Curriculum studies

Curriculum studies (CS) is a concentration within curriculum and instruction concerned with understanding
curricula as an active force of human educational experience.

lessons, done his homework, and have done so

reasonably well, etc. There are, therefore, a
host of obligations that the child is required to
shoulder. Together they constitute the discipline of the school. It is through the practice of
school discipline that we can inculcate the spirit
of discipline in the child. (Durkheim, mile
(1961 [1925]). Moral Education. New York,
The Free Press.p. 148)"

Specic questions related to curriculum studies include

the following:
What should be taught in schools?
Why should it be taught? To whom should it be
taught?

Phillip W. Jackson (1968) may have coined the term

hidden curriculum in his book Life in Classrooms. He
argued that primary school emphasized specic skills:
learning to wait quietly, exercising restraint, trying, completing work, keeping busy, cooperating, showing allegiance to both teachers and peers, being neat and punctual, and so on (Jackson, Philip (1968). Life in Classrooms.). The structural functional sociologist Robert
Dreeben (1968 On What is Learned in School) similarly
concluded that the curriculum of schooling taught students to form transient social relationships, submerge
much of their personal identity, and accept the legitimacy
of categorical treatment. Dreeben argued that formal
schooling indirectly conveyed to students values such as
independence and achievement, essential for their later
membership in society.

What does it mean to be an educated person?

Proponents of CS also investigate the relationship between curriculum theory and educational practice and the
relationship between school programs and the contours
of the society and culture in which schools are located.
There are programs in the eld of curriculum studies in
several Colleges of Education around the world. Curriculum Studies was also the rst subdivision of the American
Educational Research Association, known as Division B.
Important CS books include The Curriculum: Perspective, Paradigm, and Possibility by William Schubert (New
York: Macmillan, 1986; and Understanding Curriculum
by William Pinar, et al. (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1995).

A branch of curriculum studies that investigates how society transmits culture from generation to generation has
been tagged with the term Hidden curriculum[2] even
though much of what is studied is hiding in plain sight.
For instance, one of the 19th Century founders of the
discipline of Sociology, mile Durkheim, observed that
more is taught and learned in schools than specied in the
established curriculum of textbooks and teacher manuals.
In Moral Education Durkheim wrote:

Since then, Curriculum Studies researchers ranging

across the spectrum of paradigms from conservative
structural-functionalists, to neo-Marxists to narrativeand arts-based researchers have examined formal curricula, experienced curricula, and hidden curricula. Progressive researchers like Paul Willis (1977, Learning to
Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs),
Jean Anyon (1980, Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work. Journal of Education 162), and Annette Laureau (1989.Home Advantage: Social Class, and
Parental Intervention in Elementary Education) have examined the ways that hidden and overt curricula reproduce social class position. Narrative and arts-based researchers like Thomas Barone (2001, Touching Eternity:
The Enduring Outcomes of Teaching) have inquired about
the long-term eects of curricula on student lives.

In fact, there is a whole system of rules in

the school that predetermine the childs conduct. He must come to class regularly, he must
arrive at a specied time and with an appropriate bearing and attitude. He must not disrupt things in class. He must have learned his

Critical theorists like Henry Giroux (1983 Theories of

Reproduction and Resistance in the New Sociology of
Education: A critical analysis. Harvard Educational Review 53) began to examine the roles of students and teachers in resisting curricula both ocial and hidden. Socalled resistance theorists conceptualized students and
teachers as active agents working to subvert, reject, or

Curriculum Studies emerged as a distinctive eld in the

late 1960s and early 1970s from educationists focused
on curriculum development. The shift from developing
and evaluating curriculum to understanding curriculum
is known as the Reconceptualization of the curriculum
eld.[1]

change curricula. They noted that curriculum was not

a unied structure but incoherent conicting and contradictory messages. Other researchers have examined the
interactions between racial and ethnic cultures and the
dominant curricula of the school. For instance the Anthropologist John Ogbu examined curricula established
by African American students (Signithia Fordham and
John Ogbu 1986 Black Students School Success: Coping with the Burden of Acting White. The Urban Review18. Critical Race Theorists Critical race theory like
Daniel Solrzano examined how racial attitudes constitute another hidden curriculum in teacher education
programs (1997, Images and Words that Wound: Critical
Race Theory and Racial Stereotyping, and Teacher Education, Teacher Education Quarterly, 24). Additionally,
Judith Stacey proposed in the 1960s schools conveyed a
hidden curriculum that perpetuated the sexist beliefs, attitudes, and values of the time period (1974 And Jill
Came Tumbling After Sexism in American Education).

REFERENCES

Brock
University,St.Catharines,Ontario,Canada:
http://www.brocku.ca/education/futurestudents/
graduateed/mastersofed/program-description
Curriculum Studies is now known as Social and
Cultural Contexts of Education (*due to the change
of the MEd program requirements commencing
in 2008-09 http://www.brocku.ca/webcal/2007/
graduate/educ.html)
Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK: http://
education.okstate.edu/cied
Western University, London, ON : http:
//www.edu.uwo.ca/graduate-education/Program%
20Brochures/PhD%20-%20Field%20of%
20Curriculum%20Studies.pdf

2 References

The interest in Curriculum Studies is thus cross disciplinary and of increasing importance to educational research and to the philosophy of education.

[1] Pacheco, Jose, Augusto (2012). Curriculum studies:

What is the eld today?" (PDF). Journal of the American
Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies 8:
18.

[2] Smith, Mark, K. Curriculum theory and practice. infed.org. The Encyclopaedia of Informal Education. Retrieved 18 January 2015.

University programs in curriculum studies

3. Stacey, Judith, et al. (eds.) (1974). And Jill Came

Tumbling After: Sexism in American Education. New
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Univer- York: Dell.
sity of Toronto http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/ctl/
Prospective_Students/CTL_Graduate_Programs/
Curriculum_Studies_and_Teacher_Development_
%28CSTD%29/index.html
Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, USA.

University of British Columbia in Vancouver: www.

ubc.ca
University of Illinois at Chicago: http://www.uic.
edu/gcat/EDCIE.shtml#e
Monmouth University, West Long Branch, New Jersey: www.monmouth.edu
Arcadia University, Philadelphia, PA, USA
Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, GA, USA
University of Alberta in Edmonton: http://www.
uofaweb.ualberta.ca/secondaryed/
North West University, North West, South Africa
Indiana University, Bloomington, IN: www.iub.edu
Purdue University: http://www.edci.purdue.edu/
curriculum_studies/
Texas Christian University: http://www.coe.tcu.
edu/graduate-students-curriculum-studies.asp

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