ABSTRACT

The term curriculum has been understood and used in a number of ways and has been given different interpretations. The most orthodox approach is to view curriculum as a course of studies or program that specifically leads to achievements of prescribed learning outcomes. A formal curriculum includes four essential components, including goals and objectives, learning content, learning and teaching activities, and evidence of learning or assessment. Postmodernist approaches to curriculum have reservations as to the structural or restricted approach of understanding curriculum. Postmodernists view curriculum as a social and political medium in reproducing the cultural values of the dominant social class, and therefore, many of them tend to see an agential approach to understanding curriculum as an instrument in bringing critical perspectives into the educational system.