Curricular theory and theorists Essay

The word broadcast has its origins in the running/chariot tracks of Greece. It was, liter altogethery, a course. In Latin broadcast was a racing chariot currere was to run. A useful starting point for us here might be the definition offered by John Kerr and restrainn up by Vic Kelly in his standard wee on the subject. Kerr defines curriculum as, All the learning which is afore imagination(ip) and guided by the school, whether it is carried on in groups or individually, inside or outside the school. 1 This gives us some basis to move on. For the mo ment all we need to do is highlight two of the key featuresLearning is in function and guided. We permit to specify in advance what we atomic number 18 seeking to pass and how we atomic number 18 to go about it. The definition refers to schooling. We should recognize that our current detention of curriculum theory and recital emerged in the school and in proportion to other schooling ideas such as subject and lesson. In what fol lows we are going to look at four ways of appealing curriculum theory and practice Curriculum as a body of acquaintance to be transmitted. Curriculum as an attempt to achieve accepted ends in students product. Curriculum as process. Curriculum as praxis.Curriculum as a body of companionship to be transmitted Many people tranquil equate a curriculum with a syllabus. Syllabus, naturally, originates from the Greek. Basically it means a concise statement or table of the heads of a discourse, the matters of a treatise, the subjects of a series of lectures. In the form that many of us leave alone perplex been familiar with it is connected with courses leading to examinations. For example, when teachers talk of the syllabus associated with, say, the Cambridge GSCE exam. What we disregard see in such documents is a series of headings with some extra notes which set out the areas that may be examined.A syllabus provide not generally indicate the relative importance of its topics or the come out in which they are to be studied. Those who compile a syllabus tend to follow the traditional textbook approach of an regularise of contents, or a pattern prescribed by a logical approach to the subject, or the shape of a university course in which they may have participated. Thus, an approach to curriculum theory and practice which focuses on syllabus is completely squarely concerned with content. Curriculum is a body of knowledge-content and/or subjects. preparation in this sense is the process by which these are transmitted or delivered to students by the most effective methods that send word be devised 3. Where people alleviate equate curriculum with a syllabus they are likely to nail down 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 in primary schools, have regarded issues of curriculum as of no concern to them, since they have not regarded their task as being to transmit bodies of knowledge in this manner. Curriculum as productThe dominant modes of describing and managing education are today couched in the productive form. Education is most often seen as a technical exercise. Objectives are set, a plan drawn up, and and then applied, and the outcomes (products) measured. In the late 1980s and the 1990s many of the debates about the home(a) Curriculum for schools did not so much concern how the curriculum was thought about as to what its objectives and content might be. It is the work of two American writers Franklin Bobbitt, 1928 and Ralph W. Tyler, 1949 that dominate theory and practice within this tradition.In The Curriculum Bobbitt writes as follows The central theory is simple. Human life, however varied, consists in the performance of special(prenominal) activities. Education that prepares for life is one that prepares definitely and adequately for these specific activities. however numerou s and diverse they may be for any social elucidate they can be discovered. This requires only that one go out into the humankind of affairs and discover the particulars of which their affairs consist. These allow show the abilities, attitudes, habits, appreciations and forms of knowledge that men need. These will be the objectives of the curriculum.They will be numerous, definite and particularized. The curriculum will then be that series of experiences which children and youth must have by way of obtaining those objectives. This way of thinking about curriculum theory and practice was heavily influenced by the development of management thinking and practice. The rise of scientific management is often associated with the name of its main advocate F. W. Taylor. Basically what he proposed was greater division of labor with jobs being simplified an extension of managerial control over all elements of the workplace and cost accounting base on systematic time-and-motion study.All thr ee elements were mired in this conception of curriculum theory and practice. For example, one of the attractions of this approach to curriculum theory was that it involved detailed attention to what people needed to know in order to work, live their lives and so on. A familiar, and more restricted, example of this approach can be found in many training programs, where particular tasks or jobs have been analyzed and broken down into their component elements and lists of competencies drawn up. In other words, the curriculum was not to be the result of armchair speculation tho the product of systematic study.Bobbitts work and theory met with mixed responses. As it stands it is a technical exercise. However, it wasnt criticisms such as this which initially limited the impact of such curriculum theory in the late twenties and 1930s. Rather, the growing influence of progressive, child-centred approaches shifted the ground to more romantic notions of education. Bobbitts long lists of ob jectives and his emphasis on order and structure hardly sit comfortably with such forms. The Progressive movement lost much of its pulsing in the late 1940s in the United States and from that period the work of Ralph W.Tyler, in particular, has made a lasting impression on curriculum theory and practice. He shared Bobbitts emphasis on modestness and relative simplicity. His theory was based on four fundamental questions 1. What educational purposes should the school seek to attain? 2. What educational experience can be provided that is likely to attain these purposes? 3. How can these educational experiences be effectively make? 4. How can we determine whether these purposes are being attained? Like Bobbitt he also placed an emphasis on the formulation of behavioural objectives.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 in-chief(postnominal) to recognize that any statements of objectives of the school should be a statement of changes to take place in the students. We can see how these concerns translate into an ordered use and is very similar to the technical or productive thinking go set out below. 1. Diagnosis of need 2. Formulation of objectives 3. Selection of content 4. Organization of content 5. Selection of learning experiences.