and well-structured approach to curriculum design and content decisions. By adopting a ‘scientific method’ to curriculum making Bobbitt proposed that the school curriculummust focus onwhatwas to be taught in schools for children’s learning and understanding to go beyond their everyday life experiences and knowledge (Bobbitt, 1918, p. 44). He identified extensive lists of human characteristics and abilities from which a curriculum should be created and organised to extend and deepen academic and vocational knowledge (Bobbitt, 1918, 1922). Such content information would be structured and sequenced to enable the curriculum to be planned across year groups as the basis for lessons. Amongst others, Draper (1936) identified an intermediate stage in planning between school and year programmes and lessons, which he termed ‘units of work’. These, he argued, would be fully prescribed and arranged by the teacher who was the key curriculum maker, organising and structuring each unit. Draper also included a more ‘progressive’, child-centred approach to planning units of work, where children would contribute ideas co-operatively with the teacher to their planning and would be engaged through what today are described as ‘active learning’ approaches (Monk & Silman, 2011), influenced, it would seem, by the arguments of Dewey (1902). In subsequent decades, the term ‘curriculum making’ was less fre-quently applied, while the literature and debate about the nature and use of curriculum in schools extended considerably. Curriculum making was described using other terms in England and elsewhere, for example curric-ulum design, curriculum organisation, curriculum planning and curricu-lum construction. It was allied with other phrases, such as curriculum processes and curriculum delivery, to explain curriculum construction and implementation from national to school to classroom levels. These terms encompassed the same aspects as initially set out for ‘curriculum making’, namely curriculum aims and intentions, curriculum and learning objectives or targets, curriculum content and subjects, schemes of work, units of work and lesson plans, as well as assessment foci and methods. Other terms such as syllabus, programme and course became common-place to refer to the nature of curriculum prescriptions, plans and struc-tures influencing or enacted by schools (Brady & Kennedy, 1999; Posner & Rudnitsky, 1986). But, at all levels, this was contentious. Goodson (1988) and Kelly (2009), for example, recognised the curriculum as an arena of conflict – where curriculum content and sequence, and implicit and essential approaches to organisation and teaching, could be contested at levels from government to the classroom. At the level of units of work, taught for periods of half to a whole term, there remains debate about the extent to which teachers should follow pre-determined outlines and pre-structured units or have the flexibility and freedom to decide, organise and develop units which they see as most appropriate for their children

DOI link for and well-structured approach to curriculum design and content decisions. By adopting a ‘scientific method’ to curriculum making Bobbitt proposed that the school curriculummust focus onwhatwas to be taught in schools for children’s learning and understanding to go beyond their everyday life experiences and knowledge (Bobbitt, 1918, p. 44). He identified extensive lists of human characteristics and abilities from which a curriculum should be created and organised to extend and deepen academic and vocational knowledge (Bobbitt, 1918, 1922). Such content information would be structured and sequenced to enable the curriculum to be planned across year groups as the basis for lessons. Amongst others, Draper (1936) identified an intermediate stage in planning between school and year programmes and lessons, which he termed ‘units of work’. These, he argued, would be fully prescribed and arranged by the teacher who was the key curriculum maker, organising and structuring each unit. Draper also included a more ‘progressive’, child-centred approach to planning units of work, where children would contribute ideas co-operatively with the teacher to their planning and would be engaged through what today are described as ‘active learning’ approaches (Monk & Silman, 2011), influenced, it would seem, by the arguments of Dewey (1902). In subsequent decades, the term ‘curriculum making’ was less fre-quently applied, while the literature and debate about the nature and use of curriculum in schools extended considerably. Curriculum making was described using other terms in England and elsewhere, for example curric-ulum design, curriculum organisation, curriculum planning and curricu-lum construction. It was allied with other phrases, such as curriculum processes and curriculum delivery, to explain curriculum construction and implementation from national to school to classroom levels. These terms encompassed the same aspects as initially set out for ‘curriculum making’, namely curriculum aims and intentions, curriculum and learning objectives or targets, curriculum content and subjects, schemes of work, units of work and lesson plans, as well as assessment foci and methods. Other terms such as syllabus, programme and course became common-place to refer to the nature of curriculum prescriptions, plans and struc-tures influencing or enacted by schools (Brady & Kennedy, 1999; Posner & Rudnitsky, 1986). But, at all levels, this was contentious. Goodson (1988) and Kelly (2009), for example, recognised the curriculum as an arena of conflict – where curriculum content and sequence, and implicit and essential approaches to organisation and teaching, could be contested at levels from government to the classroom. At the level of units of work, taught for periods of half to a whole term, there remains debate about the extent to which teachers should follow pre-determined outlines and pre-structured units or have the flexibility and freedom to decide, organise and develop units which they see as most appropriate for their children

and well-structured approach to curriculum design and content decisions. By adopting a ‘scientific method’ to curriculum making Bobbitt proposed that the school curriculummust focus onwhatwas to be taught in schools for children’s learning and understanding to go beyond their everyday life experiences and knowledge (Bobbitt, 1918, p. 44). He identified extensive lists of human characteristics and abilities from which a curriculum should be created and organised to extend and deepen academic and vocational knowledge (Bobbitt, 1918, 1922). Such content information would be structured and sequenced to enable the curriculum to be planned across year groups as the basis for lessons. Amongst others, Draper (1936) identified an intermediate stage in planning between school and year programmes and lessons, which he termed ‘units of work’. These, he argued, would be fully prescribed and arranged by the teacher who was the key curriculum maker, organising and structuring each unit. Draper also included a more ‘progressive’, child-centred approach to planning units of work, where children would contribute ideas co-operatively with the teacher to their planning and would be engaged through what today are described as ‘active learning’ approaches (Monk & Silman, 2011), influenced, it would seem, by the arguments of Dewey (1902). In subsequent decades, the term ‘curriculum making’ was less fre-quently applied, while the literature and debate about the nature and use of curriculum in schools extended considerably. Curriculum making was described using other terms in England and elsewhere, for example curric-ulum design, curriculum organisation, curriculum planning and curricu-lum construction. It was allied with other phrases, such as curriculum processes and curriculum delivery, to explain curriculum construction and implementation from national to school to classroom levels. These terms encompassed the same aspects as initially set out for ‘curriculum making’, namely curriculum aims and intentions, curriculum and learning objectives or targets, curriculum content and subjects, schemes of work, units of work and lesson plans, as well as assessment foci and methods. Other terms such as syllabus, programme and course became common-place to refer to the nature of curriculum prescriptions, plans and struc-tures influencing or enacted by schools (Brady & Kennedy, 1999; Posner & Rudnitsky, 1986). But, at all levels, this was contentious. Goodson (1988) and Kelly (2009), for example, recognised the curriculum as an arena of conflict – where curriculum content and sequence, and implicit and essential approaches to organisation and teaching, could be contested at levels from government to the classroom. At the level of units of work, taught for periods of half to a whole term, there remains debate about the extent to which teachers should follow pre-determined outlines and pre-structured units or have the flexibility and freedom to decide, organise and develop units which they see as most appropriate for their children