Interpreting an integrated curriculum in a non-racial, private, alternative secondary school in South Africa

Abstract

Research into school curricula indicates an instability of focus. Curriculum may refer to a disciplinary perspective on a programme, to what practitioners 'do' in a programme, to programme content and its arrangement, to the hidden assumptions patterning thought and action and embedded in the discourse of a curriculum, to the historical and political context of curriculum, to the official curriculum, to the curriculum as curriculum-in-use, to combining academic disciplines in Learning Areas, school with community, or incorporating disability into the mainstream. As opposed to curriculum research being seen as an aspirant body of knowledge, it has been argued that curriculum studies may more usefully be seen as a social movement which focuses, in the first instance, on the unstable but usable arts of the practitioner, rather than on the systematic application of a discipline to elucidate programme purposes and effects and to reflect back on the discipline.


South African Journal of Education Vol.24(1) 2004: 31-41