Differentiates among several conceptions of curriculum, including the formal curriculum, the teacher-created and student-influenced curriculum, and the hidden curriculum. Explores new options disclosed by recent research and raises implications and issues related to them. Includes seven references. (MLH)

Adult educators create a curriculum whenever they explicitly or implicitly select some objects of knowledge over others, or choose a particular way to handle knowledge in their pedagogy. When the interests reflected in a curriculum are left unexamined, the role of knowledge as a phenomenon of power is not addressed and inequitable social…