Types of Rationality and Their Applications in Curriculum Development

In its most current application, education, leads to rationality and conveys the fostering of thought by emphasizing the uniqueness of this human dimension, which reflects the main difference between human and animal, as well as humane manifestations. Therefore, the main question arises here is the “type and the nature of rationality encompassed the curriculum and educational planning”. Actually, it is the curriculum, in each educational system, which determines the educational content by which the students gain their knowledge, acquire their skills and constitute their value system. The nature of each educational system is determined by the nature and the type of rationality existed in its curriculum. In this research an attempt has been made to recognize, firstly, the types of rationality in a historical manner and then to evaluate the application of each type in curriculum development. The results revealed that types of rationality could be recognized and classified in three different categories of theoretical rationality, communicative rationality, critical rationality and formal rationality.