Making Decisions about the Curriculum: From Metaphor to Model.

Buffeted by external and internal pressures, postsecondary institutions have been forced to make critical decisions affecting long-term and short-term institutional planning in order to develop and maintain distinctive educational programs or, in some cases, simply to survive. As a fundamental component of higher education, undergraduate curricula have always received a fair amount of attention in theory and in practice. Until recently, however, the undergraduate curriculum and the idea of planning have been treated in relative isolation. Since it is clear that curriculum development in colleges and universities can no longer remain sacrosanct, a need exists for comprehensive curriculum planning models that will aid in the process of integrating various theoretical considerations with an array of practical realities. In recent years, Axelrod [I], Dressel [7,8], and Mayhew and Ford [14] have developed models for curriculum planning. The models vary according to differential emphases placed upon certain key curricular dimensions and interactions. For instance, the most recent model by Dressel presents six continua as necessary considerations in developing programs. The continua deal with the relationship of teacher to discipline, student to content, practice to theory, flexibility to rigidity, unity to compartmentalization, and continuity to fragmentation. Dressel suggests that the continua (and his concomitant discussion) provide "both a rational and necessary series of steps to arrive at a sound program" [8, p. 79].