The Curriculum: Theory and Practice

by A.V. Kelly

This Sixth Edition of A.V. Kelly's now classic work focuses on the philosophical and political dimensions of curriculum, and especially on the implications for schools and societies of various forms of curriculum. The author outlines what form a curriculum should take if it is concerned to promote a genuine form of education for a genuinely democratic society. Kelly summarizes and explains the main aspects of curriculum theory, and shows how these can and should be translated into practice, in order to create an educational and democratic curriculum for all schools at all levels.

Genres: Education

336 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 1, 1977

Reviews

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

An essential read for those interested in curriculum and pedagogy. The text was certainly not particularly light reading and is aimed at educational practitioners rather than the casual reader.

[Aliya Khasseneyeva · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is quite useful for those studying curriculum development and evaluation. I was quite disappointed because I waited the author to tell me what a curriculum is but I just got even more confused after reading this book. The author definitely hates and despises policy makers. You can feel it when reading)) The book is mostly about politicization of the curriculum which is sad. education is used to make people think and act in the way the government wants them to. The book is useful as the author gives some recommendations (implicitly) how a proper curriculum should be planned. One of the things which confused me is the arguments about aims-and-objectives based approach to curriculum planning. I thought at the beginning that this approach implies setting general learning outcomes to be achieved by the end of schooling. Which I consider quite useful and beneficial as while all the stakeholders know the expectations, there is some freedom in formulating the learning objectives. However, in this book as far as I understand the author says about the policy makers setting very specific objectives and aims to be achieved by the teachers and pupils. I don't quite understand how possible this is.