Curriculum design is an aspect of the education profession which focuses on developing curricula for students. The term “design” is used as a verb to designate a process (as in “designing a curriculum”), or as a noun to denote a particular plan resulting from a design process. Some education professionals specialize in curriculum design, and may spend all of their time working on curricula, rather than teaching in the classroom, while in other cases working teachers develop their own curricula. Curriculum design is also practiced by parents who home school their children, sometimes with the guidance of an experienced education professional who can provide advice and suggestions, and sometimes with the assistance of experienced homeschoolers. In many nations, specific benchmark standards are set for education to ensure that children across the nation achieve a similar level of education. For example, a government may dictate when children should start to learn multiplication and division, set standards for reading ability, and so forth.
The purpose of this chapter is to explore ideas, not to provide detailed step-by-step instructions on how to create an actual curriculum design, let alone an actual curriculum. It is as though, by way of analogy, the chapter deals with how general design principles may seem to apply to designing any kind of buildings, but not to how to produce detailed engineering plans for use in constructing actual buildings. To make the argument easy to follow, the chapter parallels the Prologue section by section. This time, instead of the backyard garden of the Prologue, our desired end is an effective K-12 curriculum. Our approach need not be altogether orderly, but we would surely do these things: We would become gradually clearer on why we want a new curriculum. To have students—some students? all students?—learn more than they learn now? How