Handbook of Research on Curriculum, The

The Handbook of Research on Curriculum (1992), edited by Philip Jackson, was a project of the American Educational Research Association. This handbook and its successor The SAGE Handbook of Curriculum and Instruction (2008) are the principle resources for comprehensive research reviews of curriculum studies. This volume has 1088 pages, 34 chapters, 52 authors, a nine-member editorial advisory board, and a name index of approximately 5000 entries. The handbook's purpose was to give conceptual and methodological definition to curriculum studies while also reviewing past achievements. It is organized into four parts:

To establish commonality among chapters with widely different content, authors were instructed to consider four matters:

• 1.
  to provide a historical perspective on the topic,
• 2.
  to provide the best scholarly and empirical knowledge on the topic,
• 3.
  to provide a comprehensive bibliography on the topic, and
• 4.
  to provide ideas on future research directions for the topic.

Though none of the chapters are organized according to these directions, each is found in the chapters. The second, third, and fourth guidelines are thoroughly achieved in Parts 1, 2, and 3. Because each curriculum subject matter area has its own professional associations and journals, the chapters in Part 4 provide limited bibliographies compared to what is available in each area. The strength in these chapters lies in the second and fourth guidelines by providing an overview of [Page 425]knowledge and future directions. The first guideline, on historical perspective, is treated differently from chapter to chapter. For those chapters where an historical perspective was developed, the chapters remain one of the best historical sources for the topic, for example, in Chapter 5, “Curriculum Evaluation and Assessment”; Chapter 10, “Conceptions of Knowledge”; and Chapter 14, “Teacher as Curriculum Maker.”

The five chapters of Part 1 deal with conceptions of curriculum and curriculum specialists, the scientific tradition, the humanistic tradition, methodological issues, and curriculum evaluation and assessment. At one time, curriculum studies had an atheoretical reputation expressed in teaching and curriculum development methodology studies. A significant feature of the handbook is the theoretical scope that characterizes Part 1. Part 1 helped legitimize the diversity of conceptual curriculum thought and helped shape the direction of the field.

Parts 2 and 3 are organized by two broad purposes of education: transmission of society's knowledge and values and transformation of society's knowledge and values. However, individual chapters do not answer well to the contextualizing questions: How is curriculum shaped by society? And how is society shaped by curriculum? The importance of those two parts is that the range of topics discussed broadens the field of curriculum studies beyond general curriculum and curriculum theory.

Part 4 is on curriculum subject matter. Ten subject matter areas are represented: writing and reading, literature and the English language arts, mathematics, science and technology, social studies, foreign language curriculum, vocational education, art education, physical education, and the extra curriculum. These chapters reflect a school-based conception of curriculum organized by school subject matters. This organization has the advantage of providing insights into what the schools do, but has the disadvantage of obscuring critical alternatives to existing curriculum structures. The section does not deal with the traditional school curriculum questions of time assigned to a subject, balance among the subjects, and sequence throughout the age-grade years. The chapters focus on school subject matter rather than on disciplinary subject matter and in varying degrees give historical background for each subject. This perspective distinguishes the chapters from teaching method reviews of the subjects.

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