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CRITICAL THEORY AND CURRICULUM RESEARCH 31
limited by the fact that the agenda of critical
theory is highly particularistic, prescriptive and,
as has been seen, problematical. Though it is
an influential paradigm, it is influential in certain
fields rather than in others. For example, its impact
on curriculum research has been far-reaching.
It has been argued for many years that the
most satisfactory account of the curriculum is
given by a modernist, positivist reading of the
development of education and society. This has its
curricular expression in Tyler’s (1949) famous and
influential rationale for the curriculum in terms of
four questions:
1 Whateducationalpurposesshouldtheschool
seek to attain
2 What educational experiences can be
provided that are likely to attain these
purposes
3 How can these educational experiences be
effectively organized
4 How can we determine whether these
purposes are being attained
Underlying this rationale is a view that the curriculum
is controlled (and controllable), ordered,
predetermined, uniform, predictable and largely
behaviourist in outcome – all elements of the
positivist mentality that critical theory eschews.
Tyler’s rationale resonates sympathetically with
a modernist, scientific, managerialist mentality
of society and education that regards ideology
and power as unproblematic, indeed it claims
the putative political neutrality and objectivity
of positivism (Doll 1993); it ignores the advances
in psychology and psychopedagogy made by constructivism.
However, this view has been criticized for
precisely these sympathies. Doll (1993) argues
that it represents a closed system of planning
and practice that sits uncomfortably with the
notion of education as an opening process and
with the view of postmodern society as open and
diverse, multidimensional, fluid and with power
less monolithic and more problematical. This view
takes seriously the impact of chaos and complexity
theory and derives from them some important
features for contemporary curricula. These are
incorporated into a view of curricula as being rich,
relational, recursive and rigorous (Doll 1993) with
an emphasis on emergence, process epistemology and
constructivist psychology.
Not all knowledge can be included in the curriculum;
the curriculum is a selection of what is
deemed to be worthwhile knowledge. The justification
for that selection reveals the ideologies
and power in decision-making in society and
through the curriculum. Curriculum is an ideological
selection from a range of possible knowledge.
This resonates with Habermas’s (1972) view that
knowledge and its selection is neither neutral nor
innocent.
Ideologies can be treated unpejoratively as
sets of beliefs or, more sharply, as sets of
beliefs emanating from powerful groups in society,
designed to protect the interests of the dominant.
If curricula are value-based then why is it that
some values hold more sway than others The link
between values and power is strong. This theme
asks not only what knowledge is important but also
whose knowledge is important in curricula, what
and whose interests such knowledge serves, and how
the curriculum and pedagogy serve (or do not
serve) differing interests. Knowledge is not neutral
(as was the tacit view in modernist curricula). The
curriculum is ideologically contestable terrain.
The study of the sociology of knowledge
indicates how the powerful might retain their
power through curricula and how knowledge and
power are legitimized in curricula. The study
of the sociology of knowledge suggests that the
curriculum should be both subject to ideology
critique and itself promote ideology critique in
students. A research agenda for critical theorists,
then, is how the curriculum perpetuates the
societal status quo and how can it (and should
it) promote equality in society.
The notion of ideology critique engages the
early writings of Habermas (1972), in particular his
theory of three knowledge-constitutive interests.
His technical interest (in control and predictability)
resonates with Tyler’s (1949) model of the
curriculum and reveals itself in technicist,
instrumentalist and scientistic views of curricula
that are to be ‘delivered’ to passive recipients – the
Chapter 1