Curriculum and Professional Issues

The education system is a social institution that often faces major changes, such is the nature of public services and similar social institutions. A major factor in the changes made to these institutions is the prevalence of curriculum reform through planning and informed development. (A.V Kelly, 2004)

There are various ways in which curriculum has been defined, Curriculum can be taken to mean the quintessence of a syllabus of learning and includes philosophy, substance, strategies and assessment. Although syllabus often implies greater definition of what the curriculum may contain.

A classic example is that the term curriculum was developed from the Latin word for racecourse or to run. Indeed, this is a popular metaphor for the course of actions and experiences through which a student develops into an adult. It was John Franklin Bobbitt whom stated this in his book, and the first published on this subject, ‘The Curriculum’ (JF Bobbitt, 1918).

Curriculum has many social and cultural implications and is perceived in many differentiating ways by different cultures, governments and educationalists; Interpretation of curriculum is ambiguous and the term has been described by (Tummons, 2009) as ‘slippery at best’.

In education the curriculum is usually what is evident as prescriptive in that it is founded on a syllabus. The syllabus defines what subjects should be implicit and to what level they should be comprehended in order to achieve the necessary results. For example what is taught on a drama course is deemed as the required skills and knowledge of drama to go forward and seek commercial employment in the industry, however the arts are somewhat different to the sciences and allow greater leverage for freedom of expression ...

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