In this article, I share a number of thoughts and concerns about the current and future status of a field in which I have been a participant for five decades. I know that many others share these worries as well. Speaking honestly, I am deeply concerned that too much of the field of curriculum has lost its way. Too much of it is characterized by a…

This contribution to the symposium on Michael Young's article "Overcoming the crisis in curriculum theory: a knowledge based approach", supports his contention that curriculum theory has lost sight of its object--"what is taught and learned in schools", and argues that this has particularly deleterious consequences for…

This article uses curriculum-making frameworks to analyse and reconstruct the Chinese curriculum-making model and unpack the dynamics, complexity and constraints of China's curriculum reform since the early 1990s. It argues that curriculum reform is China's main human capital development strategy for coping with the challenges of the 21st century,…

Since the late 1990s there has been a fundamental shift in the way schooling and even education as a whole is evaluated. From this new perspective the education system would seem to be interpreted as a sub-system of the economic system and thus subservient to it. Decisions on education matters seem to have become determinant for individual…

Outlines the evolution of curriculum theory and practice in Spain from the 1970s to the 1990s. Discusses changing perspectives in response to political developments and reasons for the failure of the curriculum innovations introduced by the Socialist government after 1982. Advocates developing a dialectical theory of curriculum reform. (DB)

Argues that many of the conditions advocated in current educational theory relating to curriculum change are unrealistic in the present political and economic climate, and that politicization of education, the role of the media, as well as subject-specific factors, deserve more attention. Illustrates with a case of curriculum change in Australia.…

Examines how Paulo Freire's pedagogy changed, and how it affected pedagogical discourses when it was implemented by different education groups in Sweden. Explains how ideas move from one context to another using a grid-group model to analyze the text-translator, text-transformation process. Suggests theoretical systems can be used as ideological…