Abstract
The school curriculum has been the focus of educational and political debate in England2 for many decades. The reformist years of the 1970s, the sense of retrenchment, even disappointment, in the 1970s, and the period of government intervention in the 1980s and 1990s, have given a particular flavour and emotion to the forms these debates have taken. It is a fascinating period, vividly illustrating the complex interplay of social, political and economic forces and movements that shape contemporary ideas about schooling and the forms and processes through which curriculum can be understood. In this chapter I want to suggest that over this period two interrelated but distinct approaches to curriculum reform have evolved. The first, I suggest, grew out of the Nuffield tradition and has evolved into that broad church of social constructivist thinking that has been so influential in the curricular domains of science, mathematics and technology. This tradition I see as focussed on pupil learning. The second approach, I suggest, has origins in the work of the Humanities Curriculum Project (HCP) and has evolved into the equally wide ranging concerns for action research and reflective practice in curriculum development. This tradition I see as focussed on teacher development. The need to find ways of providing a more grounded articulation between these strands of thought and action, whilst acknowledging a wider and legitimate public interest, represents, as I set out in the conclusion, a major challenge for curriculum specialists.
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Moon, B. (2004). Contrasting Traditions: The English Experience of Curriculum Change 1960–2000. In: Curriculum Landscapes and Trends. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1205-7_2
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