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68
Part One
Learning, planning and evaluation
The word
curriculum
, derived from the verb curro, which means run
(on the land),
navigate
(on the sea),
ly
(in the air), contains in itself
the meaning to move from one place to another in space and time
and it implies the idea of a location oriented through the variety of
the possibilities.
The term curriculum in pedagogy has had several meanings: in Ita-
ly it initially coincided with the curriculum, i.e. a plan for teaching,
in which teachers identiied objectives and content. Later it became
richer and more diversiied until it outlined the whole
learning
paths.
In those years the scientiic and international experience had many
curricular models, classiied according to different types, all aim-
ing to overcome the rigidity of the programmes in order to outline
self-correcting itineraries.
Since the late 1970s every teachers´ college had to prepare its own
educational plan to contextualise the indications of the programmes
to the needs identiied in the territory and for individual students,
to adapt the organisation of their resources and to create a common
background for the pro-educational planning of individual teachers.
2.2
Planning of the activities in the model of A. and
H. Nicholls
Specialised publications in Italy, though, focused their attention
mainly on the teaching programming, an activity closer to the oper-
ational needs of the teachers, while educational training remained
more of a ritual than reality. During these years the linear curricular
model of industrial-technological type prevailed, whose phases were
summarised by A. and H. Nicholls in a graphical representation that
suggested the idea of a cyclical and recursive planning
1
.
Such model, assuming the objectives as a factor of adjustment of the
successive phases of the curriculum, implied:
>
Overcoming of the traditional concept of the curriculum, coinci-
ding with the programmes, which identiies the content of diffe-
rent disciplines with the educational purposes;
1
A. Nicholls,
Guida pratica all’elaborazione di un curricolo
, Feltrinelli, Milan,
1978.