Curriculum Theory

Origins of Curriculum Theory

Curriculum theory and foundations of education, together, grew to prominence, and then starting in the 1930s began to become more differentiated at key universities such as Teachers College, Columbia University; Ohio State University; and the University of Illinois. These universities had strong early- to mid-twentieth-century social and cultural foundations faculty, many of whom became well known in curriculum theory and in foundations. Examples of some of the major contributors to the field from the first half the twentieth century include John Dewey, William Bagley, George Counts, Harold Rugg, William H. Kilpatrick, and John Childs. Among more recent figures are, to name just a few, Jonas Soltis, Dwayne Huebner, Maxine Greene, David Hansen, Janet Miller, Ralph W. Tyler, Joseph J. Schwab, William Pinar, and Sarah Lawrence Lightfoot.

Forms of Curriculum Theory

Forms of curriculum theory (often derived from philosophical and other foundations of education) include the following: descriptive theory, prescriptive theory, critical theory, hermeneutic theory, postmodern theory, and personal theory.

Descriptive curriculum theory builds upon analytic and empirical philosophical traditions. Analytic theory strives to clarify concepts and builds theory upon both philosophical conceptualization and empirical studies that are assumed to provide small pieces of large puzzles of inquiry. It draws upon realism in philosophy of education and is patterned after investigation in the natural sciences that has led to theories of the biological cell or to atomic theory, for example. Work in this tradition often draws upon psychological origins of theory and research, exemplified by early work of E. L. Thorndike, G. Stanley Hall, Charles Judd, and B. F Skinner, and the curriculum work of Franklin Bobbitt, Ralph W. Tyler, George Beauchamp, Mauritz Johnson, Howard Gardner, and George Posner.

Prescriptive curriculum theory is often referred to as normative, in that it posits values that guide decisions about that which is worth teaching and learning, [Page 227]and then proceeds to justify such values through philosophical argument. Such argument may be made through appeal to authoritative sources of the past and usually involves the cogent construction of reasoning through deductive, syllogistic, prepositional, symbolic, inductive, or dialectical logic. Associated primarily with philosophical schools of idealism, naturalism, scholasticism, and to a lesser extent with pragmatism and existentialism, prescriptive curriculum theorists attempt to present compelling defenses of proposed or practiced responses to curriculum positions on what is worth knowing, needing, experiencing, doing, becoming, being, overcoming, sharing, and contributing. Contemporary prescriptive curriculum theorists might draw upon philosophical roots in the likes of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Peter Abelard, Martin Luther, Ignatius Loyola, Rene Descartes, G. W. F. Hegel, Immanuel Kant, David Hume, Alfred North Whitehead, William James, John Dewey, and others.

Today's versions of such theorists range from conservative proponents of the Western canon (e.g., Mortimer Adler, E. D. Hirsch), to liberals (e.g., Decker Walker, R. F. Dearden, David Hansen, Philip Jackson, Joseph Schwab, William A. Reid, and Nel Noddings), to radicals (e.g., William Ayers, James Beane, Paulo Freire), and many others whose writing is often of the essay form.

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