Curriculum Purposes

Curriculum purposes typically include the goals, aims, and objectives of an educational program. As such, purposes have long played a central role in curriculum studies. For Franklin Bobbitt, curriculum purposes focused on those skills necessary to adult life, but which were unlikely to be learned effectively outside of school. Ralph Tyler, unlike Bobbitt, did not argue directly for purposes that would concentrate on preparation for adulthood. Rather, his approach sought to identify the sources useful in formulating curriculum purposes. These [Page 228]sources included studies of learners, studies of contemporary life, suggestions by subject matter specialists, and philosophy—thus providing a broad basis for addressing Tyler's central question: What educational purposes should the school seek to attain? More recently, the objectives movement of the 1960s and 1970s ...