Introduction to Education Studies:

Chapter 5:
CURRICULUM

Bartlett, S. & Burton, D. (2007).

SAGE Publications
 Introduction to the chapter
 Chapter 5 focuses on:
the meaning of curriculum,
 different views regarding the nature and
organisation of knowledge,
curriculum frameworks that involve an
analysis of aims, content, pedagogy and
assessment.
 Introduction
• The curriculum of educational establishments
such as schools, colleges and universities has a
powerful legal basis.
 Introduction
• Curriculum represents an important social
requirement, which is regulated and kept
under strict control by various institutions.
 Introduction
• Changing the curriculum can be a difficult
process.
 Introduction
• Examination authorities significantly influence
the form and shape of curriculum subjects and
the subject practices of teachers.
 Introduction
• Teachers interpret the curriculum within the
context of their own situation.
 Introduction
• Thus, teachers and teaching can be differently
oriented in terms of their subject and general
professional practices according to:
 their own preferences,
the culture of the department and
the general ethos of the school.
 Introduction
• This represents a significant power of control
by teachers but at the same time they are
limited with their role in the school and
required to behave in certain ways and to
subscribe to certain values.
 Introduction
• There is always a tension between a teacher's
capacity to act on their individual judgement
and to conform to external constraints.
 Introduction
• Teachers do not simply deliver the national
curriculum and perform policy.
 Introduction
• They also face contextual circumstances such as
dilemmas over:
 distribution of resources,
 acts of violence,
 complex patterns of interpersonal and group
relationships,
 power struggles for control and dominance,
 engage in arguments over achievement, and
 issues about what constitutes 'really useful
knowledge' for different groups of students.
 The nature of the curriculum
• 'Curriculum' is a term frequently used in a
variety of ways by those involved in education.
 The nature of the curriculum
• For Hayes (2006), curriculum may be defined
as 'the sum total of what pupils need to
learn' (p. 57).
 The nature of the curriculum
• Sometimes the term 'curriculum' is used to
refer to the content taught on a course.
• However, this is more properly called a
syllabus.
 The nature of the curriculum
• A curriculum is more than this and according
to Jenkins and Shipman:
 The nature of the curriculum
• A curriculum is the formation and
implementation of an educational proposal
to be taught and learned within the school or
other institution and for which that institution
accepts responsibility at three levels:
its rationale,
its actual implementation and
its effects.
 The nature of the curriculum
• Kelly (2004) suggests that the curriculum is all
the experiences that the school provides.
 The nature of the curriculum
• A school's curriculum consists of all the
activities designed to promote the
intellectual, personal, social and physical
development of its students.
 The nature of the curriculum
• Curriculum includes not only the formal
program of lessons, but also the 'informal'
program.
 The nature of the curriculum
• That is, curriculum includes extracurricular
activities as well as the:
quality of relationships,
the concern for equality of opportunity,
the values exemplified in the way the school
sets about its task and
the way it is organized and
managed.
 The nature of the curriculum
• Teaching and learning styles strongly
influence the curriculum and in practice they
cannot be separated from it.
 The nature of the curriculum
• A whole curriculum is a particular way of
organizing these different elements.
 The nature of the curriculum
What is taught,
How it is put into a particular arrangement of
learning experiences,
The kind of teaching methods used to 'deliver'
the curriculum, and
How the learning of pupils is assessed
 All these things are factors in what the
curriculum is.
 The nature of the curriculum
• This means that the curriculum is not just a
collection of different subjects.
 The nature of the curriculum
• Subjects may be important but they make up
just part of the whole curriculum.
 The nature of the curriculum
• Understanding the curriculum involves:
exploring what is taught,
why it is taught and
how it is taught (Husbands, 2004).
 The nature of the curriculum
• Kelly suggests that there needs to be
awareness of the differences between the
planned curriculum, what is intended, and the
'received' curriculum, what is actually
experienced and happens.
 The nature of the curriculum
• Kelly also refers to the formal curriculum,
what is timetabled, and the informal
curriculum, what happens outside of the
timetable and could be called 'extracurricular
activities.’
 The nature of the curriculum
• There is a difference between the “informal
curriculum” and the 'hidden curriculum'.
 The nature of the curriculum
• The hidden curriculum refers to the messages
implied by school rituals:
learning how to be obedient,
how to cope with long periods of boredom and
inactivity, and
learning to remain silent in certain formal
social contexts.
 The nature of the curriculum
• The hidden curriculum includes all the
'unofficial' learning that happens.
• For example, the social and emotional
exchanges between pupils.
 The nature of the curriculum
• For these reasons, a study of the curriculum
looks at the unintended experiences as well as
those that are official and planned.
 The nature of the curriculum
• The curriculum represent a particular view of
knowledge and learning.
 The nature of the curriculum
• The curriculum defines what is important in
terms of knowledge and learning.
 The nature of the curriculum
• The curriculum is a social construction that is
at the heart of the education system and gives
shape and form to much of what happens in
schools.
 The nature of the curriculum
• In the curriculum, ideas about knowledge
carry considerable legal, social and moral
force.
 The nature of the curriculum
• The curriculum says, in effect: 'This is the kind
of knowledge that really counts. It may
determine your social future, your capacity to
earn, your right to participate in social
institutions at various levels.’
 The structure of knowledge:
EPISTEMOLOGY
• Epistemology (theory of knowledge) is
concerned with questions of knowledge:
how we know what we know and
how we may orient ourselves to what we don't
know.
 The structure of knowledge:
EPISTEMOLOGY
• Epistemologists may ask questions of
knowledge:
its sources,
its history,
its claims to authority and
where these derive from.
 The structure of knowledge:
EPISTEMOLOGY
• Epistemologists are also concerned with
issues about the relations between
the knower and the known,
teaching and learning,
individuals and institutions
 The structure of knowledge:
EPISTEMOLOGY
• Descartes (1596-1650) is the first thinker of
the modern period to confront the question of
knowledge and consciousness, responding to
the question:
How can I be sure that I know what I know?
 The structure of knowledge:
EPISTEMOLOGY
• For Descartes ,it is self-consciousness that
guarantees knowledge.
 The structure of knowledge:
EPISTEMOLOGY
• Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) pursued a line of
thinking that meant that certainty about
anything could not be guaranteed.
 The structure of knowledge:
EPISTEMOLOGY
• Kant's ideas can be said to be fundamental to
Western thinking.
 The structure of knowledge:
EPISTEMOLOGY
• Rationality was seen as the product of
thought and, through conflicts between
different ideas, new knowledge and ideas
come into existence (Hegel, 1770-1831).
 The structure of knowledge:
EPISTEMOLOGY
• This rationalism came to dominate thinking,
for example Darwin detected progress in the
order of beings in nature through his law of
natural selection.
 The structure of knowledge:
EPISTEMOLOGY
• We are born into a world of knowledge and
meaning that pre-exists the individual.
 The structure of knowledge:
EPISTEMOLOGY
• We don't each of us have to find out
everything for the first time.
 The structure of knowledge:
EPISTEMOLOGY
• We draw on existing and established forms of
knowledge held by others and this raises the
question of authority and power in the process
of knowledge acquisition.
 The structure of knowledge:
EPISTEMOLOGY
• Children may be encouraged to explore the
world around them for themselves.
 The structure of knowledge:
EPISTEMOLOGY
• Some models of education emphasise the
investigative nature of learning but children
must also acquire established skills and
knowledge, like reading, for example, which
they cannot make up for themselves.
 The structure of knowledge:
EPISTEMOLOGY
• This always requires the submission to a prior
authority, an order that precedes the
individual.
 The structure of knowledge:
EPISTEMOLOGY
• Our knowledge of the world is the product of
a complex network of factors:
family background,
formative experiences,
cultural identity,
social class,
gender and
language.
 The structure of knowledge:
EPISTEMOLOGY
• All of these factors contribute to our sense of
who we are, what the world is like and what
constitutes significant knowledge.
 The structure of knowledge:
EPISTEMOLOGY
• Different ways of life and belief systems
inevitably produce different knowledge and
different orientations towards it.
 The structure of knowledge:
EPISTEMOLOGY
• Knowledge comes not just as a body of 'facts'
about the world; it comes packaged in a
certain style.
 The structure of knowledge:
EPISTEMOLOGY
• Official knowledge as expressed, for example,
in the school curriculum may clash with
alternative forms of knowledge that may
belong to the lifestyles and belief systems of
different cultural groups (Eagleton, 2000).
 The structure of knowledge:
EPISTEMOLOGY
• In recent times the awareness of cultural
difference and its impact on schooling has
increased.
 The structure of knowledge:
KNOWLEDGE – ABSOLUTE OR PROVISIONAL?

• Knowledge, no matter how well established

scientifically, cannot be totally fixed and
absolute.
 The structure of knowledge:
KNOWLEDGE – ABSOLUTE OR PROVISIONAL?

• Knowledge is always, in some way, relative

and contingent, even though for the practical
purposes of living we must behave as though
certain knowledge is simply true and reliable.
 The structure of knowledge:
KNOWLEDGE – ABSOLUTE OR PROVISIONAL?

• For example, we may, for good reasons, think

of medicine as a well-established field of
contemporary research and knowledge.
 The structure of knowledge:
KNOWLEDGE – ABSOLUTE OR PROVISIONAL?

• We are aware, however, of the developmental

nature of medical knowledge and that new
discoveries and technologies of treatment are
emerging all the time.
 The structure of knowledge:
KNOWLEDGE – ABSOLUTE OR PROVISIONAL?

• Therefore, scientific, medical truth is not

absolute at any time, but it is often
represented as such or at least as
unquestionably authoritative.
 The structure of knowledge:
ORGANISING KNOWLEDGE AS SUBJECTS

• Influential educational theorist, Basil Bernstein

(1995) considered the organisation of
knowledge in the medieval period, giving an
account of two different and specialised types
of knowledge in the medieval university.
 The structure of knowledge:
ORGANISING KNOWLEDGE AS SUBJECTS

• Mental knowledge is classified, Bernstein

explains, into two different systems:
1. the trivium and
2. the quadrivium.
 The structure of knowledge:
ORGANISING KNOWLEDGE AS SUBJECTS

• Briefly, the trivium is concerned with logic,

grammar and rhetoric;
• The quadrivium is concerned with astronomy,
music, geometry and arithmetic.
 The structure of knowledge:
ORGANISING KNOWLEDGE AS SUBJECTS

• The trivium is studied first and the quadrivium

follows.
• The quadrivium cannot be studied without the
trivium.
 The structure of knowledge:
ORGANISING KNOWLEDGE AS SUBJECTS

• In effect, what Bernstein is describing is how

knowledge came to be divided up in the
medieval period in Europe and organised into
a system.
 The structure of knowledge:
ORGANISING KNOWLEDGE AS SUBJECTS

• Bernstein examines the changing

classifications of knowledge that occur in the
modern period between the nineteenth and
the twentieth century.
 The structure of knowledge:
ORGANISING KNOWLEDGE AS SUBJECTS

• What Bernstein is describing here is the

historically changing patterns of knowledge
and the curriculum.
 The structure of knowledge:
ORGANISING KNOWLEDGE AS SUBJECTS

• The idea of the curriculum as the organisation

of knowledge into separate subject areas has
developed powerfully through state education
systems (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977; Bowles
and Gintis, 1976).
 The structure of knowledge:
ORGANISING KNOWLEDGE AS SUBJECTS

• Hirst (1975) divided knowledge into the following

seven forms:
1. mathematics,
2. physical sciences,
3. human sciences,
4. history,
5. religion,
6. literature and the fine arts,
7. philosophy and moral knowledge.
 The structure of knowledge:
ORGANISING KNOWLEDGE AS SUBJECTS

• In order to be fully educated we need to study

all of these forms.
 The structure of knowledge:
ORGANISING KNOWLEDGE AS SUBJECTS

• Young (1971) considered how knowledge can

be organised through the curriculum and
teaching groups to exercise control over
pupils.
 The structure of knowledge:
ORGANISING KNOWLEDGE AS SUBJECTS

• He was interested in the way that only some

students are given access to high status
knowledge, i.e. those in the top sets who are
seen as the most able.
 The structure of knowledge:
ORGANISING KNOWLEDGE AS SUBJECTS

• Those in the lower sets are given watered

down versions of subject knowledge. They are
often channeled into low status subjects with
a vocational emphasis.
 The structure of knowledge:
ORGANISING KNOWLEDGE AS SUBJECTS

• Thus teachers are 'gatekeepers' to knowledge,

allowing or denying access to students.
 The structure of knowledge:
POSTMODERN PERSPECTIVES ON KNOWLEDGE

• In the postmodern world, knowledge is at the

centre and controlling knowledge is a means
to exercise power.
 The structure of knowledge:
POSTMODERN PERSPECTIVES ON KNOWLEDGE

• Knowledge in this view is always contested

and what we take for progress, towards more
powerful explanations of the world (Harvey,
1991; Lyotard, 1986).
 The structure of knowledge:
POSTMODERN PERSPECTIVES ON KNOWLEDGE

• Education institutions are qualified to grant

social status on individuals, to award them
credentials, and to authorise ideas and
practices with the status of socially significant
knowledge.
 The structure of knowledge:
POSTMODERN PERSPECTIVES ON KNOWLEDGE

• Individuals receive status through

accreditation systems that validate their
knowledge at different levels, thus producing a
knowledge hierarchy.
 The structure of knowledge:
POSTMODERN PERSPECTIVES ON KNOWLEDGE

• In contemporary global conditions, knowledge

is rapidly changing shape and form, largely
under the influence of new, electronic means
of storage and distribution.
 The structure of knowledge:
POSTMODERN PERSPECTIVES ON KNOWLEDGE

• Knowledge becomes more fragmented and

more specialized.
 The structure of knowledge:
POSTMODERN PERSPECTIVES ON KNOWLEDGE

• Hybrid forms of knowledge are produced (as

with cultural studies, for instance).
 The structure of knowledge:
POSTMODERN PERSPECTIVES ON KNOWLEDGE

• The conventional institutions of knowledge -

schools, colleges, universities - required to be
more cost-effective and more productive and
measured against performative criteria.