Curriculum as Content and Planned Activities
Curriculum as Content and Planned Activities
The seven images at a glance
- Subject matter or content.
- Program of planned activities.
- Intended learning outcomes.
- Cultural reproduction.
- Experience.
- Discrete tasks and concepts.
- Agenda for social reconstruction.
Image 1: subject matter
- Curriculum equals the subjects taught.
- Oldest image, back to the seven liberal arts.
- Trivium: grammar, rhetoric, logic. Quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music.
Image 2: planned activities
- Curriculum is everything planned in advance.
- Includes scope, sequence, subject matter, motivation, and teaching techniques.
- Can be a written document or an unwritten plan in a teacher’s mind.
There is no single picture of what a curriculum is. Across the field, seven different images compete, and each one steers planning in a different direction. The full set is worth knowing before going deeper, because most arguments about curriculum are really arguments between two of these images.
| # | Image | Curriculum is seen as… |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Subject matter | The subjects and content to be taught |
| 2 | Planned activities | Everything planned in advance for delivery |
| 3 | Intended outcomes | The specific ends learning should reach |
| 4 | Cultural reproduction | The way a society passes on its culture |
| 5 | Experience | What the learner actually lives through |
| 6 | Discrete tasks | A set of skills and concepts to master |
| 7 | Social reconstruction | An agenda for improving society |
This article takes the first two. The rest follow in the next three articles.
Image 1: curriculum as subject matter
The oldest and most common image equates curriculum with the subjects taught. Ask a learner what their curriculum is and they will likely name their subjects: a language or two, mathematics, science, social studies. On this image, the curriculum simply is that list.
The image runs deep in history. It reaches back to the seven liberal arts of the medieval and ancient world, which were split into two groups. The trivium held grammar, rhetoric, and logic (also called dialectic). The quadrivium added arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. Seven subjects made up the educated person’s course of study, and curriculum meant exactly those subjects.
Educators who hold this image do careful work: they spell out the network of subjects, the meaning given to each, the knowledge needed before a subject can be studied, and the reasons the subjects at a given level fit together. Most schools today still run on this image. The curriculum arrives as a set of subjects, and not much about that has changed in a very long time.
The two groups of the seven liberal arts
The trivium is grammar, rhetoric, and logic. The quadrivium is arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. Together they were the subject-based curriculum of the medieval world.
Image 2: curriculum as a program of planned activities
The second image is wider. Here the curriculum is not just the subjects but everything planned in advance for delivery to learners. It includes the scope and sequence of the subject matter, the interpretations given to it, the balance between topics, the motivational strategies, the teaching techniques, and anything else a teacher arranges before walking into the room.
The shift from image 1 to image 2 is the shift from “what” to “what plus how.” Subject matter is still there, but now the plan also says how learners will be motivated and how teachers will teach effectively. The picture grows from a list of topics into a full plan for action.
This image is wide-ranging in another way too. The plan can be a formal written document, or it can be unwritten, living in the mind of the teacher who carries it into class. Both count. A teacher who has thought through the lesson, the activities, and the order of events has a curriculum in this sense, even if none of it is on paper.
It adds the how, not just the what
Subject matter is the list of topics. Planned activities keep the subjects but add scope, sequence, motivation, and teaching techniques. The plan can be written or held unwritten in a teacher’s mind.
Subject matter, planned activities, intended outcomes, cultural reproduction, experience, discrete tasks, social reconstruction
Each is a different answer to what kind of thing a curriculum is, and each steers planning a different way.
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