Curriculum Coalitions: rise and demise

This paper results from an unexpected immersion at short notice into curriculum development when I filled a vacancy in the team of tutors teaching fourth‐year BEd students in a college of education. Whilst I attempted to become familiar with the area in the longer term through background reading, the immediate demands of weekly seminars were met in part by transplanting to curriculum development some ideas and concepts from my own subject which is politics. Although I rejected the predominant goal paradigm found in my new subject, few of my political analogies met with great success in filling the vacuum created. One such transfer, however, which involved introducing my students to the games theory concepts of choice, conflict and coalition, seemed to hold more promise than others. It is explored below within the framework of a brief case‐study. Because the sort of data does not exist at present which allows an undeniable explanatory link between the model and ‘reality’, the case‐study serves in the main an heuristic purpose. The underlying argument of this paper is, then, that the field of curriculum development would profit from a self‐conscious search of the methods of more established disciplines until a satisfactory mode of analysis of its own is found.