Curriculum Making: A Conceptual Framing

Abstract

This chapter provides an introduction to the European case study chapters in this volume on curriculum making. The chapter explores different conceptions of curriculum and curriculum making. It offers a critique of existing thinking about curriculum making as something that occurs within reified levels within an educational system. Such thinking often construes curriculum making as occurring through linear and hierarchical chains of command from policy to practice. Drawing upon previous conceptualizations of curriculum making, the chapter develops a new approach to understanding curriculum making. This is a heuristic rather than a normative framing; it is essentially non-linear, framed around the concept of intertwined sites of activity -supra, macro, meso, micro and nano -within complex systems, with curriculum making framed as types of activity rather than institutional functions.

Den undervisade läroplanen

“…Ett flertal forskningsstudier har dock pekat på att standards-baserade läroplanskonstruktioner är utformade enligt en linjär top-down-modell med centralt föreskrivna och specificerade kunskapskrav som sällan tillämpas lokalt i enlighet med intentionerna. En rad nationella, kulturella-pedagogiska och politiska traditioner och system, liksom lokala förhållanden, påverkar hur läroplanerna förstås, tolkas och omsätts i olika undervisningspraktiker som även rymmer olika spänningsförhållanden (Bernstein, 2000;Priestley et al, 2021;Sundberg & Wahlström, 2012). Tidigare läroplansforskning har visat att de dominerande läroplansdiskurserna tenderar att representera de sociala formationerna och maktförhållandena i deras historiska, kulturella och politiska sammanhang (Nordin, 2012;Priestley et al, 2021).…”

“…En rad nationella, kulturella-pedagogiska och politiska traditioner och system, liksom lokala förhållanden, påverkar hur läroplanerna förstås, tolkas och omsätts i olika undervisningspraktiker som även rymmer olika spänningsförhållanden (Bernstein, 2000;Priestley et al, 2021;Sundberg & Wahlström, 2012). Tidigare läroplansforskning har visat att de dominerande läroplansdiskurserna tenderar att representera de sociala formationerna och maktförhållandena i deras historiska, kulturella och politiska sammanhang (Nordin, 2012;Priestley et al, 2021). För att förstå hur en läroplansreform genomförs och med vilka konsekvenser för skola och undervisning, behöver analyserna inbegripa flera nivåer samt belysa deras dynamiska samspel, från transnationell, nationell till lokalt läroplansarbete i skola och klassrum.…”

State‐based curriculum making in Turkey: Curriculum modernization initiative and the latest science curriculum

“…There also existed a few alternatives to make an analysis of curriculum making such as Goodlad et al's (1979) Curriculum Inquiry, and a reinterpretation of Goodlad and associates' framework by Doyle (1992) (as cited in Westbury, 2008). A more recent heuristic developed by Priestley et al (2021) can also be used for the same purpose. It has also been widely acknowledged that Haft and Hopmann's (1990) tools of state‐based curriculum making (ToSBCM) can be used to discuss curriculum making and administration in all places where the state‐based curriculum making is employed (Westbury et al, 2016; Westbury & Sivesind, 2016).…”

Why curriculum inquiry? Thoughts on the purposes of the field

“…More recently, I have also been influenced by the work of Priestly et al (2021) and their argument that curriculum also needs to be understood as created through the collective work of teachers, students, policymakers, and other actors. As they argue, curriculum practices take place across multiple sites of activity including schools, policy-making arenas, and national and international agencies which interact together as part of a wider system.…”

“…It associates curriculum as concerned with implicit as well as explicit constructions of what is important in relation to knowledge, subjectivity, and vocational preparation and how schooling is set up in relation to institutional arrangements and the choices set up within, between, and beyond schools. Priestly et al (2021) have defined the sites at which curriculum work takes place as supra (the international policy-making arena led by organizations such as the OECD), macro (national or system-level development of curriculum frameworks and documents led by governments and curriculum agencies), meso (the production of guidance for curriculum making and leadership by governments, curriculum agencies, and textbook publishers), micro (school level curriculum making, decisions, and lesson planning by principals, leaders, and teachers), and nano (curriculum making in classrooms by teachers and students). At the macro level, this includes the development and writing of curriculum documents, sometimes referred to as curriculum frameworks, guidelines, or syllabus documents.…”