Towards a Kuhnian approach to curriculum development

Abstract

During the 1960s and 1970s, large-scale, ‘top-down’ curriculum development projects were fashionable in the uk, usa and Australia. Central teams (often teachers on secondment) identified curriculum aims and objectives, selected content, suggested teaching methods and produced materials. These curriculum packages were then distributed to schools through quite elaborate diffusion and dissemination networks. Surprisingly and disappointingly, much of this effort, expertise and financial investment often had little effect on curriculum practice. Many of the packages lay unused on school stockroom shelves or were so radically altered by teachers as to be virtually unrecognizable to the developers. In his survey of research findings on the poor uptake of science ‘packages’, Hodson (1985) identified two major causes: failure to meet local needs, and implementation and maintenance resources that schools could not provide. Whilst changes in the economic climate have caused us to abandon much of this large-scale curriculum development activity, there is still a penchant for top-down curriculum development, which, in my view, is entirely mistaken. I believe that this approach to curriculum development has such fundamental weaknesses that it is unlikely ever to prove consistently successful.