Creating Curricula: Aims, Knowledge and Control

Knowledge has been a defining focus for the curriculum studies field. In the early part of the 21st century convincing arguments were mounted that knowledge needed to be ‘brought back in’, both to the curriculum of schools and to the attention of curriculum researchers. This book is a result of these arguments, and what some regarded as a ‘crisis’ in curriculum study related to the growing emphasis on international comparisons between education systems.

The book’s most important contribution is to build on seminal work in the sociology and philosophy of education in order to develop new foundations for curriculum study, using the importance of ‘transactions’ as the context for understanding knowledge in the curriculum. The contributors build on this importance to suggest a rapprochement in the field around the idea of curriculum knowledge as both constructed and real. This book was originally published as a special issue of The Curriculum Journal.

Dominic Wyse is Professor of Early Childhood and Primary Education, and Head of the Department of Learning and Leadership, at the Institute of Education, University College London, UK. The main focus of his research is curriculum and pedagogy, and key areas of his work include the teaching of writing, reading, and creativity. He is the lead editor of the SAGE Handbook of Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment (2015), and the co-author of Teaching English, Language and Literacy - 3rd Edition (2013). His most recent book is Education and Childhood: From Current Certainties to New Visions (2015). He is a fellow of the RSA.