Discipline-Based Curriculum

The curricula in most formal educational systems of developing and developed countries are divided into separate and distinct subjects or disciplines, such as science, mathematics, literature, social studies, and the arts. In the curricula, school children are expected to concentrate on a single field of study, possibly supported by several courses in closely associated disciplines. Curriculum theorists refer to such curricula as discipline based. The term discipline based covers the full range of distinct subjects or fields of study, including the more traditional usage in areas such as mathematics or physics; in areas of study with a strong professional focus, such as molecular biology; and in newer areas of study, such as media education.

In a discipline-based curriculum approach, the courses that provide students with a foundation in the subjects or disciplines are critical to the curriculum. Students must have frequent and recurring opportunities to practice their disciplinary skills throughout their fields of study in a way that allows later courses to build on the work of earlier ones. Assuming that certain core skills and competencies are absolutely essential for practice any time and anywhere, curricular emphasis is laid on the teaching and assessment of essential knowledge, skills, and competencies throughout the course of distinct subjects or disciplines.

The instructional emphasis of discipline-based curriculum tends to be on specific, current, and factual information as it emerges from the disciplinarians. A discipline-based curriculum approach characterizes teaching practice within one subject and encourages teachers for specialization, depth of content knowledge, and integrity to the conventions of their discipline. For teachers, disciplinary affiliation plays a primary role in professional engagement for the development and distribution of good practice in teaching and learning. Content area teachers tend to see reality through the lenses of their subjects or disciplines. Reasonably, the content area teachers are generally convinced that their perspective is the most important one. In the absence of criteria for resolving disagreements over which knowledge is of highest value, curriculum tends to be shaped by institutional politics.

In general, a discipline-based curriculum approach encourages teachers to plan a series of connections to control the way the students come into contact with the subject matter. By doing so, teachers are expected to make the main ideas and issues more accessible to the school children. In a discipline-based curriculum approach, classroom instruction is generally concerned with sequencing resources, moving from rule to example, and thereby focusing on task analysis, teaching hierarchies, the use of drill and practice activities, and finally, testing the accurate recall of disciplinary knowledge. This static and generally linear model of teaching and instruction characterizes the nature of classroom practices in most traditional discipline-based curricula. It is teacher centered and promotes a high degree of accountability for the memorization and recognition of disciplinary knowledge and display of skills and behaviors that constitute most of the traditional, teacher-proof curriculum. However, this model of teaching and instruction does not allow school children to explore, reconstruct, and create authentic classroom products and activities.

Many curriculum theorists argue that the discipline-based curriculum limits students' learning to narrow aspects of content knowledge and does not allow for real-life explorations and learning of issues of interest to school children. A traditional, discipline-based curriculum assigns students with passive, information-storing rather than information-producing roles. In rare hands-on classroom activities, school children tackle reality in all its rationally invigorating complexity. In most courses, however, students simply read or listen to “expert” view as it comes out from the textbook and teacher and try to remember it long enough to be successful on exams. The only competency demanded is to recall. Rarely does discipline-based curriculum require students to explore, analyze, classify, synthesize, or engage in high-level thinking processes.

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