Efforts to reform teacher education should include careful reconsideration of what teachers learn about curriculum design and instructional methodology. The selection and organization of school knowledge have significant social, political, and ethical implications that are ignored by traditional, rationalistic assumptions about educational objectivity. As different cultures shape the way their members ask questions, establish priorities, and differentiate among the elements and experiences in their lives, so the methods used to teach children shape the ways in which they assimilate, organize, and evaluate information. Schools serve different social functions and, despite the sharing of a common technical language, can incorporate widely varying values, attitudes, and concerns into tests that ostensibly reflect academic achievement. The history and culture of schooling can have a greater impact on what is taught as science, social studies, art, or literature than the practices of these disciplines themselves. Professionalization endows teaching with an authority that makes curricular traditions and institutional values even harder to modify. Social forces tend to change school curricula under the guise of neutral, abstract educational improvements. The ramifications of these observations suggest that studying the social construction and production of knowledge should be a major focus of curriculum studies. (PGD)