The Potential of Systems Philosophy for Theory and Research in Curriculum

Abstract

Systems thought as applied to the study of curriculum has frequently been dominated by an input‐output‐feedback syndrome which promotes a tendency to think of systems solely in terms of a management technique rather than as a valuable heuristic device. An alternative to the management view of systems, it is argued, is to be found in that line of systems thought stemming from Ludwig von Bertalanffy and the Society for General Systems Research. It can help provide a way of viewing curricular phenomena which will draw together the normative and the descriptive dimensions of curriculum inquiry, prevent a simplistic view of complex phenomena, and permit a disciplined consideration to proceed in a non‐deterministic fashion.

Processes of systems analysis and design as they might apply to curriculum problems are explicated, and the possible difficulties to be experienced interpreted in the light of a typology of systems ranging from the deterministic to the indeterminate. It is suggested that the present lack of a body of tried and tested theory in curriculum demands a heuristic approach to its study, that the phenomena must be treated in a probabilistic rather than deterministic manner, and that such an approach might usefully draw upon some of the ideas receiving expression in the field of general system theory.