Interchange, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Summer 1988), 50-58

INTERCHANGES

The Emergence of a Paradigm in the Curriculum Field: A Reply to Jickling

Daniel Tanner and Laurel N. Tanner Rutgers University and Temple University

Daniel and Laurel Tanner, and then Robin Barrow, write in "interchange" with Bob Jickling whose article "'Paradigms in Curriculum Development" appears in this issue of Interchange (pp. xx-xx).

It is indeed unusual to find that a thesis presented in a curriculum textbook should generate the intense reaction explicated by Jickling and some other scholars in the curriculum field. In the annals of that field one would be hard pressed to find any comparable level of intense disputation having been generated from a single thesis in a curriculum textbook. For this we are grateful to Jickling and others.

When Ian Winchester, editor of Interchange, asked us to respond to JickJing's manuscript, our initial impulse was to let the record stand. However, we know that unless the reader takes pains to check Jickling's arguments and interpretations against what we actually wrote in Curriculum Development: Theory Into Practice (1975, 1980), his article would serve only to throw more heat than light on the matter. Our response to Jickling is not intended as a counter-attack or a mere defence of our thesis, but as a hopeful effort to clarify the issues and to set the record straight.

Some of the inaccuracies in Jickling's interpretations of our thesis might be attributed to our failure to explicate it more clearly. However, Jickling's essay is wracked with contradictions and distortions. At one point he cites Kuhn and Masterman on the significance of paradigms for identifying problems and seeking problem solutions in a field. At another point, he argues that a paradigm delineates boundaries and therefore restricts options for investigation and progress. Nowhere in the writing of Kuhn does one find any indication that paradigms restrict options for inquiry in a field. In fact, it is held by Kuhn both that the sense of community for any group of practitioners derives from a paradigm or set of paradigms that governs their work by accounting for the relative fullness of their professional commu- nication and consensus of judgment and that paradigms serve to guide us in the use of concrete problem solutions as models for solving other problems (pp. 175-180). Hence paradigms serve to reveal the possibilities, not the limitations, for systematic inquiry in a field.

In Curriculum Development: Theory Into Practice (1980, p. 75), we state clearly that "the paradigm or set of paradigms does not eliminate debate or disagreement in a

50 Interchange 19/2©The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education 1988

EMERGENCE OF A PARADIGM 51

field but provides for a consensual basis for community and fullness so as to enhance communication and progress." We proceed to trace the historic record wherein it is seen how the search for consensus in the curriculum field was so vividly expressed in the monumental, two-volume, Twenty-sixth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, under the editorship of Harold Rugg, and bearing the titles Curriculum-Making: Past and Present and The Foundations of Curriculum-Making, published in 1927.

Before discussing certain central elements in the Twenty-sixth Yearbook, we should like to point out that the evidence for a sense of community is clearly expressed by the fact that departments of curriculum have been operational in schools of education throughout North America and elsewhere in the modem world, tracing back to the establishment of the first such department by Hollis Caswell at Teachers College in 1938. Cremin (1971) points out that the curriculum field emerged as a specialized area of professional activity during the 1920s. The sense of professional community in the curriculum field was evidenced with the establishment of the Society for Curriculum Study during the early years of the Great Depression, and it is manifested today through such organizations as the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Division B (Curriculum Studies) of the American Educational Research Association, along with a host of national and international journals focussed on the curriculum field.

Inexplicably, in seeking to make the case that paradigms are restrictive of inquiry, Jiclding cites Dewey on education as "growth." Indeed, we share Dewey's conception of education. But where Jiclding draws from Kulm in holding that only the hard sciences are governed by paradigmatic inquiry, he fails to acknowledge that Dewey was the first to explicate systematically the paradigms of scientific inquiry for inquiry into the problems of education. In our own text, we trace how Dewey championed the scientific method for educational inquiry in such works as The Sources of a Science of Education (1929),Democracy and Education (1916),How We Think (1933), and other writings. Jickling ignores a central feature of our paradigm thesis as explicated in Curriculum Development: Theory Into Practice, namely that leading scholars throughout the formative years of the curriculum field have em- braced Dewey's problem method or scientific method as the governing process for systematic inquiry. Table 1 shows this isomorphism with Dewey (1916) in the work of Giles, McCutchen, and Zechiel (1942), Taba (1945, 1962), and Tyler (1949).

In holding that science is an objectionable model for the curriculum field, Jickling contends that "curriculum questions are not simply empirical matters but are also concerned with values" (p. xx). Here Jickling denudes science of values and reduces it to a narrow empiricism. This is scientism, not science. Jickling would do well to read Dewey's attack on this narrow-minded perversion of scientific inquiry in the aforementioned works by Dewey, along with his Freedom and Culture (1939, p. 152), The Public and Its Problems (1927, p. 171), Human Nature and Conduct (1922, pp. 10-11), andlndividualism, Old and New (1962, p. 98). Jiclding also would do well to read the works of Darwin, any of the many biographies of Galileo, Bronowski's Science and Human Values (1956), or Monod's Chance and Necessity (1971), which show vividly how science is governed by values and that scientific inquiry has reshaped values over the course of civilization.

If scholars in the curriculum field do not base their judgments on the best available evidence from research and practice but choose instead to be governed by

Dew

ey,

1916

G

iles,

McC

utch

en,

and

Zec

hiel

, 19

42

Tab

a, 1

945,

196

2 T

yler

, 19

49

Situ

atio

n of

sig

nifi

cant

ex

peri

ence

Id

enti

fica

tion

of

prob

lem

(s)

deri

ving

fro

m s

itua

tion

O

bser

vati

ons

and

info

rmat

ion

bear

ing

on t

he p

robl

em(s

) Fo

rmul

atio

ns o

f su

gges

ted

solu

tion

s (h

ypot

hese

s)

App

lica

tion

and

val

idat

ion

of

sugg

este

d so

luti

ons

Iden

tify

ing

obje

ctiv

es

Sele

ctin

g th

e m

eans

for

at

tain

ing

thes

e ob

ject

ives

O

rgan

izin

g th

ese

mea

ns

Eva

luat

ing

the

oute

omes

Dia

gnos

is o

f ne

eds

For

mul

atio

n of

obj

ecti

ves

Sele

ctio

n of

con

tent

O

rgan

izat

ion

of c

onte

nt

Sele

ctio

n of

lea

rnin

g ex

peri

ence

s O

rgan

izat

ion

of l

earn

ing

expe

rien

ces

Eva

luat

ion

Wha

t ed

ucat

iona

l pu

rpos

es

shou

ld b

e so

ught

? W

hat

educ

atio

nal

expe

rien

ces

can

be p

rovi

ded

that

are

lik

ely

to a

ttain

the

se p

urpo

ses?

H

ow c

an t

hese

edu

cati

onal

ex

peri

ence

s be

eff

ecti

vely

or

gani

zed?

H

ow c

an w

e de

term

ine

whe

ther

the

se p

urpo

ses

are

bein

g at

tain

ed?

Tab

le 1

/Cur

ricu

lum

Dev

elop

men

t as

Pro

blem

-Sol

ving

Pro

cess

Not

e: F

rom

"C

urri

culu

m H

isto

ry"

by D

anie

l T

anne

r, i

n E

ncyc

lope

dia

of E

duca

tion

al R

esea

rch

(Vol

. 1,

5th

ed.

, p.

417

), H

arol

d E

. M

itze

l,

Edi

tor-

in-C

hief

. C

opyr

ight

© 1

982

by A

mer

ican

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cati

onal

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earc

h A

ssoc

iati

on.

Rep

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ced

by p

erm

issi

on o

f T

he F

ree

Pre

ss,

a D

ivis

ion

of M

acm

illa

n, I

nc.

> Z

Z

EMERGENCE OF A PARADIGM 53

dogmatic precepts, tradition, personal bias, au courant appeal, doctrinaire prescrip- tion, narrow political motives, expediency, opportunism, superstition, trial and error, or happenstance, then the field has no place in university scholarship and there is no basis for the progressive redirection of knowledge and practice. In short, no progress can he made.

But the curriculum field, to borrow from Samuelson's critique of Kuhn, is "neither astrology nor theology" (1983, p. 14). The emergence of the curriculum field as an area of inquiry in the university during the early decades of this century was a reflection of need and of the systematic efforts to solve curriculum problems so as to improve educational practice.

In Curriculum Development: Theory Into Practice (2nd ed., 1980, pp. 79--81), we trace how Dewey as early as 1902 identified the fundamental factors in the educa- tive process: (1) the learner ("the immature, undeveloped being"), (2) society ("certain social aims, meanings, values incarnate with the matured experience of the adult"), and (3) organized subject matter ("the specialization and divisions of the curriculum"). Dewey (1902) warned that if we treat these factors in their isolation, or if we focus on one at the expense of the others, we wind up with an insoluble problem of antagonismsmsuch as the child vs. the curriculum, individual nature vs. social culture, and so on (pp. 4--8). Dewey went on to stress how the curriculum must be constructed so as to be in harmonic interaction with the nature of the learner and the needed growth of the learner, and with the aims and ideals of a democratic society.

In the Composite Statement drawn up by the contributors to the Twenty-sixth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education (Rugg, 1927b), the opening paragraphs focussed on the need to resolve the conflict between the nature and interests of the learner and the demands of adult life in the selection and organization of the curriculum (p. 13). In essence, the Composite Statement identi- fied and stressed the needed harmonic interaction of the three fundamental factors identified by Dewey three decades earlier. In connection with the process of selecting and organizing subject matter for the curriculum, the Composite State- ment acknowledged the importance of thoroughly systematized, codified knowl- edge "developed through a long social evolution," but concluded that the curri- culum should be developed "from the starting point of the needs of the learner, irrespective of the content and boundaries of existing subjects'" (p. 22).

In 1931, Bode reiterated this thesis in observing that educational progress was being hindered as a result of the misguided aims and prescriptions that were pitching the three factors against one another (pp. 543-544).

In the Eight-Year Study (1933-1941), the largest-scale longitudinal study ever undertaken on the curriculum and its effects on students, Giles, McCutchen, and Zechiel (1942) describe how curriculum development and evaluation for the Study were governed by four fundamental questions. In Table 1 it is seen that these questions have direct correspondence with Dewey's scientific method or problem method. As with Dewey, Giles et al. stressed that the process is not linear, and they modelled the questions diagramatically as four interactive determinants encompass- hag objectives, subject matter, methods and organization, and evaluation (p. 2). In Curriculum Development, we modified the diagram by Giles et al. so as to show how philosophy serves as a regulator for these interactive determinants (Figure 1). Giles et al. went on to point out that in the process of curriculum organization and

54 TANNER AND TANNER

analysis for the Eight-Year Study, the following three approaches or sources were identified: (1) social demands, (2) adolescent needs, and (3) specialized subject matter. The need for harmonic interaction of these sources or approaches was stressed (pp. 22--48). Again, the three sources or approaches correspond to Dewey's three fundamental factors.

OBJECTIVES

SUBJECT Y ~ M E T H O D S ~- PHIL( AND

EVALUATION

Figure 1/Interrelationship of Determinants in Curriculum Development

Note: From Curriculum Development: Theory Into Practice (2nd ed., p. 88) by Daniel Tanner and Laurel Tanner, 1980, New York: Macmillan. Copyright © 1980 by Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. Reprinted by permission.

In 1945, Taba elaborated on the significance of these three sources of data in curriculum planning: (1) studies of society, (2) studies of learners, and (3) studies of subject-matter content (pp. 85-92). As shown in Table 1, Tabu pmc.e~ded to identify a sequence of procedures for curriculum development which also bears direct correspondence with Dewey's scientific method or problem method.

In 1949, Ralph Tyler published a syllabus under the same title of the course, Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction, which he was teaching at the University of Chicago. Tyler had conducted the evaluation of the college success of the students in the Eight-Year Study and was well versed with the model for curriculum analysis developed for the Study, as well as with the contributions to curriculum theory and practice by Dewey, Rugg, and other experimentalists. In essence, Tyler's syllabus proved to be an orchestration and systematic elaboration of the key elements, sources, determinants, processes, and principles that had been advanced for curriculum development and evaluation by leading experimentalists during the first half of the 20th century. Tyler's syllabus remains in print to this day, and all leading textbooks on curriculum development draw from or offer various criticisms of what is commonly referred to as the "Tyler rationale." Unfortunately, it is sometimes erroneously portrayed as one man's version of how a curriculum is

EMERGENCE OF A PARADIGM 55

developed (Kliebard, 1970). Although there are indeed different rationales to guide curriculum development, such as the a priori rationale of truth and the legitimacy of indoctrination that might govern curriculum development in a school sponsored by a fundamentalist religious sect, or by a narrow sect of psychology such as behav- iorism, the dominant rationale or model that governs curriculum inquiry in the scholarly literature is a scientific one in the Deweyan sense.

As seen in Table 1, Tyler's four questions guiding systematic curriculum development correspond with Dewey's scientific method or problem method. And as shown in Table 2, Tyler (1949) also identified the same three sources, factors, or determinants as did his predecessors and contemporaries, namely: (1) studies of the learners themselves, (2) studies of contemporary life outside the school, and (3) suggestions from subject specialists (pp. 5-33). In connection with the last source, Tyler cautioned that the subject specialist should be asked, "What can your subject contribute to the education of young people who are not going to be specialists in your field?" (p. 26). Here Tyler was alluding to the macrocurricular function of general education as contrasted to specialized education, as well as to the need to recognize that curriculum is more than an assemblage of independent and specialized subject matter or disciplines.

In Table 2, we see vividly how leading scholars, throughout the first half of this century, identified the identical three factors, sources, or determinants for curri- culum development. As mentioned earlier, Dewey had warned in 1902 that when the three fundamental factors are treated separately, or when One is advanced at the expense of the others, or when antagonists are made of them, "We get the case of the child vs. the curriculum; of individual nature vs. social culture" (p. 4). Dewey went on to point out that such division and opposition create an insoluble problem: "Below all other divisions in pedagogic opinion lies this opposition" (p. 5).

From Tables 1 and 2 we see the consensual elements and structure for advanc- ing research and practice in the curriculum field. In Curriculum Development, we elaborate on how these consensual elements and structure comprise a paradigm for the curriculum field. Regardless of the criticisms levelled at the paradigm, no curriculum scholar to this day has formulated a more viable model or paradigm to govern our work.

The fact that curriculum reform movements often are political responses to shifting forces external to the schools does not provide grist to support the conten- tion that there is no paradigm for advancing curriculum research and practice. On the contrary, it serves to indicate the very need to scrutinize reform proposals carefully, taking into account the fundamental factors portrayed in Table 2 and subjecting the proposals to the process of scientific testing (Table 1).

We have seen the consequence of the alternative response, namely to follow whatever wind is dominant at a particular time. The consequence is that each successive curriculum reform is conceived to undo the excesses of the preceding reform. In the process, we have curriculum reform by reaction and counter- reaction, rather than the progressive redirection of our work. For example, when our response to the cold war and space race was to follow Bruner's dictum that "intellectual activity anywhere is the same, whether at the frontier of knowledge or in a third-grade classroom" (1960, p. 14), discipline-centred curriculum packages were fashioned by university scholar specialists who failed to take account of the nature of the learner and the wider knowledge applications in the life of the learner

Dew

ey,

1902

R

ugg

(Ch.

), C

omm

itte

e on

Cur

ricu

lum

-Mak

ing,

19

27b

Bod

e, 1

931

Gil

es,

McC

utch

en,

Zec

hiel

, E

ight

-Yea

r S

tudy

, 19

42

Tab

a,

1945

T

yler

, 19

49

Lea

rner

(de

velo

ping

, im

mat

ure

indi

vidu

al)

Soci

ety

(soc

ial

aim

s,

mea

ning

s, v

alue

s fr

om t

he m

atur

ed

expe

rien

ce o

f th

e ad

ult)

Org

aniz

ed s

ubje

ct

mat

ter

(the

div

isio

ns

of t

he c

urri

culu

m)

Lea

rner

(na

ture

and

L

earn

er

inte

rest

s of

the

) (i

nter

est

of t

he)

Adu

lt l

ife

Prac

tica

l m

an

(dem

ands

of)

(s

tand

poin

t of

the

)

Ado

lesc

ent

need

s

Soci

al d

eman

ds

Cur

ricu

lum

(se

lect

ion

Subj

ect-

Sp

ecia

lize

d an

d or

gani

zati

on

mat

ter

subj

ect

mat

ter

of t

he)

spec

iali

st

(sta

ndpo

int

of t

he)

Lea

rner

s (s

tudi

es o

f)

Soci

ety

(stu

dies

of)

Sub

ject

mat

ter

(stu

dies

of)

Lea

rner

s (s

tudi

es o

f)

Con

tem

pora

ry

life

out

side

th

e sc

hool

(s

tudi

es o

f)

Sub

ject

spe

cial

ists

(s

ugge

stio

ns f

rom

or

rele

vanc

e of

sub

ject

m

atte

r fo

r th

e no

n-sp

ecia

list

) >

Tab

le 2

/Fun

dam

enta

l F

acto

rs,

Sou

rces

, or

Det

erm

inan

ts f

or C

urri

culu

m D

evel

opm

ent

Z

Z

> Z

> Z

Z

EMERGENCE OF A PARADIGM 57

and of the wider society. We now know about the aftermath of the "new" math and the " n e w " science. The counter-reaction was the learner-centred open classroom, and the demand for "relevance" without any concerted effort for systematic curriculum redesign. In turn, the eventual counter-reaction to this was curriculum retrenchment through "back-to-basics." The bankruptcy of this retrenchment is just being realized as we rediscover the need for critical thinking and the need for revealing the interfaces between and among the areas of knowledge and how the curriculum must relate to the life of the learner in a free society.

Yet in any reaction/counter-reaction there is inevitable distortion, as was the case in our reaction to the cold war and space race, so that our current reaction to global economic competition is to turn our schools to narrow, nationalistic in- terests. We have seen how, as Dewey warned, we get the case of the child vs. the curriculum, the nature of the immature individual vs. narrow and perverse social demands. We have seen how in one era we give priority to the gifted and talented at the expense of the disadvantaged learner, only to reverse the priority in a succes- sive era. We forget that the schools must serve all the children of all the people as optimally as possible if our society is to be true to its ideals and commitments. In essence, any serious uses of the paradigm require consideration of the good person leading the good life in the good society (Bode, 1931, p. 544). Jickling indicates that such matters are ignored in the paradigm, but any reading of Dewey, Bode, Rugg et al., Giles et al., Taba, or Tyler in connection with the paradigm reveals either that Jickling has not done his homework or that he is seeking to send up smoke screens. Jickling contends that we must allow other conceptual schemes to guide our work. But he never comes up with any such schemes.

In summary, the curriculum paradigm provides a compass for treating the fundamental factors in vital interaction, rather than in opposition. The paradigm provides the structural elements for making wiser curriculum decisions, based upon the best available evidence derived through scientific inquiry or the problem method.

The conceptual scheme or paradigm as discussed in Curriculum Development: Theory Into Practice has evolved with the emergence of the curriculum field as an area of systematic university scholarship and in response to practical need. Para- digms are not infallible and are constantly subjected to testing, modification, revi- sion, and refinement. Indeed, they are even replaceable when better models are developed, whether we are looking at the natural sciences or social sciences.

Jickling implies that what we have identified as a curriculum paradigm is cast in stone. This is a gross distortion of the paradigm concept as advanced by Kuhn. And it is inimical to the schema for scientific inquiry in the curriculum field as advanced by Dewey (1929).

Jickling fails to document any instances where the curriculum paradigm has served to restrict inquiry or has resulted in misguided inquiry and misinformed practice. Any tracing of the course of events in the curriculum field during the 20th century reveals that curriculum reform by reaction and counter-reaction is counter-productive. The use of the paradigm can help us avoid our penchant for rediscovering the wheel. It can help us to build upon the ideas and experience of thoughtful educators before us so that our present is an improvement on our past. Otherwise, the prospects for the future augur for a repetition of past mistakes.

58 TANNER AND TANNER

References

Bode, B. H. (I927). Modern educational theories. New York: Macmillan.

Bode, B. H. (1931). Education at the crossroads. Progressive Education, 8, 543-549.

Bronowski, J. (1956). Science and human values. New York: Harper & Row.

Bruner, J. S. (1960). The process of education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Cremin, L. A. (1971). Curriculum-making in the United States. Teachers College Record, 73, 207-220.

Dewey, J. (1902). The child and the curriculum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York: Macmillan.

Dewey, J. (1922). Human nature and conduct. New York: Henry Holt.

Dewey, J. (1927). The public and its problems. New York: Henry Holt.

Dewey, J. (1929). The sources of a science of education. New York: Liveright.

Dewey, J. (1933). How we think (2nd ed.). Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath.

Dewey, J. (1939). Freedom and culture. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Dewey, J. (1962). Individualism, oM and new. New York: Capricorn Books.

Giles, H. H., McCutchen, S. P., & Zechiel, A. N. (1942). Exploring the curriculum. New York: Harper & Row.

Kfiebard, H. M. (1970). Reappraisal: The Tyler rationale. School Review, 78, 25%272.

Kuhn, T. S. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Monod, J. (1971). Chance and necessity. New York: Knopf.

Rugg, H. (Ed.). (1927a). Curriculum-making---Past and present. Twenty-sixth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education (Part I). Bloomington, IL: Public School Publishing Co.

Rugg, H. (Ed.). (I927b). The foundations of curriculum-making. Twenty-sixth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education (Part II). Bloomington, IL: Public School Publishing Co.

Samuelson, P. (1983). Economics in a golden age. In E. C. Brown & R. M. Solow (Eds.), Paul Samuetson and modern economic theory. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Taba, H. (1945). General techniques of curriculum planning. In R. W. Tyler (Ed.), American education in the postwar period. Forty-fourth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education (Part I) (pp. 85-92). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Taba, H. (1962). Curriculum development: Theory and practice. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.

Tanner, D. (1982). Curriculum history. In H. E. Mitzel (Ed.), Encyclopedia of educational research (5th ed.) (Vol. 1, pp. 412-420). New York: Free Press and Macmillan.

Tanner, D., & Tanner, L. N. (1975, 1980). Curriculum development: Theory into practice. New York: Macmillan.

Tyler, R. W. (1949). Basic principles of curriculum and instruction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.