ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that curriculum research seeks to answer questions of fact about curriculum development, evaluation, the operational curriculum, pupil's experience of the curriculum, the role of school subjects, the relationship between curricular intentions, the transactions of teaching and curricular outcomes. It provides examples of different modes of curriculum research: 'scientific' research, 'historical' research, 'mathematical' research and 'inspirational' research. Herbert Spencer, an advocate of the teaching of science as intrinsically worthwhile, saw science teaching as part of liberal education leading to production of 'a nobler being'. Many saw such an education as unsuitable, even dangerous for the working class. It is the controlled experiment in scientific research that gives rise to quantifiable data and, in time, to reliable knowledge about the natural world which is generalizable as laws. However, there are sciences, or parts of sciences, where the controlled experiment plays little or no part in the production of reliable knowledge.
