The Concept of Curriculum Potential

Abstract

Though implementers and evaluators tend to view any curriculum as the embodiment of its developers' intentions, curriculum materials may be viewed as expressing more than the fixed intentions of their developers. Once materials have left the originators' hands they may be interpreted and used in many ways. Curriculum may be seen as the embodiment of a potential, independent of its developers' intentions, that can be discovered and revealed by careful analysis. In such a view different interpretations of curricula would be made available to teachers for implementation as well as to evaluators for the judging of programs. At present we are bound by the notion of intended learning outcomes (Johnson 1967), but a different notion of possible learning outcomes, as implied by the concept of curriculum potential, could be profitable in curriculum theory and practice. This paper explores the concept of curriculum potential.1 After examining some of the limitations inherent in viewing curricular implementation as the transmission of developers' intentions, the paper goes on to consider the relationship between developer intentions and curriculum evaluation. The second section describes and illustrates the notion of curriculum potential and argues for its usefulness as a construct in curriculum theory. Curriculum potential as a result of implementation is dealt with in the last section, where acknowledgment of "curriculum potential" is seen as an alternative approach to curriculum implementation and evaluation.