nature of curriculum

1. The origins and nature of curriculum
• The authors explain the nature of curriculum
in terms of being centrally about knowledge,
reality and truth and the assumptions
underpinning each. They go on to explain that
what is selected as valid knowledge may vary
from different points of view with dominance
and power playing a role in settling the issue.

2. Look at the 12 definitions in the Lovet
and Smith reading
• Analyse each definition.
• Identify the view that each definition holds.

3. What is the nature of curriculum?
Curriculum is essentially about knowledge, truth and
reality
1. Any curriculum is centrally about knowledge – what we
know, how we know, what ought to be taught and
learned –
Definition 2: The curriculum should consist entirely of
knowledge from the disciplines
Based on the assumptions about the nature of knowledge
• Objective – everywhere the same or universally true,
apart from the knower,
• Subjective – personal and constructed by the knower

4. 2. Curriculum and socialization of
learners
• We spoke about this already – Lovet and
Smith reinforce it…
• One of the purposes of the curriculum is to
socialize the new generation – to accept social
norms.

5. 3. Curriculum as a selection
• Cannot teach all knowledge, skills, values,
select some
• What is selected is not neutral but biased in
favour of dominant groups.
• In this perspective the curriculum reflects the
experience of those doing the selecting. Eg.
Gender, racial, sexuality, social class biases
encoded in disciplinary knowledge

6. 4. Curriculum and reality
• But the curriculum creates reality for learners
– that regulates, shapes their consciousness,
their identity
• for some the reality matches with their own
life experiences while for others it is
conflicting even alienating. How does this
impact performance?
• Is it wrong to introduce learners to ‘other’
realities?

7. 5. Curriculum and Truth
• values, principles, ethics –
• what is right or wrong behavior,
• what is good, what is beautiful or aesthetics –
• beauty and quality of human experience
• So some topics are deemed right and good
others are not!

8. 6. Curriculum and context
Global, national, regional, local, school context.

9. Broader influences on the curriculum
• Historical,
• Political,
• Social and
• Economic factors.

10. Terminology
• Curriculum as intention
• Curriculum as process
• Curriculum as product

11. Levels of curriculum planning -
• National,
• Provincial,
• School,
• Classroom,
• Subject, etc.

12. Normative and descriptive
• Normative: how things should be…e.g. the
intended curriculum
• Descriptive: how things are…the actual
curriculum…

13. The Hidden Curriculum
(not explicit in the article)

14. Also known as the implicit, covert
curriculum
…those things which pupils learn at school
because of the way in which the work of the
school is planned and organized, but which are
not in themselves included in the planning or
even in the consciousness of those responsible
for school arrangements. (Kelly, 1982)
• E.g. boys are more important than girls
• In a democratic school learners are more
friendly?

15. • Ivan Illich coined the concept of a ‘hidden
curriculum’. It has become a well-known
phrase in the study of education. What it
means is that the overt curriculum of schools
and other establishments where formal
education takes place is much less important,
in the long run, than the covert process of
subtle repression, which is the real curriculum
(Pandor 2005).

16. This is the critical view of curriculum:
It reproduces inequalities: race, class and gender
based!