MEDD6128 Chap.2 Perspectives Shaping Curriculum Decisions
Perspectives Shaping Curriculum Decisions
The stages model, and the reason to learn its critique alongside it
The policy cycle grew from a systems view in which popular will is an input, processing stages convert it, and policy emerges as an output. Its advantage is that it chops an elaborate process into pieces that can be analysed.
Its danger is that it quietly assumes the process is rational, organised and goal directed, and imposes that picture on any case it is applied to.
Two further properties matter for curriculum work: policy is a course of action that changes over time rather than a single decision, and experience of implementing something feeds back into the next decision.
Three kinds of actor, distinguished by authority rather than interest
Curriculum writing tends to collapse everyone outside the classroom into stakeholders, and the collapse costs the only distinction a design argument needs.
A decision maker holds an office or standing that carries the power to settle particular questions of what gets taught, at what point, in what manner and by which staff. Stakeholders are entitled to be heard and to feed something in, and some of them can also enforce it while others rely on persuasion. Influences hold a common interest and try to convince authorities that a change should occur.
The same organisation can occupy different rows at different levels.
Where policy is actually made
The top down account treats a gap between intention and practice as a shortfall to be closed. The bottom up alternative observes that lower level actors hold the discretion that turns a general instruction into a specific act, so in some circumstances policy is made at that level.
Both describe real cases, and what decides between them in any instance is whether the people doing the work were given any means of complying other than their own judgement.
The instruction the course takes from the debate is to make what people do, and not only what was settled, a proper object of study.
The economy as a default criterion, and what devolution really moves
Central governments are inclined to prioritise the concerns of the economy and of those taken to represent it, because that management is the ground on which they are judged.
A curriculum policy resting on whatever a government takes the economy to require is therefore expected institutional behaviour rather than an aberration, which means arguing against it as unusual will not work.
A related point is sharper: granting schools autonomy over matters such as budgets can operate as control when autonomy and choice are elided with responsibility, so a devolution has to be tested by asking what moved down with the decision.
Using a global trend without overclaiming from it
The presentation brief asks you to explain how a framework aligns with regional or national and global mandates and trends, and the trap is treating an international comparison as though it settled a domestic question.
A trend establishes that a direction has been taken elsewhere and usually why. It does not establish that the instrument is available in your context, that the actor who would use it holds the same authority, or that the supporting conditions exist. Name the trend, then name the one condition in your own context that would have to hold.
What this chapter covers
- 01
The stages model, its heuristic value and its distorting frame
- 02
Policy as a course of action that changes over time
- 03
Decision makers, stakeholders and influences, and what separates them
- 04
The same body occupying different roles at different levels
- 05
Top down decisions against bottom up action
- 06
Discretion at the point of action, and when variation is predicted
- 07
The economy as the default criterion of curriculum policy
- 08
Testing a devolution by asking what moved with the decision
- 09
Alignment claims, and the evidence each kind requires
Was the policy rejected, or never given a means of compliance
- 3Separate the decision from the action, and say which the inspectorate observed.
- 3Identify who held discretion and what alternative to judgement they were given.
- 3State the defensible claim about the design.
Key terms
- Stakeholder
- A person or body entitled to be heard on a school programme and to feed something into it. Some can ensure their input is implemented; others hold no official power and rely on persuasion.
- Influence
- A person or group holding a common interest who tries to persuade authorities that a change should occur, whether by pushing an ideal or by focusing on specific practices.
- Street Level Worker
- A lower level actor whose discretion turns a general instruction into a specific act, and who may therefore be where policy is effectively made rather than merely applied.
- Stages Model
- The policy cycle that divides decision making into agenda setting, formulation, decision, implementation and outcome. It orders research usefully and can mislead about what actually happens.
- Bottom Up Account
- An explanation of the policy process that begins from action rather than from decision, treating what lower level actors do as the proper focus of analysis.
- Policy Instrument
- The concrete thing that carries a decision into practice, such as a document, a resource allocation, an assessment change or a preparation programme.
- Alignment Claim
- An assertion that a proposed curriculum matches a mandate or trend. At its weakest it compares wording; at its strongest it names the actor, level and instrument that would carry it.
Perspectives Shaping Curriculum Decisions FAQ
Why does it matter whether someone is a stakeholder or an influence?
Because only one of those categories can be addressed with a proposal that changes anything. A recommendation aimed at a group with no authority over what is taught will at best move the agenda, which is a real outcome but a different one from a change in practice.
Naming the category forces you to say what your proposal could realistically achieve, and a presentation that cannot name the role and level of the body that would have to act has offered an opinion rather than a framework.
Is the stages model wrong?
It is a heuristic rather than a description, and the distinction is what you are expected to handle. It imposes order on a complex process and is defended on exactly that pragmatic ground, but it also carries an implicit picture in which politicians decide, senior officials translate and junior officials implement.
Where reality departs from that picture, the model quietly reshapes the analysis and the analyst does not notice, because the frame arrived before the evidence did.
How do I tell a top down story from a bottom up one in a real case?
Ask what means of complying the people doing the work were actually given. Where a mandate arrives with staffing, materials, preparation and a matching assessment change, a gap between intention and practice really is a shortfall and the top down reading holds.
Where none of those arrived, the only instrument available was professional judgement, and variation is the predicted consequence of the design rather than resistance to it.
Why is it a problem to argue that curriculum policy is too focused on the economy?
Not because the observation is wrong, but because it treats expected institutional behaviour as an anomaly. Managing the national economy is a government's central preoccupation and the ground on which it is judged, so a curriculum policy resting on economic need is what the institution normally produces.
An argument that succeeds has to show either that the stated criterion is not the only criterion of national value, or that the proposed measure fails on its own economic terms.
What is the test for whether devolving decisions to schools is really autonomy?
Ask what moved down with the decision. If resources and accountability moved while the specification of outcomes stayed above, the school has acquired exposure to risk rather than discretion, and the reading in this session shows how granting autonomy over matters such as budgets can operate as a form of control.
The same test is useful in reverse when a system centralises, since taking a decision upward without taking the responsibility for it is equally common.
Assessment move
Take one curriculum decision that affects your own work and write the chain backwards: who acted, who decided, what instrument carried it, and at which level. Then find the one link you cannot document. That link is where you would need evidence before you could make any claim about the decision in a paper, and finding it takes ten minutes while guessing about it can undermine an entire argument.
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