Continuing education in the Australian university: a critique of contract‐based curriculum development

Abstract

The paper critically examines the principal assumptions underlying a contract‐based approach to curriculum development ('contractualism') in university continuing education. Contractualism draws its inspiration from economic rationalist ideology, which emphasises effectiveness and efficiency, and presupposes a model of persons as atomistic, autonomous, egoistic, deracinated, mechanistically rational maximisers of their own, essentially material, interests. The following assumptions of contractualism are questioned: the efficacy of education as a private commodity; the efficacy of enlightened self‐interest; the individmlistic view of humamity; the sufficiency of educational functionalism; the specifiability of educational outcomes; client awareness of their best interests; client understanding of the procedural alternatives; the progressiveness of the framework; its essentially empowering nature; the complementarity of extra‐university programs; and that of open learning programs. To theextent that these assumptions fail in theways identified in the critique, the quality of contractualist curricula may be diminished through: curricular simplification, fragmentation, inflexibility and orthodoxy; conceptual situationalism; procedural inflexibility; heightened inequality; and individualistic functionalism. It is suggested that contractualism may be both insufficient and inappropriate as an approach to curriculum development in this context.