Conceptions of curriculum: A framework for understanding New Zealand’s curriculum framework and teachers’ opinions

Abstract

Abstract Five conceptions of curriculum (i.e., humanist, social reconstructionist, skills, technological, and academic) are described and used to analyse the New Zealand Curriculum Framework. It is argued that the framework contains aspects of five conceptions, despite their apparent contradictory nature. The conceptions were used in a study of 235 primary school teachers' opinions as to the nature of curriculum. Teachers were found to be mostly in agreement with the humanist conception, while giving moderate agreement to the technological and academic conceptions. Nonetheless, they still gave slight agreement with the social reconstructionist conception. Use of the conceptions will enhance understanding of current curriculum debates and pressures. ********** The publishing of Curriculum Matters indicates that there is a growing interest in issues to do with curriculum. New Zealand embarked on a major and contested reform of its school curriculum in the early 1990s, and has recently undertaken a stocktake of those reforms. The stocktake has suggested somewhat minor revisions, while proposals to completely restructure the official curriculum are being floated (Rutherford, 2005). appears missing in the work to do with drafting, reviewing, publishing, implementing, and evaluating the official curriculum, is a framework by which the nature of curriculum can be understood. I propose in this paper is to outline a framework by which curriculum can be understood, and report two studies that make use of that framework in analysing the curriculum and interpreting teachers' opinions of curriculum. Most generally, curriculum has to do with the answers to such commonplace questions as What can and should be taught to whom, when, and how? (Eisner & Vallance, 1974). As Begg (2005, p. 6) puts it, curriculum is all planning for the classroom. There are several ways that curriculum can be understood: one approach interprets curriculum primarily in terms of political power (e.g., curriculum as a fact, as practice, or as social conflict, in Goodson, 1995), while a second analyses the nature of what is taught (e.g., curriculum as race, gender, aesthetic, institutionalised, or poststructuralist texts, in Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery, & Taubman, 1995). The approach I advocate examines the naive or layperson notions that teachers--who are not curriculum specialists or theorists--have about what they think the stuff is that they are teaching. Defining what should be in curriculum plans for the classroom requires answering two questions: (1) Who should determine what is taught?; and (2) material should be taught? It would appear that there are a limited number of options available to curriculum developers in answering these questions. Who determines the curriculum can only be one or more of the following: (a) students' needs or wants; (b) teachers' knowledge and expertise; or (c) government's policies in response to society's problems or issues. The options for determining the substance of curriculum relates to either (a) important content, such as the chemical make-up of water, or (b) important processes, such as knowing how to learn. Many studies have explored how teachers conceive of various subjects, including mathematics, English, reading, language, history, and social studies (Calderhead, 1996; Clark & Peterson, 1986; Thompson, 1992). These studies have shown that teachers develop a subject understanding that is broad and deep, enabling them to facilitate the building of similar connections in the minds of others (Calderhead, 1996, p. 716). They have also shown that the way teachers understand their subject affects the way they teach and assess. However, primary school teachers are generalists charged with responsibility for teaching subjects--therefore, it is appropriate to examine how they conceive of curriculum, rather than just subjects. A second reason for looking at curriculum, rather than subjects, is that most teachers are not just delivery mechanisms or conduits for curriculum; but rather they are creators or makers of curriculum (Clandinin & Connelly, 1992). …