Curriculum Design from an Adult Learning Context
Question: Is curriculum design prescriptive or descriptive? And who controls the curriculum? Learners, teachers, and those in a support role in the education process all participate in building the curriculum. For instance, the definition of mastery level skills or outcomes within any curriculum may be defined by diverse players in the process, such as teachers and schools, subject matter experts, administrators, accrediting boards, organizationally authored standards, societally prescribed qualifications, or codified, systematized bodies of knowledge. These players act in a dynamic and synthetic relationship. I hold that a false dichotomy is being imposed when one attempts to explicate the curriculum in either exclusively prescriptive or descriptive terms. It is both/and, a holism. The curriculum is composed of what it is not as much as what it is. The American motto of e pluribus unum plays well in this context. The curriculum requires learner, societal, and knowledge facets, but whe...