Intended Curriculum

The intended curriculum is the overt curriculum that is acknowledged in policy statements as that which schools or other educational institutions or arrangements set out to accomplish. Sometimes the intended curriculum is contrasted with the hidden curriculum (that which is learned from the structural organization of the schooling institution and the society in which it is embedded), the taught curriculum (teachers' interpretations of the intentions set forth in policy or their intentional substitutions for that which is intended), the null [Page 489]curriculum (that which is not emphasized), the tested curriculum, and the learned curriculum.

Normally, it is framed within a conceptualization derived from the writings of Ralph Tyler, known as the Tyler Rationale, which was originally developed as a set of principles to guide curriculum and instruction. These principles are based on selection from a combination of emphases: philosophical assumptions, psychological models of learning, perceived interests of learners and conceptions of their individual needs, sociopolitical and economic contexts and mandates, and conceptions from experts from the several disciplines of knowledge on the nature of subject matter to be learned.

Intended curriculum is often stated in general statements to allow for situational interpretation and adaptation, though sometimes it is given precise behavioral specification, and in less frequent instances, it is begun with a general sense of direction statement from which situational curriculum will evolve or provocative or imaginative materials that elicit expressive consequences.

Procedural criteria for developing intended curriculum policy statements include representation, clarity, feasibility, and defensibility. The ends of such inquiry emphasize one or more of the following: socialization, achievement, personal growth, and social change.

Intended content may, therefore, take the form of subject matter, specified learning activities, or learning experiences, and any of these may be analyzed by focusing on sources of derivation: societal needs, test of survival, structure of the disciplines, utility, publisher (of instructional materials or textbooks) decision, political pressure, learner interest, democratic values, among others.

Statements of intended curriculum often detail aspects of organization. For example, curriculum guides are often vertical (depicting topics across different subject matter pursued as the same time) and horizontal (depicting increased exposure to topics over the years). Regarding the latter, when the same topics are revisited with increased perspective, the phenomenon is referred to as the spiral curriculum, drawn from the work of Jerome Bruner in the 1960s.

Intended curriculum statements also provide other dimensions of scope (breadth beyond separate subject matters to include combined subjects, projects or core curricula that draw upon diverse subjects, and integration of subjects to facilitate personal and social development). Similarly, sequence is often treated as broader than a yearly listing of topics; it might accept or critique presentation in textbooks or other instructional materials, educator preference, student preference, structure of the discipline and concomitant notions of prerequisite knowledge, hierarchies of learning (e.g., simple to complex, facts to concepts, principles, and values), developmental appropriateness according to different theories of human development.

Another dimension of intended curriculum is specification of learning environment, for example, departmentalization, self-contained classroom; nongraded classrooms, open classrooms, tutorials, computer-based instruction, community-based learning, and a range of other options in school or outside of school. Such environments may be analyzed relative to several dimensions: physical, material (instructional), interpersonal, institutional, and psychosocial.

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