Conceptual Empiricist Perspective

Conceptual empiricism is one of the many perspectives that exist in the field of curriculum studies. This perspective employs the conceptual and empirical work in studying the fields of curriculum and education, as opposed to the traditional approach that was devoted simply to the development of programs of study. Conceptual empiricism represents the influence to the curriculum field from the social science researchers and academics who believed that conceptual and empirical research could evoke significant outcomes in education and thus, in classroom practice. Up to that point, and in the beginning of the 20th century, the curriculum field served primarily the areas of education connected to the narrow term of schooling, namely administration, teaching, and design and development of programs of study. The subsequent expansion of the field to draw upon disciplines from the arts, humanities, and social sciences resulted in the examination of larger educational forces and their effects upon the individual, society, and the purpose of knowledge, all of which relate to curriculum.

Seeing research in education as germane to social science research signified the departure from the traditional perspective that was connecting curriculum mainly to schools and the work of school practitioners. This departure was also indicative of the perception that education is not a discipline in itself, but an area to be studied by other disciplines, such as social science. Social scientists, instead of accepting uncontested opinions, began developing hypotheses, what they viewed as logically justifiable content, the conceptual, and testing them in a way they would do in social science—that is, collecting empirical data.

The term conceptual empiricist was coined by William Pinar in 1975 in his Curriculum Theorizing edited volume. The perspective coincides with the many changes within the field, changes that Pinar and his colleagues in their book in 1995 characterized as a paradigm shift. This was seen as a demanding shift in the field, followed by the comments of scholars Joseph Schwab, Dwayne Huebner, and Pinar who in the beginning of the 1970s characterized it as moribund, dead, and arrested. Pinar elaborated the conceptual empiricist idea in his article “The Reconceptualization of Curriculum Studies.” One of the elements that signified the crisis in the field was the lost prestige of the traditional field, which was based on the Tyler Rationale, a rationale that had started losing recognition as it [Page 140]was seen as too technical and procedural, excluding political and ethical concerns. Also, declining enrolments, increase of the educational administration and the educational psychology departments, and the induction in schools of subject matter specialists inclined toward the triumph of the conceptual empiricist curriculum paradigm.

The conceptual empiricist paradigm as identified by Pinar has also been acknowledged by other scholars who paid close attention to the contribution of science into the curriculum. This paradigm is closely related to William Schubert's social behaviorist orientation to curriculum. Social behaviorism advocates that science and technology become the basis of the curriculum. Curriculum design needs to be approached by applying the knowledge that derives from scientific educational research and that is conducted by educational and applied researchers. Skills must be developed via the careful design and the operationalization of what must be taught and learned, which should be done by conducting systematic investigation of what it takes to be successful in a particular society and instilling the kinds of behaviors identified.

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