ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out to map the field of 'curriculum studies' at a sample of universities in South Africa. It focuses on the pedagogic modality of courses offering curriculum as a substantive feature, and on their pedagogic structure. The chapter aims to see what theoretical or ideological orientation curriculum courses take in South Africa and assesses the relative internal pedagogic coherence of the courses. An account of South African curricular orientations is complicated by the fact that different kinds of institutions have drawn variously on three distinct and different national traditions: the North American, the European and the English. Analysing curriculum in South Africa is thus a matter of sorting out which imported tradition has played what kind of role in the design of curriculum courses. The knowledge modality has a focus on the substance of knowledge in the curriculum; the knower orientation on the activities of teachers and learners.
