Curriculum Inquiry

In today's highly complex and heterogeneous public schools, the current notion of schools as homogeneous communities with shared beliefs, norms, and values is inadequate. Drawing on question of how to use difference as a resource, I take up ideas from feminism, multiculturalism, and inclusive education to consider the development of community in schools. I argue that despite the valuable contributions of these theoretical perspectives, each also includes the potential for increased fragmentation and polarization. As we consider how to use differences as a foundation for community, it is important not to reify any particular perspective, thus marginalizing others and erecting new barriers. Explicitly embracing the need to identify and respect difference, being open to new ideas without taking an exclusionary position, and committing to ongoing participation in dialogical processes may help schools to develop as more authentic communities of difference.

This article presents and discusses the results of a project on the development of new forms of intercultural education in Dutch schools. On the initiative of the Ministry of Education, culture and science teachers in different sectors of education collaborated in networks to develop examples for "intercultural learning" that are of practical relevance for the daily practice of teachers and move beyond the existing culturalistic practice of intercultural education. The project was evaluated by research. Analysis of the examples developed by the teachers shows an emphasis on intercultural competence as an objective. This fits in well with the growing attention to the development of a broader range of competences after decades of a somewhat imbalanced emphasis on cognitive skills. From this viewpoint there are promising possibilities for the dissemination of intercultural education. In analyzing the content of the formats it is striking that culturalism is replaced by a recognition of individual differences. This has the potential to redefine the dominant perception of the "standard" pupil and cultural standards in curricula and pedagogy. However, from a critical perspective of multiculturality there are serious reservations.

In his 1979 acclaimed and Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, computer scientist Douglas Hofstadter puts forth the notion that the mind (and therefore consciousness) is a paradoxical, self-referential, and recursive "strange loop." Like the hand that paints the hand, that paints the hand in M. C. Escher's "Drawing Hands" or like monks that climb a tower only to end up where they began in his "Ascending and Descending," strange loops appear to make logical sense at one level, but contradict the logic of subsequent levels of meaning, rendering a paradox that inevitably returns us to the first level.c uri_490 409..417 This sentence, for instance, is not a strange loop. It (the previous sentence) refers to itself, but it does not contradict itself; we can accept without further levels of interpretation that it is not a strange loop. This sentence, however, is a strange loop. It (the previous sentence) is also self-referential, and at one level it does not appear to contradict itself, which would mean that the sentence is not a strange loop. This first-level conclusion, while perfectly reasonable, would imply that the sentence is false (i.e., the sentence is not a strange loop), which would contradict the first-level conclusion that the sentence does not contradict itself. Yet, if it does not contradict itself, then it would not be a strange loop, therefore contradicting itself, and so on and so forth.

In this article, the authors critically and generatively encounter emergent curriculum, drawing from their experiences working as pedagogistas in three different early childhood education centres in Western Canada. The intent is to engage with the concept of emergence as that which can bring ethical and political engagements with curriculum and pedagogy; complicating understandings of emergent curriculum as simply following the lead of children. The particular interruptive orientations that the authors bring forward include: possibilities for responding to and cultivating the conditions for emergence in ways that disrupt the managerial concerns of everyday practice; troubling the co-optation of emergence by human-centred consumptive practice; and unsettling emergence in conversation with settler colonialism and antiblackness in the places and spaces of early childhood education.

Robert Romanyshyn's book acts as a guide for researchers who are beginning research projects that address spirituality, consciousness and learning. In the four parts of the book-Theory, Process, Method and Implicationsa dense array of scholarly literature from the fields of psychology, phenomenology and hermeneutics is critically considered. The proposed process, referred to as the imaginal approach to research, has arisen from a central supposition that research bears the soul in mind. In the field of holistic education, John P. has described the tendencies of the soul as slowing down, letting go and feeling the rhythm of lived experience. Romanyshyn expands on these tendencies and highlights how the soul gazes backward and downward asking, What is there yet to be acknowledged?

Feminist theory provides a refreshing lens from which to reflect on inclusiveness in science education. The conceptual framework central to this effort stems from attempts to rethink the nature of science and science education rather than from a belief that equality in the sciences can be reached through the implementation of compensatory programs for women and minorities. This marks a fundamental shift in thinking in science education circles because it shifts the reform focus from centering on the deficiencies held by women or minorities to deficiencies and discriminatory practices in science and education. This shift in thinking raises such questions as, “Can a science and science education be constructed that is liberatory, rather than oppressive, to those students who historically have been marginalized by the science endeavor?” and “Can we teach a science that is open to multiple ways of knowing in order to help all students value the contributions made by those traditionally silenced in science?” In this article, I utilize this shift in thinking to argue that feminist theory pushes at the boundaries of the conversation regarding teaching science to all students through the construct of “liberatory education.” Reflecting on my own teaching and learning experiences, I work through some of the underlying assumptions that guide efforts to reform science teaching and learning for all students, and suggest that critiques of science, knowledge of positionality, and efforts to construct new language are essential in the process of constructing a science education for all.

In this article, Villenas and Deyhle use the lens of Critical Race Theory (CRT) to examine Latino schooling and family education as portrayed in seven recent ethnographic studies. They argue that CRT provides a powerful tool to understand how the subordination and marginalization of people of color is created and maintained in the United States. The ethnographic studies of Latino education are filled with the stories and voices of Latino parents and youth. These stories and voices are the rich data by which a CRT lens can unveil and explain how and why "raced" children are overwhelmingly the recipients of low teacher expectations and are consequently tracked, placed in low-level classes and receive "dull and boring" curriculum. The voices of Latino parents reveal how despite the school rhetoric of parent involvement, parents are really "kept out" of schools by the negative ways in which they are treated, by insensitive bureaucratic requirements, and by the ways in which school-conceived parent involvement programs disregard Latino knowledge and cultural bases. Together these studies offer an insight into the schooling success and failure of Latino/a students within the context of the social construction of Latino/Mexicano as Other, played out in the anti-immigrant, xenophobic ambience of this country. Yet these studies also give powerful testimony to the cultural strengths and assets of Latino family education as a base by which new ways of schooling can be conceived. It is in fact when communities act as a collective, firmly rooted in their own language and culture, and gain economic and political power that families are able to make concrete changes.

While the mainline eugenics movement in early 20th century was closely associated with racism and the European Holocaust and was present in biology textbooks in the early 20 th century, the following article finds that a transformed eugenics could be found the U.S. science curriculum by mid-century. The following article analyzes the content of 73 high school biology textbooks published between 1914-1964, and traces the patterns in their eugenic content. Those patterns are then compared to the eugenic content in science textbooks written by Truman Jesse Moon and published by Henry Holt between . Between 1947, and drawing upon eugenics, the series consistently suggested a broad narrative to their adolescent readers. Identified as a "narrative of adjustment," it contained direct, albeit nonracial, political implications. Rooted as it was in a reform view of eugenics, it built on a dialectical nature-nurture paradigm for human development; on insights from twin studies; on IQ testing; and on the presumption that each individual's immutable heredity sets limits on achievement. The Moon series served as a conduit for this reform version of eugenics, and provided its high school readers with a lens through which to understand themselves and their social world. Placed in the context of a national policy to make schooling socially efficient, the texts provided their readers with a specific life narrative, a narrative of adjustment. Its parameters were clear. Readers should accept their fixed heredity, work hard, and adjust to the world as they find it.

This essay draws on the concept of “difficult knowledge” to think with some of the interventions and arguments of affect theory and discusses the implications for curriculum and pedagogy in handling traumatic representations. The author makes an argument that affect theory enables the theorization of difficult knowledge as an intersection of language, desire, power, bodies, social structure, materiality, and trauma. To show the possibilities of this theorization of difficult knowledge, the essay puts in conversation Judith Butler's work on vulnerability, affect, and grievable lives with scholarship on difficult knowledge. The essay leans on Butler's work and affect theory to make a political and pedagogical intervention into the terrain of learning and acting in the face of difficult knowledge. This intervention offers a conceptual, curricular, and pedagogical way out of dilemmas of representation and it is rooted in a political project of social action that does not disavow...

Decolonial studies from Latin America is a vast and multifaceted field of research, thought, and sociopolitical praxis (Aquino Moreschi, 2013; Curiel, 2016; Moraga & Anzaldúa, 2015; Díaz Gómez, 2004; Espinosa-Miñoso, 2014; Leyva et al., 2015; Mariátegui, 1928/2007; Marcos, 2001; Mignolo & Walsh, 2018; Pacari, 2009). However, it has too often been critiqued and interpreted monolithically or, conversely, omitted entirely by North American academics relying predominantly on anglophone scholarship. This special issue builds upon the 2014 Educational Studies special issue, guest-edited by Stephanie L. Daza and Eve Tuck, which drew from several concepts advanced by Latin American decolonial scholars with the intent to “unsettle the boundaries of post-, de-, and anticolonial theory and practice” (Daza & Tuck, 2014, p. 310). Most of the articles, however, centered anticolonial and postcolonial North American scholarship informed by US-based and anglophone settler colonial frameworks (e.g., Calderón, 2014; Patel, 2014). Our special issue seeks to advance the contributions of this work and complicate the decolonial conversation by thinking from and with Indigenous, Black, and Mestizx discourses and praxes emerging from the Global South.

The purpose of this article is to explore the meanings and implications of dangerous memories in two different sites of past traumatic memories: one in Israel and the other in Cyprus. Dangerous memories are defined as those memories that are disruptive to the status quo, that is, the hegemonic culture of strengthening and perpetuating existing group-based identities. Our effort is to outline some insights from this endeavor-insights that may help educators recognize the potential of dangerous memories to ease pain and offer hope. First, a discussion on memory, history and identity sets the ground for discussing the meaning and significance of dangerous memories in the history curriculum. Next, we narrate two stories from our longitudinal ethnographic studies on trauma and memory in Israel and Cyprus; these stories are interpreted through the lens of dangerous memories and their workings in relation to the hegemonic powers that aim to sustain collective memories. The two different stories suggest that collective memories of historical trauma are not simply "transmitted" in any simple way down the generations-although there are powerful workings that support this transmission. Rather, there seems to be much ambivalence in the workings of memories that under some circumstances may create openings for new identities. The final section discusses the possibilities of developing a pedagogy of dangerous memories by highlighting educational implications that focus on the notion of creating new solidarities without forgetting past traumas. This last section employs dangerous memories as a critical category for pedagogy in the context of our general concern about the implications of memory, history and identity in educational contexts.

The burgeoning knowledge of the human brain generated by the proliferation of new brain imaging technology from in recent decades has posed questions about the potential for this new knowledge of neural processing to be translated into "usable knowledge" that teachers can employ in their practical curriculum work. The application of the findings of neuroscience to education has met a mixed reception, with some questioning its relevance for educational practice. Simplistic generalizations about neuroscience's application to education have been dubbed as neuromyths, and regarded as being at best irrelevant to or at worst counterproductive in bringing about good educational practice. In recent times, expansive literature generated in the area of educational neuroscience has drawn attention to a range of epistemological and conceptual issues pertinent to the attempt to translate neuroscientific research findings into usable knowledge that has the potential to improve curriculum practice. Issues involved in such a process include the place of neuroscience among the corpus of disciplines constituting the educational foundations; the conceptual framework required to translate knowledge between neuroscience and education; and, whether usable knowledge can be generated from neuroscientific information, so to be applied in curriculum work. These curriculum questions have direct bearing on curriculum work as the issue of usable knowledge relates directly to the teacher's role in the curriculum process. This article will consider the expectations and constraints in relation to the contribution of neuroscience to the production of usable knowledge for curriculum work.

The world of educational research is a strange one for a teacher to enter. This was very true for me as a biology teacher, having my origins in the "harder" sciences and trained to measure trees, not people. Naively, when I started my PhD study I expected to find a clear set of methods for investigating teacher knowledge and behavior. What a shock to find myself in this hazy environment full of conceptualizations and constructs, overlapping but disconnected, with names such as beliefs, intentions, cognitions, principles, orientations, and knowledge that could be formal, situated, personal, or practical. I was interested in knowing what teachers do when designing lessons, how this relates to their knowledge base, and how lesson design can be learned, which seem to be straightforward questions, but satisfying answers proved difficult to find. A study of the literature taught me that until the 1970s the main aim of studies on teacher planning was to describe teacher behavior and to assess whether teachers follow formal planning models. The conclusion was that they usually do not plan according to goal-oriented models . From the 1970s onward, attention shifted to teachers' cognitions. Lesson planning was considered a process of either solving problems or of decision making, with teachers generating alternatives and choosing between them . Later, Shavelson himself criticized this perspective because it underestimated the role of routines and the influence of classroom materials . More recently Maher Hashweh, who has played an important role in developing the concept of Pedagogical Content Knowledge, could not but observe that there is still limited knowledge on the interplay between teacher knowledge and educational design , that is to say, we lack answers to the questions about how teachers' knowledge develops during the design of lessons, and how this knowledge guides the design process.

This doctoral dissertation represents a qualitative inquiry into the lived experiences and practices of seven faculty and student alumni, the author included, within an accredited Women’s Spirituality Master of Arts (WSMA) degree program, located in the San Francisco Bay area. This graduate course of study originates from the grassroots North American women’s movement, and prepares women for leadership in the pluralistic global culture of the 21st Century. The woman-centred curriculum re-claims women’s history, pre-history, spiritual experience, social contributions and creative expressions by integrating scholarly research, feminist perspectives and analysis, goddesses, activism, ritual, spiritual practices, and the arts. Through individual and collective processes of self-inquiry, healing and transformation, faculty and students contribute to new knowledge and social practices that can holistically address local and global challenges of gender, social and ecological justice. This dissertation artfully illuminates intersections of spirituality and feminism in education that remain little known or understood. The study responds to calls made by North American scholars for inspiriting the academy by attending to the spiritual dimensions of human experience.
The author posits the WSMA as being an exemplar of innovations of spirituality in higher education. Stories and practices woven into this dissertation document, communicate, and commune-with, faculty and students’ experiences of self- formation and authorization, search for meaning and understanding, gender, social, and ecological justice work, and the relational embodiment of spirit- and heart- centred learning and renewal. Throughout this text, the author navigates the complexity of her ongoing path as a scholar who claims Women’s Spirituality as a site of learning and research. Stories and practices are woven through the life-based, artistic material metaphor and gesture of “red thread” into themes of “Beginnings,” “Gifts,” and “New Philosophies.” The author engages narrative, auto/biographic, and arts-based research methodologies through life writing and oral history stories, her mixed-media textiles and performance art practice, and the research persona of the philosopher-midwife, drawn from her working background in lay midwifery of being with-woman. She weaves, performs, translates and transmits co-participants’ stories and practices of living Women’s Spirituality, and that of herself, as being the central bodies/body of this research text.

The resilience of teachers in the face of terror was examined in a narrative study of two Israeli kindergarten teachers over the course of one school year. During this time, there occurred frequent terror attacks as well as the threat of impending war with Iraq and the concomitant threat of chemical warfare. Each teacher's unique pattern of coping based on her own personal theory of resilience was examined. One teacher actively processed with her students stressful news items that the children had encountered. This was based on her belief that children would become more resilient if they had experience dealing with stress in a mediated fashion. The second teacher chose to create what she perceived to be a comfort zone for her students by actively avoiding open discussion about stressful events. She chose to focus on enhancing self-esteem, self-efficacy, and optimism, which she believed would produce greater resilience in her students. In developing these personal resilience theories, both teachers were able to move out of a paralyzed position that is typical of crisis and the immediate posttraumatic period, and move into active coping, thereby incorporating their unique theories of resilience into their personal professional knowledge. These practices were examined in light of current resilience theory.

The author sought to understand an African American English teacher's multicultural curriculum transformation and teaching in a suburban, mostly White, high school. Building on Banks's (1998) model of multicultural curriculum integration, the study focused on a context that might otherwise be ignored because there was not a large student-of-color representation in the school. The teacher in the study was operating at one of the highest levels of Banks's model, the transformational approach. Although the teacher shared characteristics with many of the Black teachers explored in the literature, there was one important difference: much of the research and theory about Black teachers and their instruction focus on Black teachers and their effectiveness in predominantly Black settings. The Black teacher in this study taught in a predominantly White teaching context. The study suggested that even teachers highly conscious of race, culture, gender, and ethnicity may find it difficult to reach the highest level of Banks's model: the social action approach. Implications of this study suggest that multicultural curricula can be well developed and received in a predominantly White setting as long as the curriculum is thoughtfully and carefully transformed. However, the study pointed out that the pervasive discourses and belief systems against multicultural education in a school can discourage highly effective curriculum transformers, and there is a great need to help critically minded teachers persevere in the face of such adversity.

This chapter aims to advance transgressive decolonial hermeneutics (TDH) as a theoretical method in activist education research. Broadly speaking, TDH works at the intersections of decolonial, hermeneutic, and collective action theory. It surfaces from the critical ethnographic study I conducted in Honduras where I engaged in participant observation for 18 months in the university student movement. Although hermeneutics did not strictly form part of my research, the “multi-voiced interpretative praxis” (Fúnez-Flores, 2020, p. 154) inspired by Lincoln and Cannella (2009) and Santos’s (2018) interpretation of social movements as sites of knowledge production encouraged me to consider the ethico-political implications of interpretation. TDH thus evolved into a transgressive mode of interpretation entangled with social struggles. It contests the ontological and epistemological commitments and empirical methodological models of the natural sciences, namely as they are adopted paradigmatically in the human sciences. Further, it disrupts the idea that interpretation is a mode of discovering the meaning of texts and affirms rather that interpretation, understanding, reflection, and comprehension are modes of being and becoming within a living context.

This article examines the “why” and “what” of curriculum inquiry from the perspective of the practical in Schwab’s (1970/1978a) paper. It critically scrutinizes the state of curriculum inquiry in China and in North America. The central argument is that curriculum inquiry is a practical undertaking centrally concerned with the practice or inner work of schooling within the societal, institutional and instructional contexts. It is a normative endeavor for its ultimate
purpose is the advancement of schooling. Furthermore, this article addresses what makes curriculum inquiry curricular, and challenges contemporary curriculum theorizing (e.g.,
reconceptualist curriculum inquiry) as peripheral to or decoupled from the real-world practice of schooling.

In this article, we examine John Updike's short story "A&P" and its depiction of the grocery store as a curricular space re/presenting consumption and resistance to it. We position Updike's fictional A&P as a space where the "big curriculum" (Schubert, 2006a) of consumption is enacted in everyday life and explore both how the curriculum of consumption works and how resistance to consumerism might operate. We argue that this story provides insight into how consumption works as educational practice-one that teaches us how to be consumers, how to operate within consumer capitalism, and how to accept consumerism as natural-and also raises more specific questions about consumptive resistance by pointing toward the ways in which our particular positions within cultural narratives determine our individual perceptions of consumption-focused counterhegemonic action. Through an analysis of the fictional A&P in Updike's story, we examine how physical spaces of consumption such as grocery stores embody particular consumer capitalist ideologies and how shoppers are socialized into behaving in particular ways in such stores. We also address the issue of consumer resistance by focusing on how audiences interpret such consumptive resistance, rather than focusing solely on those resisting. These audiences include the story's protagonist, Sammy, and by extension us, both as readers of Updike's story and as viewers of various sites and acts of consumer resistance in current consumer culture. Our examination shifts the focus from the usual object of analysis-those resisting-to the audiences who, like ourselves, interpret that resistance.

Every way of thinking is both premised on and generative of a way of naming that reflects particular underlying convictions. Over the last 15 years, a way of thinking has reemerged that strives to reposition students in educational research and reform. Best documented in Australia, Canada, England, and the United States, this way of thinking is premised on the following convictions: that young people have unique perspectives on learning, teaching, and schooling; that their insights warrant not only the attention but also the responses of adults; and that they should be afforded opportunities to actively shape their education. Although these convictions mean different things to different people and take different forms in practice, a single term has emerged to capture a range of activities that strive to reposition students in educational research and reform: "student voice." In this discussion the author explores the emergence of the term "student voice," identifies underlying premises signaled by two particular words associated with the term, "rights" and "respect," and explores the many meanings of a word that surfaces repeatedly across discussions of student voice efforts but refers to a wide range of practices: "listening." The author offers this discussion not as an exhaustive or definitive analysis but rather with the goal of looking across discussions of work that advocates, enacts, and critically analyzes the term "student voice." Every way of thinking is both premised on and generative of a way of naming that reflects particular underlying convictions. Over the last 15 years, a way of thinking has reemerged that strives to reposition school students in educational research and reform. 1 Best documented in Australia, Canada, England, and the United States, this way of thinking is premised on the following convictions: that young people have unique perspectives on learning, teaching, and schooling; that their insights

Complementary education programs have emerged as a useful tool for addressing the educational needs of marginalized communities in the developing world. The literature attributes the success of these complementary education programs to innovative school organization, curriculum development, and community participation. This article is based on a recent ethnographic study that explored the curriculum development process of School for Life (SFL), a complementary education program operating in northern Ghana. The objective of the study was to understand the elements of the SFL curriculum, to explore the different stages of the curriculum development process, and to investigate the stakeholders and their roles in the process. The scope of the article includes the background, the analytical framework, the context of education in northern Ghana, the SFL program, the SFL curriculum development process, and conclusion. Initially, the study revealed that the program utilized elements of both technical and critical approaches to curriculum development. The curriculum process was influenced by the context within which it occurred; the process was highly political, empowering, and emancipating for the community members who served as the major curriculum actors and decision makers.

This exploratory article is threefold in purpose. In the first instance, it seeks to re-assess the contributions of feminist thought to our understanding of democratic values in education. We draw extensively upon the insights of feminist political theorists to conduct this re-assessment and suggest some new directions for the study of "Education Feminism" (see . The second aim is to identify and describe the key feminist debates which have emerged about the gendering of liberal democracy. We revisit major but contrasting traditions of thought-that of liberal feminism and feminist theorizing from maternal, socialist, and post-structural positions-to illustrate shifts in thinking about democracy and democratic education. Our goal in conducting this re-evaluation is to highlight the necessity of developing a more explicit and systematic consideration of the relationship between feminism and democratic education. Our third aim is to describe the key levels of political analysis that have been favored by feminists in their efforts to understand the relationship between gender politics and democratic education. We then go on to argue that feminists must revisit the social and political dimensions of their work in order to engage more critically with "epistemic" concerns as they emerge in relation to the study of gender and democratic schooling. This view may seem somewhat out of step with postmodern/post-structural feminist theories that attempt to defend the illusory and performative nature of gender. It is our view, however, that feminists remain committed to the idea that "democratic values" must not only function to serve, but also represent, the political concerns of women "as gendered persons" from diverse contexts. This commitment implies that we view feminism as both a political representation of women's difference/experience and as a necessary theoretical abstraction which has, at its core, an interest in struggling over the meaning and significance of feminist values in a democracy.

Inquiry-based learning is becoming a widely recognized and used
pedagogical approach. However, existing research has largely
focused on inquiry learning in science education, neglecting fields
such as social studies (SS). In Singapore, inquiry learning in SS
received an impetus when a component called “Issue Investigation”
(II) was introduced into the compulsory secondary school syllabus of
2016. Given the recency of this introduction, there has been a lacuna
of empirical research. Addressing both these research gaps, this
paper presents qualitative findings from a preliminary study of
Singapore secondary school SS teachers’ perspectives and experiences
relating to II. Building on a recognition of teacher agency and
of the role teachers play in mediating curriculum and teaching/
learning, this paper focuses on how teachers interpret the nature of
inquiry learning in SS in the Singapore context. Findings suggest that
teachers held broadly two conceptions of II: some saw it as aimed
towards working out practical solutions to societal issues in the spirit
of participative citizenship; others treated it akin to a social science
inquiry process that fostered critical and analytical thinking. In addition,
the challenges teachers encountered in implementing and
enacting II, and their coping strategies are also briefly discussed.

Educators avoid the word "spiritual." It makes them uncomfortable. This discomfort and avoidance betray the sad state of education today. We focus on outcomes rather than have students explore the fundamental questions of life. These questions include such issues as: What is the purpose of human life? What is our role in the universe? What is the nature of reality? How can we deal with human suffering? To be educated should mean that one has addressed these issues in the course of one's life. Of course, these questions cannot be answered through logical or direct means. We must explore and experience them through art, literature, science, and the various spiritual traditions and practices. Unfortunately, we do little of this in our schools or universities; instead, we cover material and solve problems. We fiddle, while Rome burns.

This text is the ‘preface’ opening up my 1991 PhD dissertation – ‘After the New English: Cultural Politics and English Curriculum Change’ (Green, 1991). It was playfully conceived as a set-of-instructions-for-the-Reader (i.e., the Examiner), but perhaps it is more a portrayal of anxiety of writing. It indicates the significance of Jacques Derrida for the project of the dissertation, and, at least retrospectively, can be seen as locating the dissertation overall in the relationship between Education and Cultural Studies, as fields of inquiry and praxis. Essentially a ‘text’ in itself, it outlines and overviews what is to come – in effect, an extended Abstract.

ABSTRACT The field of curriculum studies has a history of looking at its own past, summarizing and synthesizing the trends and patterns across its foundations. Whether through synoptic texts, historical analyses, or edited collections, the field's foundational retrospection typically traces a lineage of curriculum studies that runs through various official committees, university scholars, textbook designers, and school leaders at the turn of the 20th century and into the first few decades. In this critical essay, the authors draw from the theories of cultural memory and critical race theory, to contextualize how the histories of race and curriculum are portrayed. The authors find that, despite curriculum studies' more recent attention to issues of power and identity associated with race, culture, gender, and sexuality, the voices and curricular histories of communities of color in the United States are largely left out of the selective tradition associated with the narrative of the field's foundations. To challenge what amounts to a master narrative of the foundations of curriculum studies, the authors use Charles Mills's (1998) notion of revisionist ontology to explore the curricular conversations that took place in the African American, Native American, Mexican American, and Asian American communities typically left out of the hegemonic history of the field. In doing so, the authors point to the rich curricular history of communities of color and argue for the field of curriculum studies to challenge its own institutional racism and acknowledge the contributions these communities made to its foundations.

The burgeoning knowledge of the human brain generated by the proliferation of new brain imaging technology from in recent decades has posed questions about the potential for this new knowledge of neural processing to be translated into "usable knowledge" that teachers can employ in their practical curriculum work. The application of the findings of neuroscience to education has met a mixed reception, with some questioning its relevance for educational practice. Simplistic generalizations about neuroscience's application to education have been dubbed as neuromyths, and regarded as being at best irrelevant to or at worst counterproductive in bringing about good educational practice. In recent times, expansive literature generated in the area of educational neuroscience has drawn attention to a range of epistemological and conceptual issues pertinent to the attempt to translate neuroscientific research findings into usable knowledge that has the potential to improve curriculum practice. Issues involved in such a process include the place of neuroscience among the corpus of disciplines constituting the educational foundations; the conceptual framework required to translate knowledge between neuroscience and education; and, whether usable knowledge can be generated from neuroscientific information, so to be applied in curriculum work. These curriculum questions have direct bearing on curriculum work as the issue of usable knowledge relates directly to the teacher's role in the curriculum process. This article will consider the expectations and constraints in relation to the contribution of neuroscience to the production of usable knowledge for curriculum work.

Reading the four essays selected from the final section of The Sage Handbook of Curriculum and Instruction,“Inquiring Into Curriculum,” I am somewhat surprised by their courtesy and civility. I feel as if I have dragged myself out of the house, girded for a day of work and arrived at a tea party. Then I realize that perhaps I have responded to the wrong invitation. Part III of The Handbook is entitled,“Curriculum in Theory”; yet, its section editor, William H. Schubert, groups the eight essays under the heading,“Inquiring Into Curriculum ...

In the wake of new forms of curricular policy in many parts of the world, teachers are increasingly required to act as agents of change. And yet, teacher agency is under-theorised and often misconstrued in the educational change literature, wherein agency and change are seen as synonymous and positive. This paper addresses the issue of teacher agency in the context of an empirical study of curriculum making in schooling. Drawing upon the existing literature, we outline an ecological view of agency as an effect. These insights frame the analysis of a set of empirical data, derived from a research project about curriculum-making in a school and further education college in Scotland. Based upon the evidence, we argue that the extent to which teachers are able to achieve agency varies from context to context based upon certain environmental conditions of possibility and constraint, and that an important factor in this lies in the beliefs, values and attributes that teachers mobilise in relation to particular situations.

The use of reform-based curricula is one possible avenue for the widespread implementation of mathematics education reform. In this article, we present two urban elementary teachers' models of curriculum use that describe how each teacher used a reform-oriented mathematics curriculum. In particular, we examine when and how the teachers made adaptations to the curriculum. We find that each teacher had a distinctive pattern of adaptation when using the curriculum. Furthermore, these patterns were related to three key aspects of the teachers' own experiences with mathematics: their early memories of learning mathematics, their current perceptions of themselves as mathematics learners, and their mathematical interactions with family members. Implications for curriculum design and implementation are discussed.

While much of the critical scholarship around elite schooling has focused on the students who attend elite institutions, their social class locations, privileged habituses and cultural capital, this paper foregrounds curricular form itself as a central mechanism in the (re)production of elites. Using Basil Bernstein's conceptual framework of pedagogic codes, this paper depicts how one of the most high-status forms of school knowledge À critical thinking À is taught in both an elite as well as a mainstream secondary school in Singapore. It argues that even as, or more accurately, precisely because the Singapore Ministry of Education emphasizes the teaching of critical thinking in all schools and to all students, how such knowledge is presented and performed in the school curriculum becomes crucial in differentiating elites from mainstream students. Findings suggest that whereas the pedagogic codes in the mainstream school remain oriented towards an instrumental rationality and the fulfillment of external and profane market exigencies, in the elite school they invoke a rationality that is inward-looking, personalized and that encourages the development of narcissistic, sacred identities. This paper concludes by considering how curricular form itself functions as a non-neutral mechanism for the transmission of educational knowledge, and the ways in which, in Singapore's highly stratified society where meritocracy functions as a key principle of governance, the elite identities that accrue from such a curricular form further entrench the political legitimacy of a "meritorious" class.

What does it mean to teach children to be "good citizens," for example, in conflict resolution and service learning activities? This study addressed that question by examining contrasting conceptions of "good citizenship" that were enacted in several peer conflict mediation programs implemented in urban elementary schools. In 1995, the Winning against Violent Environments mediation training program was expanded into the Cleveland Public Schools Center for Conflict Resolution. In school-based peer mediation, the mediator is supposed to neither judge nor investigate facts nor counsel nor offer suggestions regarding the conflict itself. Mediators are responsible for process only for assisting peers to communicate with one another and to negotiate a solution to their problem themselves. A small

This article builds on an extensive review of the comparative and international literature on teachers' perspectives on the education of Muslim students in public, Catholic, and Islamic schools. Bringing the teachers' voices and practices to the attention of researchers, policy makers, and general readers, the authors emphasize the centrality of teachers' roles in the education of Muslim students, highlight the constructive and positive work that teachers do, and point out the challenges they face and the support they need in fulfilling their moral and intellectual duties. We situate teachers' perspectives in the context of the upsurge of global interest in Islam and Islamic education and the increase in Muslims' challenges to multiculturalism and the existing education system dominated largely by Eurocentric, Hellenic-Judeo-Christian heritage and modernist values. The article examines and challenges the research, media and publicly produced contradictory and overlapping statements about Western teachers' work with Muslim students. Predominantly pessimistic, these pronouncements implicate teachers in (1) racism and Islamophobia; (2) an unwillingness and inability to include Muslims' historical and contemporary contributions and perspectives into the existing school curricula; (3) a lowering of expectations about their Muslim students and channelling them into non-academic streams; (4) cultural and religious insensitivity; and (5) an overall lack of knowledge about Islam and Muslims. The article problematizes these observations by engaging with them conceptually and methodologically, and by bringing counter-points from research. The article concludes by proposing a balanced portrayal of teachers' work and the inclusion of teachers' perspectives to improve policy, research, and practice in educating Muslim students within a multicultural society.

In recent years, Canadian schools have developed new policies and practices in their approaches to both diversity policy and curriculum development. Public schools once intended to homogenize a diverse population have been transformed to institutions designed to foster tolerance and respect for diversity. Curricula previously organized around subject content are now framed as standards for student achievement. This article traces the development of contemporary curriculum standards with regard to diversity and examines those standards in the context of a study of grade 7 students' understanding of diversity in New Brunswick. It presents evidence to suggest students are falling far short of expectations outlined in standards documents. While the sparse and fragmentary nature of student understanding should be of concern, this article also identifies key areas of concern about the development and implementation of the standards themselves. We argue that expecting teachers to teach toward, and students to attain, the standards might be unreasonable in light of these concerns.

Engaging in curriculum inquiry in an international context has been a relatively recent phenomenon. To be sure, there has long been a wellestablished field of international and comparative education, but curriculum studies is customarily contained within national and local boundaries in the form of educational practices that are embedded in local and national histories and cultures. The growing movement towards the internationalization of curriculum inquiry over the past decade reflects not only the forces of globalization that impinge upon education, but it also points to much broader changes within in the field that Janet Miller (2005) asserts are now "fully implicated in its unavoidable worldly circumstances" (p. 250). There are both dangers and possibilities for curriculum and teaching

This essay draws on the concept of “difficult knowledge” to think with some of the interventions and arguments of affect theory and discusses the implications for curriculum and pedagogy in handling traumatic representations. The author makes an argument that affect theory enables the theorization of difficult knowledge as an intersection of language, desire, power, bodies, social structure, materiality, and trauma. To show the possibilities of this theorization of difficult knowledge, the essay puts in conversation Judith Butler's work on vulnerability, affect, and grievable lives with scholarship on difficult knowledge. The essay leans on Butler's work and affect theory to make a political and pedagogical intervention into the terrain of learning and acting in the face of difficult knowledge. This intervention offers a conceptual, curricular, and pedagogical way out of dilemmas of representation and it is rooted in a political project of social action that does not disavow...