How Scholars Define Curriculum
How Scholars Define Curriculum
A century of definitions
- Bobbitt (1924): organized and unorganized experiences students encounter.
- Tyler (1957): all that teachers plan and direct to reach educational goals.
- Glatthorn (1987): plans for guiding teaching and learning.
- English (1992): a work plan of content plus teaching strategies.
- Tanner and Tanner (1995): reconstruction of knowledge and experience under the school.
- Reinhartz and Beach (1997): a flexible plan that meets learner needs and allows teachable moments.
Two camps
- Prescriptive: what ought to happen, an intended plan or program.
- Descriptive: what actually happens, the real experience in classrooms.
The takeaway
- Schubert (1993): the term is wrapped in definitional controversy; definitions keep evolving.
No single sentence has won the argument over what curriculum means. Since the 1920s, scholars have offered definition after definition, and each one leans on what mattered most to its author. Reading them in order is the fastest way to see both the common thread and the real disagreement underneath.
A century of definitions
The definitions below run from the 1920s to the 2000s. Notice how they shift: early ones lean toward experiences, the middle ones toward plans, and later ones add flexibility.
| Scholar | Year | Curriculum is… |
|---|---|---|
| Bobbitt | 1924 | All the organized and unorganized educational experiences students encounter |
| Tyler | 1957 | All that is planned and directed by teachers to achieve educational goals |
| Glatthorn | 1987 | Plans for guiding teaching and learning |
| English | 1992 | A work plan with both content and strategies for teaching and learning |
| Tanner and Tanner | 1995 | The reconstruction of knowledge and experience under the guidance of the school |
| Reinhartz and Beach | 1997 | A flexible plan for teaching that meets learner needs and allows teachable moments |
Two threads run through the list. Some authors define curriculum by the experiences a learner has, while others define it by the plan a teacher follows. That difference is small in wording but large in meaning, and it sets up the deeper split that comes next.
Bobbitt’s 1924 definition includes both organized and unorganized experiences.
What does adding “unorganized” signal about his view of curriculum?
The deeper split: prescriptive and descriptive
The many definitions sort into two camps. Arthur Ellis named them clearly in 2004.
A prescriptive definition is about what ought to happen. It is a plan, or an expert view of what should be taught in a course of study. When a ministry publishes the official syllabus, that document is the prescriptive curriculum: the intended path.
A descriptive definition goes further. It describes not how things ought to be but how things actually are in real classrooms. On this view, the curriculum is the actual experience a learner ends up having, which is rarely identical to the plan on paper.
The gap between the two is where much of curriculum study lives. A beautiful plan that no classroom follows is a weak curriculum in the descriptive sense, however strong it looks on paper.
A national education board releases an official syllabus stating what every Grade 5 class should cover.
In Ellis’s terms, this document is an example of which kind of curriculum?
Why the definitions keep changing
It might look like the field should have settled on one definition by now. It has not, and Schubert explained why in 1993: the term is wrapped in definitional controversy, and definitions keep evolving. They change with the educational conditions of a given time and with our growing understanding of how teaching and learning work.
This is not a weakness to be embarrassed about. A definition that fit a small village school in 1924 does not stretch to cover a connected, fast-changing system a century later. The willingness to redefine curriculum is a sign the field is keeping pace with the schools it studies.
Definitions evolve with the times
Schubert (1993) called the term shrouded in definitional controversy. As educational conditions change and understanding of teaching and learning grows, the definition is reworked to keep pace.
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