The Past in the Present: The Historic Reach of the “Tyler Rationale”

Abstract

This chapter contextualizes the struggle for the American curriculum in various historical movements, which illustrate the conflation of curriculum and teaching and the instrumentalism associated with the institution of education operating within a broader system of disciplinary power. The chapter focuses on the “Tyler Rationale” to demonstrate its persistence in contemporary curriculum design. The chapter also advocates for the disentangling of curriculum from teaching, particularly as both have been subsumed under assessment, and poses questions through which curriculum scholars and teachers might consider how they can embody counter-conducts against the institutionalization of Tyler’s portrayal of curriculum as a “functioning instrument of education.”