Models of curriculum design

How should a curriculum be designed — around subjects, around competencies, around social problems, or around the learner? Each model answers differently, and each suits different purposes. A discipline-based model organises knowledge by subject (history, physics); a competency-based model organises it by what learners must be able to do; a social reconstruction model organises it around society's problems. Worked example: a course that teaches 'how to purify drinking water' as a community project is social reconstruction; the same content taught as a chemistry chapter on filtration is discipline-based.