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Issues in Curriculum
Development

Current Curriculum Issues

A number of curricular developments, that is, programs and practices, on the current scene
have gained both followers and critics. As such, they have become issues around which there
swirls considerable debate. Controversial in nature, they pose challenges to curriculum
developers. Borrowing the rubric of Chapter 9 where we examined a number of curricular
innovations and programs by periods of history, ending with Curriculum Future, Chapter 15
returns to Curriculum Present. We have reserved for this chapter discussion of a number of the
more significant current programs and practices, some of which have been in' operation for
some time; others, relatively new.
Curriculum planners are buffeted by strong educational, social, and political forces
affecting the curricular decisions they must make. Movements have emanated from networks
of like-minded professional educators, from the public in general, and from indi viduals and
pressure groups from outside the teacher education profession.
Some of the desires of both pressure groups and the public generally and; even on
occasion, of professional educators, have been enacted into state or federal law. No law,
however, has mandated strong movements of cooperative learning, discussed elsewhere, and
whole language, discussed in this chapter. Those nonmandated movements that have become
practices in the schools have done so by gathering enough voluntary support among the teacher
education and public school professionals to translate them into action.

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