Official Curriculum

The official curriculum can be simply defined by the way curriculum itself has been traditionally understood: as the course of study, body of courses, or program of training at a school or university. However, this conception fails to address its analytical significance in the field of curriculum studies, where attention is directed specifically at [Page 617]what is formally sanctioned by schools or other institutions of learning through their explicit educational offerings. To speak of the official curriculum is also to raise questions about the relationship between knowledge and power, ideology and institutionthe politics of education and teaching, and processes of standardization, legitimation, and accountability that come to define what constitutes curriculum. Representing an authoritative response to the classical query concerning what knowledge is of most ...