Empirical Analytic paradigm

The empirical analytic paradigm in curriculum studies derives from intellectual traditions of empiricism and philosophical or conceptual analysis. Empiricism refers to derivation of knowledge from experience, usually by scientific inquiry, and the analytic tradition in philosophy gives careful attention to definitions of concepts and related dimensions of language. Thus, the empirical analytic paradigm in curriculum studies bespeaks this orientation applied to curriculum matters.

The curriculum field began at the onset of the 20th century with an orientation to inquiry that melded everyday problem solving with prescriptive philosophizing derived from an amalgam of philosophical traditions: realism, idealism, scholasticism, naturalism, and pragmatism. Based on these origins, curriculum inquiry prior to 1950 was geared primarily toward developing and revising curriculum for schools. In the 1950s, when normal schools, the ...