A new National Curriculum Guide for secondary schools and old curriculum theories

Abstract

In May 2011, the Icelandic Ministry of Education, Science and Culture issued a new National Curriculum Guide for secondary schools. This publication requires secondary schools to describe each course or module in terms of learning outcomes, i.e. knowledge, skills and competences students are supposed to acquire. It also requires schools to work towards six general aims (democracy and human rights, equality, literacy, creativity, sustainable development, and health and welfare). This emphasis on two types of educational aims places the new Curriculum Guide within a tradition of curriculum theory that originated in the works of Bobbitt and Tyler, and was further developed by Bloom and Taba. Some modern manifestations of this tradition are known as ‘outcomes based education’ and have been incorporated into the so-called Bologna process. This tradition has its roots in Cartesian rationalism and technocratic modes of thinking. Its core is summarised in the following three statements: 1) Curriculum design begins with a statement of aims and decisions about teaching materials, and teaching methods are derived from the aims. 2) The aims, are learner-centred, that is, they specify how students are supposed to change, i.e. what competencies, skills, knowledge, attitudes, mindset or characteristics they are expected to acquire. 3) The aims are objectives that can be completed rather than guiding lights that give direction to an open-ended or lifelong endeavour. These three points often go hand in hand with emphasis on efficiency and quantifiable results. This tradition of curriculum theory was influential among curriculum theorists and top-level educational administration in the 20th century. However, it was at odds with school traditions that were largely shaped in the 19th century and drew upon humanistic and enlightenment ideals of education. Over the past 45 years or so, the tradition of curriculum theory, outlined above, has been criticized by a number of educationists and philosophers of education. Some of the most important criticisms were set forth by Schwab and Stenhouse in the early 1970s. They both advocated ideals of liberal education and warned against reducing subject matter to the role of servant. Schwab also argued that statements of educational aims are abstractions that get whatever meaning they have from contexts that include subject matter and teaching methods and are therefore unable to determine what to do in schools. This argument makes it doubtful that school curricula can possibly be aims-based in the sense assumed by the tradition outlined above. Stenhouse did not argue for the impossibility of aims-based curricula. His main point was rather that detailed specification of aims is undesirable, both because education should increase the freedom of students rather than mould them, and because truly successful education makes students’ behaviour unpredictable. The arguments produced by Schwab make it questionable how realistic the requirements made by the new National Curriculum Guide are, and Stenhouse’s arguments provide reasons to doubt their desirability. Earlier curriculum guides for secondary schools issued by the Icelandic Ministry of Education in 1986 and 1999 had required schools to use aims as principles of curriculum organisation. These publications from the last decades of the 20th century did, however, not specify in detail what types of aims were acceptable. With the publication of the 2011 National Curriculum Guide for secondary schools, educational authorities in Iceland attempt to systematise the presentation of educational aims in secondary school curricula to a greater extent than before, by requesting schools to use precise formulation of learner-centred aims as organising principles for all modules. This can be read as a continuation of the attacks advocates of technocratic rationalism in the 20th century have been making on traditions based on ideals of humanism and liberal learning.