Emerging curriculum

Begg, Andrew John Cameron (2006). Emerging curriculum. PhD thesis The Open University.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21954/ou.ro.0000d567

Abstract

In this autobiographical narrative study I consider how curriculum, in particular the mathematical curriculum, emerged for me throughout my life.

My aims with this study are:

- to show how my concept of curriculum has emerged and changed over time.

- to encourage others to envisage curriculum in a range of different, but complementary ways.

I started with a naive view of curriculum-the received curriculum. While teaching this changed. I began to appreciate levels of curriculum (national, school and classroom), to realize that within the constraints of a national curriculum I had professional freedom and to understand how students negotiate curriculum. I also became aware of curriculum as a continually changing process rather than a product.

As an education officer in the curriculum development division, my views evolved further. I juggled with the conflict between all planning for the classroom and curriculum as government policy. My understanding grew about the assessed curriculum, the global curriculum, the development process (based on a research-development-dissemination model) and the notion that a curriculum should operationalize educational aims. I realized that contradictory perspectives on curriculum needed to co-exist.

In the last 15 years I worked in tertiary institutions. My scholarship focussed on curriculum-related matters. My view of curriculum became multi-dimensional and complex, with associated documents and development being inseparable from curriculum; and I formulated a model in which curriculum, development and other influencing activities are envisaged as a complex living system.