Curriculum Reforms and the Construction of the Knowledge to Be Taught

This chapter focuses on the question of the content and how it is treated and affected by past curriculum reforms. It addresses this question from a concrete perspective, the anthropological theory of the didactic, and by modelling curriculum reforms in terms of didactic transposition processes. Three cases studies form the core of the chapter. The first one illustrates the analysis in terms of didactic transposition processes by considering a piece of knowledge, proportionality, and the way it has been taught in three periods: before, during and after the New Maths reform. The second one focuses on an even smaller piece of knowledge, the notion of integral, and shows its destiny across different curriculum reforms in Vietnam before and after the reunification of the country. The last case illustrates a transposition phenomenon related to the elaboration and reception of the knowledge to be taught and how what teachers perceive as ‘the instruction time’ can also be related to the new organisation of content.