A historical reconsideration of the work of the National Society for the Study of Education’s Committee on Curriculum-Making

Abstract

Historical representations of the National Society for the Study of Education’s Committee on Curriculum-Making typically recount that the purpose of the committee was to assemble representatives from competing curriculum camps to achieve consensus on curriculum principles, depict the committee’s work as important, cast doubt on the consensus the committee achieved, overlook the principles proposed by the committee and ignore its call for deliberation. A historical reconstruction of the committee’s work in the USA during the 1920s reveals that the purpose of the committee changed from reviewing research to prescribing techniques and finally to proposing general curriculum principles, with the aim of fostering deliberation among curriculum workers. A review of the US curriculum literature reveals that, after some initial attention, the Twenty-Sixth Yearbook fell into relative obscurity, but was rediscovered in the 1960s. A new analysis of the committee members’ supplementary statements argues that the committee indeed achieved consensus on foundational curriculum principles. As a historical document, the yearbook represents the coalescence of curriculum development as a professional field in the USA during in the 1920s. As a repository of professional knowledge, the General Statement remains pertinent to curriculum reform in the twenty-first century.

Keywords:

• Curriculum history
• curriculum development
• curriculum reform
• history of education
• deliberation

Acknowledgement

The author wishes to thank the anonymous referees for their constructive feedback on this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 2011 annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Curriculum History, New Orleans, LA and at the 2014 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Philadelphia, PA. The author wishes to thank the anonymous referees for their constructive feedback on this paper.