Advances in Research on Teaching

As we engaged in this research, we returned to the earliest uses of the term curriculum making that we could find. We were not surprised to learn that curriculum making is most commonly used to refer to making the planned or mandated curriculum (Jackson, 1968) and not in reference to the curriculum making in which teachers and children engage in classroom and schools (Clandinin & Connelly, 1992). However, in our search, we read Cremin (1971), who drew our attention to William Torrey Harris, a school superintendent in the St. Louis school system in the United States during the 1870s. As Cremin wrote,What is of special interest is rather the analytical paradigm. There is the learner, self-active and self-willed by virtue of his humanity and thus self-propelled into the educative process; there is the course of study, organized by responsible adults with appropriate concern for priority, sequence, and scope; there are materials of instruction which particularize the course of study; there is the teacher who encourages and mediates the process of instruction; there are the examinations which appraise it; and there is the organizational structure within which it proceeds and within which large numbers of individuals are enabled simultaneously to enjoy its benefits. All the pieces were present for the game of curriculum-making that would be played over the next half-century; only the particular combinations and the players would change. (p. 210)