If this is the case, then, the curriculum is ‘hidden’ only to or from the pupils, and the values to be learnt clearly form a part of what is planned for pupils. They must, therefore, be accepted as fully a part of the curriculum, and most especially as an important focus for the kind of study of curriculum with which we are concerned here, not least because important questions must be asked concerning the legitimacy of such practices.

Others, however, take a less definite and perhaps less cynical line on this but wish nevertheless to insist that teachers do have a responsibility here. They accept that some of the values and attitudes learnt via the hidden curriculum are not directly intended by teachers, but believe that, since these things are being learnt as a by-product of what is planned and of the materials provided, teachers should be aware of and accept responsibility for what is going on, for what their pupils are learning in this unplanned way. It is this view which is at the heart of attempts to eliminate implicit racism and sexism from the experiences children receive at school.

It is because of the all-pervasive nature of such experiences and hidden forms of learning, however, and because of the assumed impossibility of eliminating such unplanned, and thus uncontrolled, learning, that some theorists, such as Ivan Illich (1971), have recommended a ‘deschooling’ of society and have claimed that all forms of organized schooling must involve the imposition of the values implicit in the selection of the content of such schooling on its recipients, and thus constitute an invidious form of social and political control through the distribution of knowledge. This is an important point and one to which we shall return in Chapter 2. What it suggests which is of importance here, however, is that, if we are not to go to the lengths of abolishing schooling altogether, we cannot merely ignore these hidden aspects of the school curriculum, and certainly must not adopt a definition of curriculum which excludes them from all critical consideration. Rather our definition must embrace all the learning that goes on in schools whether it is expressly planned and intended or is a by-product of our planning and/or practice. For it is difficult to exonerate teachers completely from responsibility for these implicit forms of learning. Rather they need to be sensitized to them and helped to recognize and identify the hidden implications of some of the materials and the experiences they offer their pupils.

The planned curriculum and the received curriculum

Much the same point emerges when we consider the distinction which has sometimes been made between the official curriculum and the actual curriculum, or between the planned curriculum and the received curriculum. By the official or planned curriculum is meant what is laid down in syllabuses, prospectuses and so on; the actual or received curriculum is the reality of the pupils’ experience. The difference between them may be conscious or unconscious, the cause of any mismatch being either a deliberate attempt by the teachers or others to deceive, to make what they offer appear more attractive than it really is, or merely the fact that, since teachers and pupils are human, the realities of any course will never fully match up to the hopes and intentions of those who have planned it.

Both of these distinctions are important and we would be foolish to go very far in our examination of the curriculum without acknowledging both the gaps that must inevitably exist between theory and practice and the predilection of some teachers, and more especially national planners, for elaborate ‘packaging’ of thei...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1 The Curriculum and the Study of the Curriculum
• 2 Knowledge and the Curriculum
• 3 Curriculum as Content and Product
• 4 Curriculum as Process and Development
• 5 Curriculum Development, Change and Control
• The dissemination of innovation and change
• School-based curriculum development
• Action research and ‘the teacher as researcher’
• Changing the curriculum through centralized control
• 6 Assessment, Evaluation, Appraisal and Accountability
• 7 The Politicization of the School Curriculum
• 8 What the Average Politician Understands about Education
• 9 The Flaws Endemic to Central Planning by Politicians
• 10 A Democratic and Educational Curriculum
• A chronology of curriculum development and change
• Bibliography
• Government reports and other official publications referred to in the text
• Author index
• Subject index