No royal road: Mapping the curriculum for lifelong learning

Abstract

‘Curriculum’ in its ordinary usage refers to learning content and processes which are structured, organised, timetabled, taught and assessed according to institutional requirements and expected outcomes. This is curriculum in the formal setting of school, college, university and so forth. Through a variety of elaborations and distinctions, the understanding of curriculum has been extended: the intended, the constructed, the experienced, the hidden and so on. Common to all of them is the institution which provides the setting and exercises authority over the learning. In this sense, schooling in one form or another is the primary vehicle or instrument of curriculum (Oakeshott 1971; Skilbeck 1984). All natures by their destinies diverse, More or less near unto their origin; Hence they move onward unto ports diverse O’er the great sea of being, and each one With instinct given it which bears it on. (Alighieri and Longfellow 1890).