After Studying This Chapter You Should Be Able To

2 PRINCIPLES OF CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT

AFTER STUDYING THIS CHAPTER YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO:

1.  Describe the ten axioms for curriculum development discussed in this chapter.

2.  Illustrate in what way the curriculum is influenced by changes in society.

3.  Describe limitations affecting curriculum changes in a school system and within which curriculum workers must function.

CLARIFICATION OF TERMS

Education is one of the institutions the human race has created to serve certain needs, and, like all human institutions, it responds or should respond to changes in the environment. The institution of education is activated by a curriculum that itself changes in response to forces affecting it. The curriculum of the cave dweller, albeit informal and unstructured, was quite different from increasingly formal types of schooling that the human race invented over subsequent periods of history. Techniques for coping with the woolly mammoth may well have been of paramount concern to prehistoric man.[1] But the woolly mammoth has disappeared, and men and women today must learn to cope with other sources of anxiety like poverty, crime, drug addiction, job insecurities, homelessness, environmental problems, health problems, natural disasters, decreasing natural resources, intercultural and international conflicts, and the military and industrial hazards of nuclear power. At the same time humankind must learn to apply the technological tools that are proliferating in both number and complexity at an astronomical rate—a cause of anxiety in itself—to solve these and other problems. Although no educator—teacher, curriculum coordinator, administrator, or professor—would dream of arguing that techniques for coping with the woolly mammoth should be part of the curriculum of schools at the dawn of the twenty-first century A.D., in the third century of the American republic, the woolly mammoth syndrome still persists. Schools “woolly mammoth” children when they offer a curriculum that does the following:

•  Allows learners to leave school without an adequate mastery of the basic skills.

•  Ill equips learners to find and hold employment when they finish school.

•  Fails to promote attitudes of respect for others, cooperation with others, responsibility for one’s actions, tolerance for others, and preservation of the environment.

•  Holds learners to low expectations.

•  Uses materials that show all children as members of healthy, happy, prosperous, white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant families joyously living in the suburbs.

•  Leaves out the practical knowledge and skills necessary for survival and success in a complex, technological society, such as computer science, knowledge about insurance and taxes, writing a résumé and letter of application for a job, interviewing for a position, intelligent consumerism, and listening and discussion skills. • Omits exposure to the fine arts, including the development of aesthetic appreciation.

•  Distorts truths of the past (“Honest Abe had no faults”), the present (“Every person who is willing to work can find an adequate job”), and the future (“There is no need for residents of fast-growing sections of the country to worry about running out of potable water”).

•  Appeals to short-term interests of students and ignores long-range needs; or, vice versa, appeals to long-range needs and ignores short-term interests.

•  Ignores the health needs of children and youth.

If the curriculum is perceived as a plan for the learning experiences that young people encounter under the direction of the school, its purpose is to provide a vehicle for ordering and directing those experiences. This process of providing the vehicle and keeping it running smoothly is known as curriculum development.

It may be helpful at this point to review the slight distinctions among the following terms: curriculum development, curriculum planning, curriculum improvement, and curriculum evaluation. Curriculum development is the more comprehensive term; it includes planning, implementation, and evaluation. Since curriculum development implies change and betterment, curriculum improvement is often used synonymously with curriculum development, though in some cases improvement is viewed as the result of development.

Curriculum planning is the preliminary phase of curriculum development when the curriculum workers make decisions and take actions to establish the plan that teachers and students will carry out. Planning is the thinking or design phase.

Curriculum implementation is translation of plans into action. During the stage of curriculum planning certain patterns of curriculum organization or reorganization are chosen. These patterns are put into operation at the implementation stage. Ways of delivering the learning experiences, for example, using teaching teams, are taken out of the planning context and made operational. Since curriculum implementation translates plans into action in the classroom, thereby transforming the realm of curriculum into the realm of instruction, the role of the teacher changes from curriculum worker to instructor.

Those intermediate and final phases of development in which results are assessed and successes of both the learners and the programs are determined are curriculum evaluation. On occasion, curriculum revision is used to refer to the process for making changes in an existing curriculum or to the changes themselves and is substituted for curriculum development or improvement. We shall return to the distinctions among curriculum planning, implementation, and evaluation when models of curriculum development are diagrammed and discussed in Chapter 5.

Through the process of curriculum development we can discover new ways for providing more effective pupil learning experiences. The curriculum developer continuously strives to find newer, better, and more efficient means to accomplish the task of educating the young.

TYPES OF CURRICULUM DEVELOPERS

Some curriculum developers excel in the conceptualizing phase (planning), others in carrying out the curricular plan (implementation), and still others in assessing curriculum results (evaluation). Over the centuries the human race has had no shortage of curriculum developers. In a positive vein Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Confucius, and Mohammed could all be called curriculum consultants. They had their respective conceptions of the goals of the human race and recommended behavior that must be learned and practiced to achieve those goals. On the negative side, at a later period in history, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, and Mao Zedong had definite notions and programs to train the young in what to believe and how to behave in a totalitarian society. On the current scene, the curriculum of the madrassas of Moslem countries diverges widely from that of Western nations.

The ranks of the politicians in a democracy have produced curriculum consultants, some more astute than others. To the weary professional curriculum worker, it sometimes seems that every federal, state, and local legislator is a self-appointed, self-trained curriculum consultant who has his or her own pet program to promulgate. The statutes of the state legislatures, as we shall see in Chapter 3, provide numerous examples of legislative curriculum making.

Singling out all the politicians who have turned themselves into curriculum consultants through the years would be impossible. But the kite-flier who experimented with electricity, invented a stove, created a new educational institution called the Academy, and in between found time to participate in a revolution—Benjamin Franklin—made some farsighted curriculum proposals for his academy. Franklin’s statement of recommendations almost seems to have been drawn out of a report on a high school’s program of studies by a present-day visiting committee of a regional accrediting association. Franklin proposed for his academy (later to become the University of Pennsylvania) a curriculum much more suited to its time than its predecessor, the Latin Grammar School.[2]

Curriculum advisers have been found not only among politicians but also among academicians, journalists, the clergy, and the public at large. Professional educators have received a great deal of both solicited and unsolicited help in shaping school curricula. An unending procession of advisers from both within and outside the profession of education over many decades has not been at a loss to advocate curriculum proposals. No matter how significant or minor, no matter how mundane or bizarre, all proposals have shared one common element: advocacy of change.

What has led so many people to be dissatisfied with so much of what education is all about? Why is the status quo rarely a satisfactory place to be? And why does it turn out, as will be illustrated, that yesterday’s status quo is sometimes tomorrow’s innovation? For answers to these questions some general principles of curriculum development should be considered by teachers and specialists who participate in efforts to improve the curriculum.

SOURCES OF CURRICULUM PRINCIPLES

Principles serve as guidelines to direct the activity of persons working in a particular area. Curriculum principles are derived from many sources: (1) empirical data, (2) experimental data, (3) the folklore of curriculum, composed of unsubstantiated beliefs and attitudes, and (4) common sense. In an age of science and technology, the attitude often prevails that all principles must be scientifically derived from the results of research. Yet even folklore and common sense can have their use. The scientist has discovered, for example, that some truths underlie ancient folk remedies for human maladies and that old wives’ tales are not always the ravings of demented witches. While a garland of garlic hung around the neck may or may not fend off vampires and asafetida on the end of a fishline may or may not lure fish onto the hook, the aloe plant does, after all, yield a soothing ointment for burns, and the peppermint herb has relieved many a stomachache.

Common sense, which is often distrusted, combines folklore, generalizations based on observation, and learning discovered through experimentation with intuition and reasoned guesses. It can function not only as a source of curriculum principles but as a methodology as well. For example, Joseph J. Schwab proposed a commonsense process he called “deliberation” to deal with curriculum problems. Minimizing the search for theoretical constructs and principles, his method depends more on practical solutions to specific problems.[3] Schwab pointed out the pitfalls of relying on theory alone. He rejected “the pursuit of global principles and comprehensive patterns, the search for stable sequences and invariant elements, the construction of taxonomies of supposedly fixed or recurrent kinds” and recommended “three other modes of operation . . . the practical, the quasi-practical, and the eclectic.”[4]

Of particular interest is Schwab’s contrast of the theoretical and practical modes. Schwab explained:

The end or outcome of the theoretical is knowledge, general or universal statements which are supposed to be true, warranted, confidence-inspiring. Their truth, warrant, or untrustworthiness is held, moreover, to be durable and extensive. . . . The end or outcome of the practical, on the other hand, is a decision, a selection and guide to possible action. Decisions are never true or trustworthy. Instead a decision (before it is put into effect) can be judged only comparatively, as probably better or worse than alternatives. . . . A decision, moreover, has no great durability or extensive application. It applies unequivocally only to the case for which it is sought.[5]

When curriculum planning is based on deliberation, judgment and common sense are applied to decision making. Some professional educators have faulted the application of common sense or judgment as a methodology, so imbued are they with a scientific approach to problem solving. In 1918 Franklin Bobbitt took note of scientific methodology in curriculum making, citing the application of measurement and evaluation techniques, diagnosis of problems, and prescription of remedies.[6] At a later date Arthur W. Combs was moved to warn against too great a reliance on science for the solution of all educational problems.[7] Whereas science may help us find solutions to some problems, not all answers to educational problems of the day can be found in this way. Certainly, hard data are preferred over beliefs and judgments. But there are times in the absence of hard data when curriculum workers must rely on their intuition and make judgments on the basis of the best available evidence.

Unless a principle is established that is irrefutable by reason of objective data, some degree of judgment must be brought into play. Whenever judgment comes into the picture, the potential for controversy arises. Consequently, some of the principles for curriculum development provoke controversy, while others are generally accepted as reasonable guidelines. Controversy occurs as often as a result of differing values and philosophical orientations of curriculum workers as it does from lack of hard data for making decisions.

TYPES OF PRINCIPLES

Curriculum principles may be viewed as whole truths, partial truths, or hypotheses. While all function as operating principles, they are distinguished by their known effectiveness or by degree of risk. It is important to understand these differences before examining the major guiding principles for curriculum development.

Whole Truths

Whole truths are either obvious facts or concepts proved through experimentation, and they are usually accepted without challenge. For example, few will dispute that students will be able, as a rule, to master an advanced body of content only after they have developed the prerequisite skills. From this principle come the practices of preassessment of entry skills and sequencing of content.

Partial Truths

Partial truths are based on limited data and can apply to some, many, or most situations, but they are not always universal. Some educators assert, for example, that student achievement is higher when students are grouped homogeneously for instruction. Some learners may achieve better results when placed in groups of like ability, but others may not. The practice of homogeneous or ability grouping may be successful with some groups but not with others. It may permit schools to achieve certain goals of education, such as mastery of content, but prevent them from achieving other goals, such as enabling students to learn to live and work with persons of differing levels of ability. Partial truths are not “half-truths,” containing falsehoods, but they do not always tell the whole story.

Hypotheses

Finally, some principles are neither whole nor partial truths but are hypotheses or tentative working assumptions. Curriculum workers base these ideas on their best judgments, folklore, and common sense. As one example, teachers and administrators have talked for many years about optimum size for classes and for schools. Educators have advocated class sizes of as few as twenty-five students in high school classes and fewer in elementary classes. They have been less certain as to how many pupils should be housed in a single school. Figures used as recommendations for class and school size are but estimates based on best judgments. School planners have reasoned that for purposes of economy and efficiency, class and school sizes can be too small. They also know from intuition or experience that class and school sizes can grow so large as to create situations that reduce educational productivity. However, the research delivers no magic number that will guarantee success in every course, classroom, and school.