Customer Reviews

Curriculum: Foundations, Principles, and Issues (5th Edition)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Book Review: Curriculum: Foundations, Principles, and Issues by Ornstein and Hunkins

This book discusses various curriculum approaches and is an excellent source of information about philosophical, historical, psychological, and social foundations of curriculum. It discusses curriculum theory, curriculum development and curriculum designs. This book explains the taxonomic levels and approaches to educational objectives. It identifies curriculum implementation models and numerous curriculum evaluation models. It ends with a discussion of curriculum issues, trends and future directions. This book is an excellent source of theory related to curriculum and should be helpful to faculty and students studying curriculum and to anyone involved in developing curriculum.

This is a very comprehensive book, and for the most part, very evenly written. Information about the history of curriculum is excellent, well organized and in great detail. Information about the processes of curriculum writing is outstanding - extremely thorough, complete and exhaustive in scope - and quite valuable as a reference. The last section of the book covers what directions new curricula might move, with information about what has changed, and predictions about what will change. Here the high quality of the writing and information evaporates, revealing quite inappropriate bias, slipshod research, vague or incorrect information, and gaps in continuity. I got more reliable, unbiased and accurate information on the last topics from a much older (different) source book.
I used the bulk of this book as a valuable source and reference in classwork and curriculum writing, but the latter part is inappropriate and unreliable for that.

I read this book along with Oliva's and it is quite thorough. Other readers would wonder why read both. They kind of cover the same ground. However, I like that Ornstein makes distinctions between philosophies and educational philosophies. This chapter is broader in scope. Likewise, his history on education in America seems to cover a greater ground. There is another chapter on social background which Oliva does not have. In his discussion on curericulum designs, he includes backward design curriculums, while Oliva doesn't. This is important to me as a reader because I am strongly influenced by backward design, and there are several authors covering this type of design (Erickson, 2003, 2007; and Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). A big distinction between these two books, however, is that Ornstein's tone is critical. Oliva's is objective, as a newsreporter who is describing what is going on. Ornstein's is editorial, as a person who voices his perspective and describes history with a critical eye. I thought that wwas inmportant to this textbook.

I had to read this book for one of my Ed.S. Classes, and found it very hard to comprehend! It was not interesting and very boring! Good Luck trying to understand it!

Required textbook -- easy read. I enjoyed the chapter on the history of American education. I thought the authors did a great job of being objective toward different educational philosophies and ideas.

Book came very quickly. Very fast shipping. There was a little more highlighting throughout the book than originally stated, but everything else is good!

Would not have bought this book, but I needed it for a class. One of the worst written text books I have ever had to purchase. Of course Amazon made the buying process easy.

I needed this book in a fairly quick timeline. I ordered the book on a sunday night, and I got the book on wednesday and started working on my assignment. I was never so sad to see my book! I hate the class!

GReat item. Fast shipping and great condition. What else is there? Book is okay to read---very simplified look at curriculum, but for a student who has not had much instruction or experience in curriculum, it suits the purpose.

I am ejoying the book very much, it is a very insightful piece to my class. I was not happy about the service. When I purchased this book I decided to pay for faster shipping and did not get the book any faster! I was very unhappy!