The purpose of this keynote address is to discuss how curriculum theory can make a specific contribution to research on transnational education policy; in particular, curriculum theory has implications for national policy due to the interest in exploring educational phenomena at different levels of the school system. From a Swedish perspective on…

This paper offers alternatives to curriculum research. It examines Bruner and Schwab's transformation since their espousal of the structure of the discipline-based inquiry in curriculum, Beitell and Eisner's call for going to the roots of curriculum thought, and the reconceptualists' urgings to recognize the need to consider the deep level…

At the end of the first nine months of the American Institutes for Research (AIR) project to revise and field test the Comprehensive Career Education Model (CCEM) curriculum materials, activities are proceeding on four fronts. A coding of 61 curriculum units on a lesson-by-lesson basis has been completed and a content analysis is now being carried…

A 1989 comprehensive report addressed the then-current status of curricula in all of the mainstream components of most mass communication programs: journalism, advertising, broadcasting, magazines, public relations, and visual communication. Recently, a study replicated the advertising portion of the original report, using a questionnaire based…

The Comparing Options in Secondary Mathematics: Investigating Curriculum (COSMIC) project is a longitudinal study of student learning from two types of mathematics curricula: integrated and subject-specific. Previous large-scale research studies such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) indicate that numerous variables are…

Current interest in curriculum is of four types. First, there is an interest in analyzing and describing aspects of curriculum, both in terms of what actually goes on in schools and in terms of how curriculum policy is made and implemented. This field of inquiry is well established. Not so thoroughly investigated is a second area, the attempt to…

This paper focuses on some of the issues from a study that questioned the validity of the proposal advanced by the influential North American curriculum movement referred to as "Discipline-Based Art Education" (DBAE); that the methods and understanding of artists, art critics, aestheticians, and art historians can be represented in a…

A professional journal, written by teachers and read by curriculum researchers, may help the collaborative process needed to produce effective curricula that teachers will use in their classrooms. A journal of this kind could help researchers understand teachers' thought and planning processes and why curricula may have been adapted in a special…

This study draws a relationship between curriculum documents and classroom daily occurrences by describing how the curriculum document is enacted in the instructional context. The setting for the study centered on the daily life of two classrooms. Two inductee teachers were paired with mentor teachers as part of a collaborative project between a…

The author examines recent trends in curriculum study through a discussion of three schools of thought in the field--traditionalism, conceptual-empiricism, and reconceptualism. (IRT)

The first phase of the American Institutes for Research (AIR) activity in the revision of 61 curriculum units of the Comprehensive Career Education Model (CCEM) project focused on obtaining information that would aid in revising the units to meet the needs of publishers, school administrators, and teachers. Three separate acceptability studies…

Several practical suggestions or guidelines for deriving objectives in traditionally difficult curriculum areas (written and oral communication, fine arts, social sciences, and humanities) are presented in this paper. The author believes that educators do not know how well they can define important, teachable objectives in these areas until they…

A particular historical account of the "reconceptualization" of the curriculum field has prevailed since advocates of this movement began promoting it in the late 1970s. The standard account is that two developments have led to the demise of the curriculum field and education reform. First, leaders of national reform excluded curriculum…

The Curriculum Matrix developed by A. W. Foshay (1991) is a broad, comprehensive conception of curriculum, incorporating a range of perspectives and meanings often overlooked. This paper situates Foshay's matrix in the field of curriculum studies. By focusing on Foshay's interpretation of five curricular purposes (aesthetic, physical,…

Ten different methods of inquiry are outlined in this overview of research methodologies currently being employed in the field of curriculum studies: (1) philosophical, (2) historical, (3) scientific, (4) artistic, (5) moral, (6) religious, (7) interpretive, (8) instrumental, (9) deliberative, and (10) action oriented. Each of the 10 methods is…