With critical pedagogy, the curriculum focuses on students critiquing the societal and political situations surrounding them and influencing the material. Paulo Freire was credited with developing this pedagogy in Brazil. According to this method, the ultimate goal of education is to liberate "the emergence of consciousness." A curriculum built around this pedagogy might encourage students to compare the social climate in books such as "The Grapes of Wrath" or "A Tale of Two Cities" to modern society.
Curriculum developed around the social pedagogy focuses on holistic learning, meaning that subjects are not taught in isolation but in connection with other subjects and within the current social context. This method also emphasizes current societal views and focuses on educating students in accordance with the dominant views of the moment. For example, curriculum designers may find ways to boost students' self-esteem because poor self-esteem is currently viewed as a hurdle to success for students.
In a curriculum based around concept learning, the main focus is not on the specific material itself but on how that material connects to the basic concept being taught. For example, the history of the Civil War would not just be taught as a series of battles discussed in chronological order. Instead, the war would be used to illustrate bigger issues, such as states' rights versus Federal government rights. The broader concept gives students a framework to help them understand and catalog the material so it is not simply memorized then forgotten.
With a curriculum designed around the learner-centered pedagogy, the student becomes actively involved in the learner. Instead of consisting primarily of lectures passively received by students, this method would make them active participants in the learning. For example, Alice Fornari, the director of medical education at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, created an ethics curriculum for health-education students in which they were presented with ethical situations that had to be evaluated by them. Instead of just being told about ethical guidelines, they had to apply them in realistic scenarios.