Deliberative Curriculum

Deliberation is a formal process of inquiry about curriculum policy, program development, and other curriculum activity, including conflicting goals and values in specific situations of practice. Its fundamental purpose is to reach justified decisions about curricular action in particular contexts [Page 278]considering the problematic character of a situation. Through this process, public policy decisions are implemented in social and typically institutional contexts with development of materials and strategies for their use. Deliberative inquiry focuses on curriculum policies and guidelines concerning a particular classroom and less often, a school, a district, a state, or a nation.

Researcher Ilene Harris depicted deliberative inquiry as a form of curriculum inquiry because it links the interrelated tasks of doing practical curriculum activity with doing formal curriculum inquiry, namely research, through a systematic structure of deliberation about curriculum decisions. This process of inquiry is informed by asking and answering subsidiary questions through multiple forms of inquiry for which deliberative inquiry serves as a framework to incorporate the results in decision making. Through formal curriculum inquiry, particular curriculum questions are identified, questions that are open to inquiry and can lead to definite answers addressed through appropriate forms of rigorous, disciplined, intellectual processes. Through practical curriculum, activity choices are made in specific situations relevant to policy questions about what should be taught, to whom, and under what guidelines of instruction, and they are based on thoughtful examination of alternatives in the context of values and knowledge. Practical curriculum activity should be informed by the results of formal curriculum inquiry. However, because any theory represents only a partial reality deriving from a generalization of a plethora of particulars and selected areas of research, curriculum judgment and action must be informed by multiple research approaches, sources of knowledge, theories, and principles.

The need for using deliberation in the curriculum was first identified by Joseph Schwab, who in the late 1960s argued that the field of curriculum is moribund due to the theoretic bend it has taken and is unable at its present form to contribute significantly to the advancement of education and the improvement of practice. He urged diversion of its energies from theoretical pursuits aimed at knowledge generation to practical disciplines emphasizing choice and action. Schwab, in his articles on the practical paradigm, associated the practical, perceived as a mode of inquiry rather than rules of thumb, with the method of deliberation. Practical arts employ perception and problemation to recognize particularities of practical situations, to identify problems, and to generate alternative solutions to act upon the best one. He also proposed use of eclectic arts, which determine which combinations and portions of sciences and theories shed useful light on specific curriculum problems. Schwab suggested that in each phase of deliberation the four commonplaces—student, teacher, subject matter, and milieu, which are elements in every education situation—participate and are considered.

William Reid, who in 1982 coined the term deliberative inquiry, viewed deliberation in terms of practical reasoning. He saw curriculum problems as among a wider class of uncertain practical problems involving prudential, moral, and ethical considerations. These problems can be solved through deliberation or practical reasoning, an intricate and skilled intellectual and social process whereby, individually or collectively, questions are identified, grounds are established for deciding answers, and a choice is made among the available solutions. The ambiguity of the choices made and of the outcomes of the decisions are what attribute uncertainty to these problems. Reid argued about the importance of considering institutional and political contexts in conducting deliberations, the effect of relevant facts, and acceptable solutions. Also, Decker Walker in the 1970s formulated a naturalistic model for curriculum development, a model that represents phenomena and relations observed in actual curriculum projects as realistically as possible, and it includes processes of deliberation and practical reasoning as central features. In this model, both theory and practice are modes of inquiry, each competent in its own sphere and each informing the other via the radical differences they carry.

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