Normative inquiry in curriculum (NIC) is concerned with a substantive, integrative approach to values so that the curriculum possesses integrity, consistency, and congruity. This article explores definitions and characteristics of NIC, analyzes the role of curricular influences and realities, provides suggestions for getting started, and answers…

Defines "conceptual framework" (an explanatory theory useful for structuring contextual elements within complex settings) and attempts to show its relationship to curriculum research. Discusses two important issues when considering conceptual frameworks in schools: selection of criteria and selection of data collection and analysis…

Rejecting technological, job-training views of curriculum, this article affirms the similarity of good novels to good curriculum as to diversity of voice, transcendent theme, cohesive structure, construction of meaning. Novels do not automatically broaden one's horizons; the reader's expectation for discovering relevant ideas and willingness to…

Describes a curriculum matrix embodying three elements (purpose, substance, practice) and their various dimensions. Argues for a transcendent view of mathematics as a profoundly human, spiritual, astonishing, majestic, and powerful enterprise. Outlines seven mathematical ideas that have transformed human experience by celebrating unlimited freedom…

Provides an objective critique of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) as a reform strategy and a curriculum process, based on a literature review and experience in North Carolina schools. OBE is theoretically narrow, but charges concerning OBE's technocratic, uncaring orientation lack foundation. The curriculum process allows teacher participation. OBE…

The most effective educational improvement strategy necessitates supervisors and curricularists working with teachers to improve classroom instruction through cooperative curriculum development. This article probes historical antecedents for collaborative efforts between supervisors and curriculum people, focusing specifically on developments in…

The future of curriculum studies is uncertain. Curricular language at the beginning of the 1990s demonstrates several features that inhibit our understanding of curricular phenomena. Persistence of the generic fallacy, confused conceptualizations, uncertain metaphoric transfer from other disciplines, and ideological commitment make optimism…

Differentiates among three levels of teachers' curriculum knowledge as autonomous consumers, consumer-developers, and autonomous developers. Most teachers studied were unfamiliar with curriculum terminology, history, theory, and methods of comparing and evaluating materials. Student teachers must take curriculum courses, and inservice programs…

As this case study of a suburban New York school district shows, creating contexts for effective and meaningful curriculum deliberation means combatting the quest for certainty embedded in the nature of institutions. Applying shared decision-making "technology" is not enough. The situation demands a transformation of social relations,…

Before World War II, secondary school mathematics fell on hard times. The war focused educators' and the public's attention on the immediate need for mathematics. Experts conceived of postwar curricula aimed at solving social and scientific problems. Postwar planning was based on three assumptions: functional competence, applications based on…

Reviews contributions of Alice Miel, a prominent curriculum development scholar-practitioner at Columbia University Teacher's College from 1942 to 1971. Miel advocated development of democratic behavior as schooling's ultimate goal and worked to democratize thee overall school structure. She emphasized that curricular change was a social process…

Investigates the nature of curriculum decision making as it occurred in two school-based curriculum development committees in an Ontario, Canada, school district. As Thomas J. Sergiovanni suggests, certain technical, human, and educational forces are necessary but not sufficient for deliberation; symbolic and cultural forces must also be present.…

Criticizes outcome-based education for reducing education, teaching, and learning to forms of human engineering and quasi-scientific planning procedures geared toward instrumental means and specified ends. Stating outcomes as a comprehensive form of intellectual scaffolding limits inquiry and speculation and gives schools and curriculum framers…

Summarizes study investigating collaborative curriculum development in Alberta, Canada, elementary schools. Focus is "snapshot" capturing extent, rather than quality, of collaboration, based on stratified random sample of elementary school principals. School staffs are moving toward more collaborative curriculum-development mode but are…

The process of education is intended to free the mind from certainty, to liberate children and adolescents so that they can consider options not entertained by their parents. After distinguishing between the intended and the operational curricula, this article examines five desirable features of intended curricula. Includes 14 references. (MLH)