Organizing curriculum change: an introduction^*

Abstract

This paper introduces the questions and approaches of a five-nation cross-cultural study of state-based curriculum-making discussed in this issue of JCS. The paper reviews the two decade-long interest of many nations in state-based curriculum-making and presents a framework for thinking about state-based curriculum-making as a tool of educational governance.

Keywords:

• Canada
• curriculum standards
• legitimacy
• national curricula
• state-based curriculum-making

Notes

1. In Canada, for example, the provinces direct the programmes of their schools using a libraries of authoritative subject-area guidelines; see Mølstad and Hansén (2013).

2. In Norway ‘Kristendoms-religion -og livssynskunnskap’ (‘Christian knowledge and religious and ethical education’) became ‘Religion, livssyn og Etikk’ (i.e. ‘Religions, philosophies of life and ethics’).

3. In 2003, for example, Ontario converted its curriculum-making into an on-going process, with each subject being formally revisited every seven years (see Table 6).

4. Prior to the early 1990s many US states had left responsibility for curriculum-making exclusively in the hands of LEAs.

5. Sivesind (2002) reports that 229 people were directly engaged in the development of the 343-page Norwegian compulsory school curriculum of 1997, and a further 1000 people had roles in the in-service work around the new curriculum (p. 321).

6. That is, royal or presidential commissions, commissions of inquiry, etc.; see Prasser, 1994.

7. What, and how, heritage languages found in a national community might be acknowledged by schools has political implications. The languages for which curricula exist in the state of Victoria, Australia, include Albanian, Arabic, Armenian, Bengali, Bosnian, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Filipino, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Maltese, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Sinhala, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Turkish, Ukranian, Vietnamese, Yiddish (Victorian Curriculum & Assessment Authority, 2009).

8. See, e.g. Gundem, 1990; Gundem, 1993; Sivesind, 2008; Weniger, 1930, 1952, 2000.

9. In presenting this framework for understanding state-based curriculum-making Haft (1986) and Hopmann (1988; see also Haft & Hopmann, 1990b) anticipated the analyses of curriculum-making that followed the introduction of the English National Curriculum (see Bernstein, 1996; Bowe, Ball, & Gold, 1992; Roberts, 1995). Thus, Bowe et al. (1992) highlighted the character of the National Curriculum as a text that must be interpreted by its readers to be given meaning. But every text is read in the light of the interpretative starting points, routines or scripts of its readers, and within the framing of the social systems within which it is read. To the extent that the interpretative starting points of different sites and/or settings, e.g. political ‘parties’, teachers’ communities of practice, schools, etc., vary more or less widely, the understanding and uptake of any curriculum will vary more or less widely.