Phenomenological Analysis of School Curriculum

Abstract

The article considers school curricula as a pedagogical phenomenon, which is understood as a general reflection of theoretical ideas about the content of education, fixed in a normative document and maintaining relative stability over a long period of time. The purpose of the article is to describe the main characteristics of curricula that determine the features of the school curriculum as a pedagogical phenomenon. The main research method is phenomenological analysis, auxiliary methods are historical and pedagogical analysis and expert analysis of documents. The analysis of curricula created over 100 years in Soviet and Russian schools is carried out in the logic of a systematic approach. As a result of the study, the author identified a set of qualitative characteristics of curricula: focus on achieving learning outcomes, objectivity, integrativity, consistency, variability, stability (sustainability), richness, flexibility, cultural conformity. Among them, a “core” of permanent characteristics has been singled out, which have been characteristic of curricula for decades in an almost unchanged form and which ensure the functionality of this type of pedagogical documentation. In addition, the author additionally highlights additional qualities that, in different periods of the development of the education system, are manifested in curricula to varying degrees, from the minimum to the maximum possible. The identified complex of characteristics reveals the value-semantic basis of curricula and their deep non-linear connections with the content of education.