ABSTRACT
Curriculum theory involves both descriptive and prescriptive work. Descriptive theory talks about the necessary to understand and describe what does go on when tring to teach different people different things in various ways and what it seems likely would happen if doing something new. Prescriptive theory explores to offer some kind of informed answers to questions of value and priority, such as whether people would accept certain consequences of a particular practice and what they try to achieve. This chapter concentrates exclusively on making general points about possible influences on curriculum and some of the problems involved in researching those influences. The essential influence on curriculum practice is sound curriculum theory. Most writing on curriculum context and implementation concentrates on evident, but avoidable, influences as if they must necessarily be accepted and circumvented, rather than simply crushed. Good curriculum theory will be based upon a sound understanding of sociological and psychological data.
