The paper concerns the main conference themes on educational policies, theories and reforms. It outlines a theory for curriculum reform and implements it for evaluation of Estonia’s (ambivalent) policies on curriculum administration, development and theory. The theory is also used for analysis of German syllabuses and textbooks for social sciences (Kerncurricula für Sozialkunde und Politik).

A new curriculum theory.

A new curriculum theory for formation of good specialists and active citizens was elaborated as a civic initiative after 2010. Main curriculum theorists have isolated the main concepts of students, culture and society. They have relied on an authoritarian model of curriculum administration. They considered themselves as main actors and ignored the active role of others (students and wider society). Society, man (student) and culture were taken as factors of curriculum development (Bobbitt 1918, Tyler 1949, Taba 1962, He et al. 2015, Rutiku et al. 2009). They put themselves and their activities outside of the system man-society-culture. As a result, the subject knowledge and student development have contradicted to each other.

I started to integrate the concepts of man, society and culture, in order to fulfil the gap between human advancement and knowledge acquisition. It was necessary to abandon from the simple and linear concepts of man. There should be a collection of concepts (Haav 2014, 2015). The initial most general definitions of man are sociological and semiotic. In sociology, the essence of man is a system of his or her social relations. In semiotic, man is considered as a collection of one’s actual sign systems. If society is taken as a system of all social relations between people, then the sociological concept of man is integrated with that. If culture is defined as a collection of all sign systems created by men, then the semiotic concept of man is integrated with that. These are the most general initial concepts. They serve also like methodological devices for linking other complementary concepts. The latter should not contradict to the system of initial integrated concepts of man, society and culture. There is no final definition. In social and educational sciences, these concepts should be in the centre of curricula. So far, this is not the case. Other sciences can be considered as different aspects of relations between people, society, culture and nature.

Campaign for outcome-oriented curricula in HEI.

This theory was not used in the national and European campaigns for introduction of outcome-oriented curricula into higher education (EC 2011, 2015, Cort 2014). Estonia conducted for curriculum reform an extensive campaign in 2006-2010. The European Social Fund supported this. The administrators heralded an educational reform towards student-centred teaching and learning (Biggs, Tang 2007, 2008, Rutiku et al. 2009). They followed the curriculum theory and designed the guides with all main steps: formulation of outcomes, restructuring of the curricula, active participation of main educational partners like students and employers. The guides proposed a list of possible outcomes in terms of relevant special knowledge, skills and values. Still, the Guides didn’t rely on any relevant theory of formation of specialists and citizens. In 2010, the curricula and syllabuses were re-formulated. Unfortunately, the curriculum administrators and policy did not support the next steps (participation of students and employers, and restructuring of the curricula). They also did not support development of curriculum theory and research on practice. Many other studies like Laan et al. 2015, Jõgi et al. 2013, Udam, Seema, Mattisen 2015, Koit 2016, did not reveal any significant changes in the quality of education. 

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