Understanding Curriculum Making by teachers: implications for policy as text and as practice

Abstract

Recent debates in curriculum studies have focused on the role of teachers as active curriculum makers. In this chapter, we argue for a more systemic approach to curriculum making as social practice. Our particular focus is on micro and nano curriculum making by teachers, that is curriculum making in schools and classrooms respectively, as curricular programmes are developed and enacted into practice. In making sense of these complex practices, we draw upon a theoretical typology for understanding and analysing curriculum making across different sites within education systems, and an ecological understanding of teacher agency. We apply these theoretical insights to the analysis of various influences on micro/nano curriculum, emerging from a range of recent empirical studies in five European education systems. In undertaking this analysis, we challenge prevalent notions of curriculum making as a linear process of delivery or implementation, instead seeking to understand it as interpretation and enactment across sites by multiple social actors, and tracing the multiple and dynamic connections