Published Paper Details:

Abstract: Curriculum can be recognized as an authoritative prescription for the course of study of a system of schools. According to old concept, the curriculum was merely an outline of the course of study. The new concept of curriculum represents a very broad dimension in itself, which means that it is tailored very flexibly by the curriculum developers to meet the diverse needs of the students at various age levels in recent days. The different aspects of this very curriculum helps the learners to acquire various knowledge, whether it is taught directly by the school or indirectly inculcated among them through both teachers and peers. In most of the textbooks, core, hidden, latent and null curriculum are present more or less. Core or written or overt curriculum directly inculcates the required knowledge through the syllabus mentioned in textbooks. Although many of us think of hidden or covert and latent curriculum as the same but there is a very subtle difference between these two types of curriculum. There is a bit of difficulty in understanding the null curriculum even after so many debates and efforts to extend its knowledge base. The general purpose of this paper is to understand the concepts of core, hidden, latent and null curriculum as well as their identification in textbooks. By reviewing some selected past and present significant articles, this review article is aimed to identify and bring forward the importance of the different aspects of the curriculum involved in various textbooks, and fortify insights for the due improvements in the textbooks so that the new curriculum runs parallel to the recent trends in education. This is a sincere effort to present the various types of curriculum in current textbooks and it is also hoped that we can one-day meet the challenges to build up an ideal curriculum through optimal incorporation of core, hidden, latent and null aspects of the curriculum in textbooks which may lead to advancement in the curriculum development.