Content I. Introduction II. Main part Approaches of Curriculum 4

Traditionalists, in his formulation, are those such as Ralph Tyler who are concerned with the most efficient means of transmitting a fixed body of knowledge in order to impart the cultural heritage and keep the existing society functioning .
Traditionalists like Tyler view curriculum as notions of class, teacher, course, units, lessons, and so forth. For example, Hirsch (1995 :76 ), reveals that proponents of formal education are generally very interested in the concept of schooling that emphasizes basic knowledge and a definitive structure of instruction that involves the classics. Common themes of formal education proponents might include the development of a syllabus, transmittal of data and knowledge via lecture, formulation of goals and objectives, assessment, and a focus on an end product.
While , theorists who espouse an informal education reveal an entirely different perspective on how curriculum should be designed and implemented. Informal proponents such as conceptual empiricists and reconceptualists view education more as an existential experience.
Conceptual empiricists, such as Gagne, are those who derive their research methodologies from the physical sciences in attempting to produce generalizations that will enable educators to control and predict what happens in schools.
Whereas, the reconceptualists emphasize subjectivity, existential experience, and the art of interpretation in order to reveal the class conflict and the unequal power relationships existing in the larger society.
The basic difficulty with this tripartite formulation is that it mixes in a confusing fashion the theorists’ research methodologies and their political stances as bases for categorizing theorists. Whereas , McNeil (1985:69) sets up what seems to be an unilluminating dichotomy: soft curricularists and hard curricularists. Soft curricularists, in his view, are those such as William Pinar and other reconceptualists who draw from the “soft” fields of religion, philosophy, and literary criticism; hard curricularists, such as Decker Walker and Mauritz Johnson, follow a rational approach and rely on empirical data.
The basic error of all three formulations (McNeil; Pinar; Eisner & Vallance) is that they do not sort out curricular theories in terms of their primary orientation or emphasis. Here, Huenecke’s (1982 : 290-294 ) analysis of the domains of curricular inquiry seems the most productive. She postulates three different types of curricular theorizing: structural, generic, and substantive.

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