Are the Traditional Curricula Dispensable? A Feature Pattern to Compare Different Types of Curriculum and a Critical View of Educational Standards and Essential Curricula in Germany
Source: European Educational Research Journal, Volume 11 Number 3 2012, pages 328–341.
The results of international school achievement studies had major educational implications in many European countries, especially for the control concepts of education.
This becomes exemplarily apparent in Germany, in which a large-scale educational reform was set in motion.
Part of this reform involved the adoption of new curriculum types.
A striking feature of this enactment was that while it initiated studies of school curricula, it was shown at the same time that there are currently no established sophisticated theoretical tools for analysis of curricula – neither in Europe in general nor in Germany in particular.
In this article, the author presents a curriculum-theoretical instrument, which allows a systematic analysis of the structure of curricula.
This instrument was developed based on German curricula, which are taken as examples.