European Curriculum Studies, Continental Overview

Curriculum studies as a field of education may today be found in continental Europe (including the Nordic countries) in most universities, teacher education institutions, and institutions of further training. This tendency represents in certain ways a late 20th-century development. It was in 17th century Europe that the concepts of curriculum and didactics were first used to denote educational phenomena. Didactics was linked to Wolfgang Ratke's (1571–1635) Methodus didactica and to Johann Amos Comenius's (1592–1670) Didactica magna. The use of the term curriculum may be linked to Daniel Georgius Morhof (1639–1691), professor in Rostock from 1660. From this century on, traditions developed in which the expression didactics became the usual one on the continent, while the term curriculum was the one adhered to in the English-speaking Western world. One may say that there exist two main traditions: the Anglo-American tradition of curriculum studies and the Continental and Northern European tradition of didactics. The curriculum studies tradition has, however, to a certain degree been acknowledged, adopted, and adapted also in European continental educational contexts, as indicated, without, however, these curriculum studies losing their lasting [Page 355]influence from the didactic tradition. This fact makes for the relevance of the present topic.

The word curriculum is not a common word in any of the continental countries and is used only in special contexts such as curriculum vitae. An exact translation of it in any of the European continental languages does not exist. The word usually used to transfer the meaning of curriculum is Icereplan, liiroplan (Norwegian, Danish, Swedish), Lehrplan (German)—translated into English meaning curriculum guidelines. The concept Icereplan has, however, acquired a manifold meaning implying complex relations in compliance with the concept of curriculum. Another way to put it is to say that curriculum and curriculum studies as well broadly covers the why, what, and how of education and schooling. The why refers to the aims and goals related both to superior goals and to the aims of school subjects, the what to the content in general and to specific schools and school subjects, while the how refers to teaching methods related to classroom practice. This implies compared to English-U.S. curriculum studies a marked difference underlying the didactic inheritance stressing Bildung and the importance of educating for life and the whole person more than educating for certain standards that can be measured individually.

In continental Europe curriculum studies have, from the 1960s and 1970s, preferred to focus on the subjects that make up the curriculum or teaching content. This growing interest arises from a number of different causes. The societal importance of frequent efforts to reform the curriculum through plans for reconstruction has highlighted the centrality of school subjects. Moreover, a renewed emphasis on content in terms of defining basic skills or a core curriculum naturally focuses on school subjects. The introduction of school subject didactics in teacher education courses and as part of academic degree courses during the 1980s has also contributed to this trend. A professor of school subject didactics will be found in most universities in the Nordic countries and especially in

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