ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses in turn on the purposes and scope of curriculum design, the situational factors which affect it, and the range of opinion about what it is that curriculum designers do or, more usually, should do. Curriculum Design can be defined as one of the four main tasks of curriculum development: analysis of needs and context, design, implementation, and evaluation. Curriculum development does not always begin with analysis of needs, because needs are often taken for granted. In the most organic form of curriculum development, the various tasks interpenetrate and recycle. The artistic approach to curriculum design provides a total contrast, for its criteria are not mastery and effectiveness, but attention, engagement, and impact. However, one finds it implicit in much talk about educational practice in general, whether discussing the stimulus of children's television, the quality of experience on a school visit, or the response to a poem or piece of music.
