Rationality and Intention in Irish Education: A Grid for the Design and Evaluation of a Core Curriculum

Abstract

Since the late 1940s a 'technical rationality' has been advocated for curriculum planners (Tyler, 1949). Curriculum improvement, it was advised, could only count as a 'rational' activity if the planned actions were guided by quite clear behavioural statements of intended educational outcomes that were operationally defined in terms of empirically verifiable changes in pupil behaviour. This model of curriculum designa known as the 'objectives model', has been widely taken up, although curiously curriculum designers in Ireland have resisted its lore. One of the most obvious shortcomings noted by curriculum scholars of Irish education has been the inability of curriculum designers and policy-makers to specify clear and valued intentions for curriculum (Mulcahy, 1981; Crooks & McKernan, 1984; O'Buachalla, 1988; Mulcahy & O'Sullivan, 1989), and to construct a common 'core' curriculum based on an agreed set of outcomes for all pupils. Indeed, curriculum development and innovation has not generally been regarded as a rational activity with either clear objectives or the procedural means for realising such goals or intentions. In recent years, however, there has been a recognition of this impoverished state of affairs by central authorities (CE NCCA, 1989) and a declared commitment to what is generally considered to be rational curriculum planning and assessment. It is not the purpose of this paper to exhume the many criticisms of such work (Elliott, 1988; Simons, 1988). In extreme cases, these can lead to distorted forms of normreferenced testing and even a 'league division table' for schools through national assessment and monitoring of student achievement along the lines developed in the United States and Britain through the various National Assessment of Educational Performance projects, notably the work of the Assessment of Performance Units in the UK (Welford et al., 1986) and the kind of debate brought about by the establishment of 'National Curriculums' in the UK and many other European nations, including Ireland. Rather, it is my intention to describe a conceptual tool which has been constructed to act as a model for curriculum design and evaluation in light of the declared statements made by central educational decision-makers. Thus, the chief outcomes of this paper will be, first, an evaluation grid by which school staff and others can reflect upon the intentions and declared goals of their work; and second, a reaffirmation and commitment to the concept of a core curriculum.