Commonplaces

Commonplaces are interrelated curricular components encompassing learners, teachers, content, and context. Scholars in curriculum studies have employed commonplaces to frame curriculum development, to develop a heuristic for understanding curriculum, and to create a structure of analysis for curriculum inquiry.

Curriculum scholar Joseph Schwab delineated the commonplaces to guide the process of curriculum development. He explained that when people come together to revise curriculum, they need knowledge of these fundamental elements. Schwab's first commonplace, subject matter, means comprehension of content disciplines, their underlying systems of thought, and curriculum materials. Knowledge of learners involves familiarity with students including children's developmental abilities, [Page 127]their unique qualities, and their probable futures as influenced by the environment of families and community (rather than how education might transform their possible destinies). Schwab referred to classroom, school environments, and influences on them as the third commonplace, the milieus; he called for recognition of the context of learning—social structures within schools, the influence of families, and the multitude of values and attitudes stemming from the community and culture surrounding the school. The fourth commonplace, teachers, includes educators' subject matter erudition, their personalities—such as their flexibility or openness to new methods—and their biases or political stances.

Schwab described each commonplace as a body of experience necessary for curriculum making and revision. He explained that there should be coordination among these commonplaces and that one component should not dominate the others. Schwab also insisted that when making curricular decisions, representatives with deep knowledge of each commonplace should participate in deliberations. Further, he believed that the curriculum specialist, who understands the practice of curriculum making, ought to facilitate conversations among representatives of the commonplaces and guide the curriculum-making process. Schwab's attention to commonplaces created a deliberative progression of curriculum planning that de-emphasized standardization as curriculum planners consider the unique nature of each classroom and numerous influences upon curriculum from outside the classroom.

Other scholars have drawn on the commonplaces to understand and analyze curriculum. Seeing curriculum as a fluid narrative stemming from teachers' sense of self and practice, Michael Connelly and Jean Clandinin formulated the commonplaces as a heuristic to inspire teachers' self-reflection and articulation of their stances as curriculum workers. Unlike Schwab, who placed the curriculum specialist as the expert in charge of curriculum planning, Connelly and Clandinin viewed teachers as curriculum planners and commonplaces as their analytic tools to develop their own narratives, to understand historical trends of curriculum, and to gain insight into contemporary controversies. In particular, by attending to the commonplaces, curriculum workers thus could uncover the logic or emphasis in a given rationale for curriculum.

Accordingly, commonplaces have been utilized for curriculum inquiry to raise questions about assumptions of learners, consequently to examine beliefs about human nature and learning theory. For instance, are children perceived as naturally curious or resistant to learning? Do they construct knowledge or passively absorb information? Correspondingly, assumptions about content can be probed: Should content be perceived as flexible, evolving, or fixed? Should content be influenced by children's interests, the needs of society, or the demands of industry? Should it be arranged chronologically, thematically, or developmentally? Such questions also lead to inquiry about images embedded in the commonplaces, such as metaphors of learners as empty vessels, sponges, or inventors. Scholars call for such assumptions and images to be scrutinized so that stakeholders involved in curriculum can challenge their untenable assumptions and discover what beliefs they hold in common.

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