ABSTRACT
Numerous curricular traditions (academic and vocational, liberal and radical) and forms are to be found in colleges, providing a range of learning opportunities for their diverse student body. The curriculum principles guiding the organisation of teaching and learning in different areas of the college will reflect the parameters within which they have to work. Some teachers will have more freedom to experiment with the curriculum than others, but many will be constrained by the requirements of regulatory bodies. Rogers (2002: 207) provides a helpful model for thinking about what the concept embraces. He proposes that a curriculum comprises five elements:
1 Philosophical framework: This reflects the assumptions that lie behind the way the curriculum has been designed. Hence, ‘Woodwork may be seen as a series of techniques or as part of a concern for good design and good living . . . Natural history may be taught as a leisure pursuit or as part of socially concerned issues . . . In particular, it (the framework) will reflect our assumptions as to whether the education we are engaged in is designed to reproduce or transform existing social systems, whether it is aimed to lead to conformity or to liberation’ (ibid.: 207).
