ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a brief analysis of the main trends in the research about curriculum that have been conducted in México during the last decade. In my opinion, those trends are the following: (a) a technologic-systemic trend, (b) a critical-reconceptualist trend, (c) a psychopedagogical trend, (d) a trend that deals with professional formation and practice, and (e) an interpretative trend. These categories represent the most relevant and fertile sectors of the national production in theorization and intervention in the field of research. Although one cannot talk in strict sense about paradigms or programs of curriculum research in the way those concepts are interpreted by authors like Thomas S. Kuhn or Lee Shulman (see Hernández, 1998), nevertheless we can clearly recognize trends or research lines about diverse themes that are linked to curriculum, in which it is possible to distinguish, on the one hand, an explicit conception of what we understand as curriculum as well as study subjects and specific theoretical assumptions, and on the other, those inherent methodologies employed to conduct these studies or the educative interventions that derive from those approaches. In our case, the mentioned trends are delimited in regard to their importance and presence in the domain of research, theoretical reflection, intervention, and teaching in the Mexican teaching institutions. They are defined on the basis of the subjacent notion of curriculum and the domain of specific problems to which they pay attention. It is also possible to identify in those trends the predominance of any discipline or particular theoretical focusing (e.g., behaviorism, constructivism, critical theory, new educational sociology, etc.).
