ABSTRACT
‘Curriculum’ is understood in many ways and has been the subject of study from a number of perspectives. Three levels of analysis have become evident over the years, namely that of the specified, the enacted, and the experienced curricula. Early perspectives focused on the aims and content of what was to be taught; the specified curriculum. This focus on the specified curriculum led to analyses that sought to establish the relationships between educational knowledge and the social and economic interests of a society. These analyses have since been expanded to consider the socio-historical influences on the production and validation of the knowledge specified in curricula. More recently this has focused attention on how knowledge is selected, organised, transmitted and evaluated (Bernstein, 1971); and the extent to which worldwide processes are at play in this, in terms of the emergence of standardised models of society and of education (Benavot et al., 1992). These developments had a twofold effect; they extended the context of the curriculum debate in relation to the mediating influences that were identified. They also, and importantly, extended the levels of study of curriculum to include the arena of the ‘classroom’, i.e. the enacted curriculum. In this sense curriculum and instruction were seen as inseparable, reflecting Goodson's concept of curriculum as ‘constructed, negotiated, and re-negotiated at a number of levels and in a number of arenas’ (Goodson, 1994, p. 111).
