Curriculum development efforts for English instruction over the past 20 years are reviewed, and an "inside-outside" approach that uses the structure of the discipline, or its inner core, to guide curriculum development is suggested. Three principles--metaphoric thinking, writing as reconstruction of experience, and language in context--would…

Since education is both a science and an art, it is difficult for curriculum theorists to develop rules and principles which apply to both aspects. Practical uses of curriculum theory include the application of existing models to specific situations, and practitioners using their own practical experiences and relating them to curriculum models.…

Curriculum theorists should develop three classes of propositions: (1) definitional propositions, which involve the curriculum design and curriculum system; (2) normative or descriptive propositions, which involve goals in planning the curriculum and designing an evaluation scheme; and (3) predictive propositions, which involve the correlative…

A proposal for curriculum criticism contains three characteristics: (1) Criticism provides a view of curricula from the perspective of the student; (2) Criticism provides an assessment from the viewpoint of the critic; and (3) Criticism reveals the common interactions of students with facets of the curricula. (JN)