ABSTRACT
This paper does not attempt to sum up the case studies; they are well able to speak for themselves, and do so in their own unique ways. Its purpose is rather to sketch in an account of the broad field to which they contribute – the theory of curriculum design and diffusion – and to consider a basic problem to which they point – the gap between theory and practice, between the ideal and the norm. All the studies owe at least part of their interest to the mismatches they demonstrate between what currently popular models would assume or predict, and the ways in which curricula are actually designed and implemented. This finding is not altogether surprising when it is considered that theories of curriculum development owe relatively little to descriptive studies of actual practice, and that, although the argument is less easy to make, similar problems of congruence with empirical data seem to exist with theories of curriculum implementation.
