ABSTRACT
This chapter examines and evaluates the guidelines which provide frameworks through which conceptions of education can be given tangible form as curriculum proposals. The design of intended curricula involves a multitude of factors – ideological, technical, epistemological, psychological, to name but some. Developing curricula in a systematic way, as opposed to piecemeal, 'one-off modifications to current practice, is still relatively new and in consequence is both 'tentative and primitive'. Three principal curriculum design models are: 'objectives' model or 'Tyler' model, 'process' model and 'situational' model. The 'objectives' design model, greatly influenced by behavioural psychology and systematized into a coherent rationale by R. Tyler has directed a great amount of theorising and practical activity, especially in the United States. If the objectives model has its roots in behavioural psychology and the process model in philosophy of education, the third major framework for design has its roots in cultural analysis.
