Curriculum Theory Reconsidered: Strategic Planning and Organizational Training

Abstract

In organizational training, curriculum design—that is, instructional planning—has been based on the fundamentally faulty assumption that past performance deficiencies can be used to design instruction for improving future performance. As a result, training has too often been considered marginally relevant to top-level planning and policymaking. Training should be reoriented to anticipate, rather than just react to, organizational needs. This article introduces strategic planning, describes four current schools of curriculum theory, and shows how each theory can be transformed in a way consistent with strategic planning.