Curriculum Developmen

Curriculum Development

Let’s begin with two foundational works on curriculum, one by Ralph Tyler (1949) and the other by Jerome Bruner (1960). These provide a good beginning, not only because they were among the first books on curriculum to be published but because the ideas they contain have been among the most enduring. Indeed, they continue to provide the foundation for our most current thinking in curriculum development. Foundations In 1959, at Woods Hole on Cape Cod, a group of 35 scientists, scholars and educators met with the purpose of discussing how to improve science education, to “examine the fundamental processes involved in imparting to students a sense of the substance and method of science” (Bruner, 1960, p. xvii). The meeting was sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences and over the course of the ten day meeting, several important themes emerged that were to have major implications not only for science education, but for education in general. Jerome Bruner’s book, The Process of Education, was written to provide an account of the major themes and conclusions that emerged from that conference. While the entire book is worth reading (and re-reading), the chapter on the importance of structure speaks most directly to the development of curriculum. The theme of structure as it developed at the Woods Hole conference refers to the importance of presenting the basic structures of the disciplines as the focal points of curricula. Basic structures consist of essential concepts, such as “supply and demand” in economics or “conflict” in history or “energy” in physics, and the relationships among them. Such concepts, when understood, enable students to understand many of the phenomena in that discipline and similar phenomena that may be encountered elsewhere. As Bruner wrote, “Learning should not only take us somewhere; it should allow us later to go further more easily…The more fundamental or basic is the idea, the greater will be its breadth of applicability to new problems” (pp 17-18). Bruner advocated that these fundamental ideas, once identified, should be constantly revisited and reexamined so that understanding deepens over time. This notion of revisiting and reexamining fundamental ideas over time is what has become known as a “spiral curriculum.” As time goes by, students return again and again to the basic concepts, building on them, making them more complex, and understanding them more fully.
2
“Curriculum Development” by Judith Howard
Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning
Elon University
A decade before the conference that Jerome Bruner writes about, Ralph Tyler (1949) published his classic text on curriculum development. It was organized around four questions:
1. What educational purposes should the school seek to attain?
2. How can learning experiences that are likely to be useful in attaining these objectives be selected?
3. How can learning experiences be organized for effective instruction?
4. How can the effectiveness of learning experiences be evaluated?
This short volume, written to help educational institutions engage in curriculum building, called for the application of four corresponding principles in the development of any curriculum: defining goals, establishing corresponding learning experiences, organizing learning experiences to have a cumulative effect, and evaluating outcomes. Tyler’s principles were the accepted approach to curriculum development for almost 30 years, and they guide the essential questions of curriculum development today, though they now are applied to newer ideas and considerations that extend or reinterpret his principles.