Blog Post 3 - Historical Beginnings: Technology as a Curricular Conception

According to Eisner and Vallance, there are five key 'conceptions' of curriculum.  These include: the cognitive processes  approach, curriculum as technology, curriculum for self-actualization and consummatory experiences,curriculum for social reconstruction, and academic rationalism. (Eisner & Vallance, 1974).  The curriculum as technology conception is not concerned with content (the 'what') but the process (the 'how').  Esiner & Vallance note that the goal of the technology approach is to find "efficient means" to attaining learning goals, with the focus being "less on the learner or even on his relationship to the material than on the more practical problem of efficiently packaging and presenting the material to him"(Eisner & Vallance, 1974, p.7).  Sowell (2005) notes that this system assumes that learning occurs systematically and predictably, and, again, its goal and effect is efficiency.

Early attempts to define these different approaches to curriculum tended to separate the conceptions - almost an 'either-or' approach.  Looking back, we can see that the development and popularity of curriculum can be linked to shifting social, political, and cultural beliefs.  Conceptions of curriculum which have reached the mainstream are those which both reflect and serve the needs and values of society at a given time.

When Vallance revisited her original dissertation on the five curricular conceptions in 1986, she made an astute observation: technology had made the jump from being its own conception, to becoming more of a cross-system skill.  It was becoming (and since then has become) ubiquitous.

From this foray into the past, I see that curriculum as technology was originally noted for two things: it was considered to be efficient in its presentation of the curriculum, and the focus was more on the presentation of material than on the learner.

Is this still true?  Is efficiency still the goal of and with technology?  Does the technology conception of curriculum still focus more on the method, and less on the student?  Obviously, technology has become intertwined with our education system - fulfilling the prophecy of Vallance made in 1986.  You might almost say that technology is part of the 'hidden curriculum' nowadays.  It's almost like using a pencil: you don't teach it as a separate stream, because it's a necessary skill for all subjects and learning!

The COVID pandemic provided an opportunity for many of us to update our technology skills, and introduced many excellent platforms and programs into our daily classroom learning (eg, Google, Kahoot, FlipGrid).  But are these always necessarily more efficient?  Yes and no.  And more, is its use as necessary as we tend to assume?

Stay tuned for my next blogs, where I'll look into the 'efficiency' aspect of technology a little more, along with the incidental effects of technology and screen use in the classroom.

References:

Eisner, E., & Vallance, E. (Eds.). (1974). Five conceptions of the curriculum: Their roots and implications for curriculum planning.In E. Eisner & E. Vallance (Eds.), Conflicting conceptions of curriculum (pp. 1-18). Berkeley, CA: McCutchan Publishing.

Sowell, E. J. (2005). Curriculum: An integrative introduction (3rd ed., pp. 37-51). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Vallance. (1986). A second look at conflicting conceptions of the curriculum. Theory into Practice, 25(1), 24-30.