Primary School Curriculum 1999 Essay

The Principles of the 1999 Curriculum reflect the priorities identified in the Introduction to the Primary Curriculum (1999). The introduction states that ‘the curriculum is designed to cater for the needs of children in the modern world’ (1999) and the listed principles certainly compliment that statement. Upon evaluating and analysing those principles, it is clearly evident that they were strongly influenced by topics relating to our Foundations of Education module including Sociology of Education, Psychology of Education and Philosophy of Education.
The Primary School Curriculum celebrates the ‘uniqueness of the child’. The curriculum is designed to ‘nurture the child in all dimensions of his or her life—spiritual, moral, cognitive, emotional, imaginative, aesthetic, social and physical’. The listed principals of the curriculum that relate to this aim are as follows;
• celebrating the uniqueness of the child
• ensuring the development of the child’s full potential
• the child’s sense of wonder and natural curiosity is a primary motivating factor in learning
In Sociology of Education the topics of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion have an impact on the

The concept of Constuctivism is very prominent with characteristics of both Jean Piaget’s and Lev Vygotsky’s theories. Both believed that classrooms should be constructivist in nature as students are more likely to retain knowledge that they learn through actions, higher order thinking and problem solving. Both argue that active learning methodologies produce a greater depth of understanding and the ability to transfer knowledge. Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development is reflected in the principal that states ‘learning is developmental in nature’. Piaget postulated that students must be aware of basic facts before they can advance to more complex lessons. Piaget termed this staged approach to learning as