Curriculum Studies in the Lifelong Learning Sector

Jonathan Tummons

• Publisher: Learning Matters
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780857259158, 9781446256916
• eBook ISBN: 9780857259165
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Adult Education

Curriculum is a key issue for trainee teachers in the lifelong learning sector and a core component of most courses. It lies at the heart of the work of teachers and trainers, it shapes the programmes and courses that are taught, and dictates which students can have access to courses. What goes in to the curriculum is argued over by governments, employers, parents and educationalists. How the curriculum is funded can change on a yearly basis. Access to a particular curriculum can raise or diminish the life chances of the learners involved.

This book provides an accessible and up-to-date overview of the key issues surrounding the curriculum. Written for all those working towards QTLS, it provides examples and case studies from working FE colleges, adult education centres and work-based learning contexts as well as offering succinct summaries of key theories and debates relating to the curriculum. This fully revised Second Edition reflects the latest policies and thinking, has a new chapter on the implications of e-learning on curricula, and includes a full glossary of key terms and concepts.

Jonathan Tummons has worked in higher education since 1995. After six years as a lecturer in teacher education in the further education sector, in 2009 he took up his current post as senior lecturer in education at Teesside University where he is also research co-ordinator for education and a member of the management board for the Social Futures Institute, Teesside?s research centre for the social sciences.

1 Defining Curriculum

By the End of this Chapter you should

• be able to evaluate definitions of curriculum, according to context;
• know and be able to apply relevant definitions of curriculum, as appropriate to your own professional practice;
• be able to begin a critical evaluation of your own curriculum, in terms of how it is delivered in the classroom and how it is experienced by the students with whom you work.

Professional Standards

This chapter relates to the following Professional Standards:

Professional Values:

DS 1 Planning to promote equality, support diversity and to meet the aims and learning needs of learners.

DS 2 Learner participation in the planning of learning.

Professional Knowledge and Understanding:

DK 2.1 The importance of including learners in the planning process.

Professional Practice:

DP 1.1 Plan coherent and inclusive learning programmes that meet learners’ needs and curriculum requirements, promote equality and engage with diversity effectively.

This chapter will allow you to work towards the following elements of the LLUK Minimum Core:

Language and Literacy – Personal Language Skills

Reading:

• Find, and select from, a range of reference material and sources of information, including the internet.
• Use and reflect on a range of reading strategies to interpret texts and to locate information or meaning.
• Identify and record the key information or messages contained within reading material using note-taking techniques.

Introduction

A book called ‘Curriculum Studies in the Lifelong Learning Sector’ would, you might think, be able to provide a straightforward definition of ‘curriculum’ for the reader at, or near, the very start. I have lost count of the number of times when I have told my teacher-training students, while they are completing assignments, to provide proper definitions, accompanied by an appropriate reference and perhaps a quotation, for terms such as ‘socially situated learning’ or ‘behaviourism’. While I always encourage my students to work from a variety of textbooks, rather than just one, these definitions tend to be pretty uniform. By this I mean that with occasional minor variations, different authors tend to use the terms ‘socially situated learning’ or ‘behaviourism’ in similar ways, reflecting the fact that the meanings attached to these terms are pretty much consensual. (Just to be sure, and for the benefit of the curious, I have included definitions of these two terms at the end of this chapter.)

When my students have to work on their curriculum module assignments, however, this simple act of defining terms becomes somewhat complicated. The variations in the definitions that they read seem to be significantly greater, and therefore less straightforward, than they are used to. Moreover, the word ‘curriculum’ is invariably prefixed by an additional word – ‘vocational’, ‘total’, ‘hidden’ – that raises further questions. Sometimes, the word ‘curriculum’, on its own, seems too broad, vague or far-reaching to be useful, while combinations like ‘enacted curriculum’ and ‘teaching curriculum’ only apply in quite specific contexts. If researchers and writers cannot always agree on what ‘curriculum’ actually means, then how can we have ‘curriculum studies’?

There are several ways to think about this. The simplest response is to begin by looking in a dictionary and then comparing this definition with the working definitions of ‘curriculum’ that we, as teachers and trainers, carry around in our heads and use when we talk to our colleagues and our students. Then we can start to look at how the word ‘curriculum’ has been defined and explored over time by different education theorists and researchers, before going on to think about the extent to which these more academic definitions impact on our everyday understanding. And finally we can accept the fact that it is a slippery word, and that the reason why we have ‘studies’ about it is because there are lots of ways of thinking about it.

Practical Task

Before reading on, write down your own working definition of ‘curriculum’. You may wish to discuss this with fellow teacher-training students, or with your mentor or line manager. In addition, spend some time thinking about the different places, or contexts, that you have seen the word used. This might be in a college or adult education centre prospectus, a newsletter from an exam board or an awarding body, a government publication or a funding body report. If you have ready access to materials such as these, make notes of how these different publications use the term, and what the term implies.

Think about where your definition of curriculum comes from. We are not born with definitions of curriculum already present in our heads. Rather, we form our own understanding of the word as a consequence of taking part in conversations, reading how the word has been used, or listening to something on television or radio. To what extent has your working definition been shaped by day-to-day life, as distinct from what might be termed your professional or academic experience?

Defining ‘Curriculum’

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines curriculum as:

a course; specifically, a regular course of study or training, as at a school or university.

And for the purposes of this book, we might add the words ‘or college’ to the end of the above sentence.

The OED goes on to give examples of the use of the word, in an educational context, that date back to the seventeenth century. And this is, broadly speaking, the definition that my teacher-training students tend to give when asked to do so. There are a small number of other terms that have been, and continue to be, used synonymously with curriculum: ‘programme’, ‘provision’ and ‘syllabus’, for example. The dictionary definition implies that the curriculum is public (that is to say, it is easily accessible and out in the open, and not concealed in anyway), easily identifiable and probably written down somewhere (usually in the handbooks and documents that are supplied by awarding bodies). It appears to be unproblematic and readily accepted throughout different educational sectors. The OED definition can, in summary, be said to be straightforward, easily recognisable, and longstanding. So why have so many researchers and writers spent so much time redefining the word?

Refining and Redefining ‘Curriculum’

The problem with ‘curriculum’, and by extension the main shortcoming of the OED definition, is that it leaves lots of unanswered questions behind. Partly this is due to the simple fact that a dictionary definition of just a sentence or two is almost bound to be restricted or limited: there is simply not enough room to debate the ambiguities or nuances that the word generates. To be fair, this is not the responsibility of the dictionary's compilers. And partly this is due to the fact that the dictionary definition in turn rests on some important ideas, while missing out others altogether.

For example, consider the implications of a simple term: ‘a course’. In an educational setting, we talk about courses all of the time, but they are hardly uniform in terms of purpose or shape or content. By this I mean that when as teachers and trainers we talk about ‘a course’, we could be referring to more than one thing. Does the course in question last for ten weeks, six months or two years? Does the student or apprentice attend college once a week, or on a daily basis? Does the student physically attend the course at all, or does he or she participate on a virtual basis, via an e-learning platform? Does the course consist of just one subject or area of interest or specialism, or are several different topics or competencies covered? How are these different topics related to each other, if at all?

A brief survey of the ways in which the word ‘curriculum’ is used serves to highlight this concern relating to definitions. From looking through a few books, prospectuses and policy documents, a number of different uses of the word quickly emerge. Some are easily recognisable, if not directly relevant to the learning and skills sector: the ‘National Curriculum’, for example. Others are more pertinent to a QTLS award and therefore deserve further investigation. Partly this is due to the fact that they will help us explore the term ‘curriculum’; and partly this is due to the fact that this exploration will allow us to introduce some of the themes of enquiry that will be returned to in more depth in the later chapters of this book. The three examples that we shall begin with are:

1. the Adult Literacy and Numeracy Core Curriculum;
2. the vocational curriculum;
3. the motor vehicle curriculum.

1. The Adult Literacy and Numeracy Core Curriculum

The Adult Literacy and Numeracy Core Curriculum is the end result of a process that can be traced back to the publication of A Fresh Start: Improving Literacy and Numeracy. This report is also often referred to as the Moser Report, after Sir Claus Moser, chair of the Basic Skills Agency, who was appointed chair of a working group investigating post-school basic skills in 1998 by the then Secretary of State for Education, David Blunkett. A Fresh Start, published a year later, gave a bleak assessment of literacy and numeracy skills among adults:

Something like one adult in five in this country is not functionally literate and far more people have problems with numeracy. This is a shocking situation and a sad reflection on past decades of schooling. It is one of the reasons for relatively low productivity in our economy, and it cramps the lives of millions of people. We owe it to them to remedy at public expense the shortcomings of the past. To do so should be a priority for Government, and for all those, in the business world or elsewhere, who can help.

(www.lifelonglearning.co.uk/mosergroup/)

In 2000, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) published national standards for adult literacy and numeracy. These national standards, together with the QCA specifications for key skills units in communications and application of number, all contributed to the creation of the core curriculum, which consists of a number of elements.

It sets out the entitlement to learning for all adults who have difficulties with literacy and numeracy. It describes the content of what should be taught in literacy and numeracy programmes in: further and adult education; the workplace and programmes for the unemployed; prisons; community-based and family literacy and numeracy programmes. It assists teachers to meet the individual needs of adults through the selection and teaching of skills appropriate to those adults’ needs.

(www.counton.org/resources/adultcc/)

The Adult Literacy and Numeracy Core Curriculum can, therefore, be seen as a centrally controlled curriculum, driven in part by government legislation. Actual courses vary in terms of delivery pattern and intensity: a brief look through any local adult education prospectus will quickly highlight any number of different literacy and numeracy courses for adults which may be delivered at a large FE college, an adult education centre or in the workplace. In this example the term ‘curriculum’ refers to the overall provision of education in literacy and numeracy for a specified student group, delivered in a variety of modes and across a variety of institutional sites, but all nonetheless following a strong central lead.

2. The Vocational Curriculum

The vocational curriculum is a broad term that is in some ways best approached from the point of view of what it is not. It is invariably found coupled with, or perhaps opposed to, the term ‘academic curriculum’. That is to say, it refers in the very broadest terms to education and training provision that pertains to vocational occupations, as delivered in FE colleges and increasingly in schools as well. Courses in areas such as hairdressing, beauty therapy, catering, construction and engineering are typical of the vocational curriculum. By contrast, the academic curriculum tends to be defined in ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• The Author
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Defining Curriculum
• 2 Conceptualising the Curriculum
• 3 Shaping the Curriculum
• 4 Planning, Sequencing and Delivering the Curriculum
• 5 Evaluating the Curriculum
• 6 Curriculum, Learning and Knowledge
• 7 Boundary Crossing: Curriculum, Place and Time
• 8 The Accessible Curriculum
• Afterword
• Glossary and Key to Symbols
• Index