Documents the emergence of interdisciplinary curriculum organization patterns as viable alternatives to the subject-centered curriculum field in the United States during the first half of the 20th century. Early 20th-century approaches to the elementary curriculum included the project method, the experience curriculum, and the activity movement.…

Today's curriculum frames, based on the Tyler/Taylor rationale, competency-based instruction, or Madeline Hunter's model, are not constructed to welcome paradox and eclecticism, indeterminacy, self-organization, or satire and play. Postmodernism demands a fundamental questioning of old ways and an exploration of new values. Copy-model and…

This essay explores the relationship between curriculum theory and classroom practice in order to show why a theory-practice gap exists. The idiosyncratic nature of organizations and individuals alike is cited as the weak link in control-oriented curriculum theory, while emancipation-oriented theory underestimates the need for order and control.…