ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to examine how curriculum developers can, and do, devise curricula. It focuses on an analysis of how teachers may develop curricula successfully as well as presenting a synthesis of the literature explaining how teachers currently approach curriculum development. A general term gaining greater acceptance as a means of explaining the curriculum process is ‘algorithm’. Taba argued for a rational, sequential approach to curriculum development rather than a rule-of-thumb procedure. In examining the curriculum process, one could argue that Tyler and Taba have found the inherent logic that underpins the construction of curricula, at least from a rationalist perspective. Cyclical models view elements of the curriculum as interrelated and interdependent, so that the distinctions between the elements, as in the rational model, are less clear. The Nicholls model emphasised the logical approach to curriculum development, particularly where the need for new curricula emerged from changed situations.
