Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies (JCACS)
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Living (Ek)statically: Educating-within-place and the Ecological Imagination
Get PDFThis paper explores the concept of educating-within-place, existentially derived through a series of immediate and direct experiences within several old growth forests in southern Ontario, and how this might inform notions of the ecological imagination. Our ruminations are guided by several ongoing research endeavours, some existential, others empirical. We take pause in order to examine what we have been doing in the field of Canadian curriculum studies whilst grasping towards a broadened perspective of teacher educating. To theoretically frame this pursuit we draw upon the notion of Ekstasis in order to engage in a pedagogy that considers possibilities through the senses and sensibilities of teacher candidates. In doing so we examine ways of being that move beyond the technocratic and cultivate a living curriculum
To Placate or Provoke? A Critical Review of the Disciplines Approach to History Curriculum
Get PDFAlthough there are many models that attempt to take Canadian history curriculum in more critical, thought-provoking directions, most notably the disciplinary cognitive citizenship’ approach spearheaded in Canada by Peter Seixas, these reforms are so typical of the transaction orientation that there is no room for what I think history can and should do: transform. Canadian history curriculum needs to take seriously the homogenizing ethic of today’s neoliberal politics by acknowledging the power and privilege imbedded within historical narratives. By structuring history education so that there is no place to think of the Canadian historical narrative outside a rational and depolitical framework, under the guise of a provocative curriculum, an approach like the disciplinary cognitive citizenship approach seeks to placate students in a neoliberal understanding of self rather than prepare them for the diversity of 21st century Canada
“The Reluctant Pilgrim:” Questioning Belief After Historical Loss
Get PDFIn this paper, I explore the question of belief as it is enacted in the inclination to return to places of history's lost objects. I argue that such returns, and the beliefs that fuel them, offer a site in which to consider the persistent, inter-generational effects of history, particularly when the history at stake is one of trauma. While, in education, belief is often cast as separate from historical consciousness, I suggest that belief is evidence, a remnant, of a "truth" of past trauma that disrupts the very capacity to know (Caruth, 1996). I ground my discussion in a case study of historical pilgrimage that returns every July to the former site of the Lejac Residential School in Northern British Columbia. This pilgrimage, in my view, lays bare the double-edged quality of belief as it intersects with the subject of history: on the one hand, there is the wish for redemption that repeats the very terms of history it seeks to overcome, and on the other hand, the possibility of tolerating the idea of a future that can face the vulnerabilities, anxieties and uncertainties that difficult history sets into motion. The pilgrimage, I believe, is a useful metaphor for thinking about curriculum, where what is at stake is not a "simple knowledge," but the capacity to open oneself to the vulnerabilities of living with and after historical loss
Thinking like Grass, with Deleuze in Education?
Get PDFThe French philosopher Gilles Deleuze might not be well known yet to the Canadian education landscape. So in this paper, I begin with a close-reading of “On the Superiority of Anglo-American Literature”, a chapter in Deleuze’s collaborative works with his colleague Claire Parnet, appropriately titled Dialogue, where they exemplifies their own “deterritorialization” of thought across disciplines and geographical domains. I then give a sketch of his reflection on the major movements in Philosophy as an attempt to envision his own possible orientation of philosophizing that is close to life in its creative force. By introducing some of the important yet creative concepts as well as the fresh spirit of his philosophical movements in thinking, I intend to create a space of openness where we the educators could think anew on the some fundamental theoretical questions in curriculum studies, for instance: what does it mean to attempt to bring Deleuze’s work from the “outside” in the proximity of our educational realm, or rather, to extend our ignorance to the edge of the inter-disciplinary borders, to think about curriculum questions with his diverse philosophical thinking
The Reader Response Approach in Modern Language Acquisition
No full textThis article describes the implementation of the reader response approach as a focal practice in a university Spanish language class. The design of was qualitative. Methods included participant observation, taped responses, a taped focus group meeting, and analysis of documents. Four main themes emerged from the data analysis: shifting roles in the modern language classroom; patterns of shared response to La Casa en Mango Street; students’ attitudes towards a new pedagogical approach; and response to La Casa en Mango Street. This approach contributed to the narrowing of the gap between language and culture in the modern language classroom
An/other Bell Ringing in the Sky: Greenwashing, Curriculum, and Ecojustice
No full textThe paper was presented for a session a the Provoking Curriculum Studies conference
La Figure de Terry Fox : Handicap et Performance et les Conséquences Pour l’Éducation
No full textCet article analyse la figure de Terry Fox par rapport à une reproduction idéologique d’un certain discours sur le handicap et sur l’infirmité à l’école. L’auteur reprend l’exemple du personnage de Terry Fox qui met en lumière certains aspects sociaux et culturels par rapport au handicap. L’analyse montre que la visibilité du handicap de Terry Fox est liée à sa performance physique et à des courants philanthropiques qui ont émergé dans les années 1980 et qui se sont maintenus, voire renforcés, depuis. Le handicap devient supportable quand il peut être « surmonté » et associé à de grandes causes qui transcendent le handicap. Ainsi, en enseignant de façon naïve l’histoire de Terry Fox et en encourageant la participation aux Courses Terry Fox dans les écoles, on renforce et on rend légitime un certain discours néolibéral qui cherche à former le citoyen consommateur individualiste capable de maîtriser son propre corps et son sort
Hitler's Car as Curriculum Text: Reading Adolescents Reading History
Get PDFIn this paper I explore how adolescents and beginning teachers encounter and respond to Hitler’s private limousine, a prominent and controversial exhibit at the Canadian War Museum. I first consider the conflicts of learning at stake when the curriculum contains representations of social trauma and war. I then draw from psychoanalytic perspectives on human development to think about what happens when conflict as it is represented in the world outside meets conflict in the individual’s inner world or psychology. Several research questions are raised: How do adults ‘read’ adolescents reading history and understand adolescents’ emotional connections to difficult historical objects? Further, how are these reading practices shaped by the traumatic losses that the concept of adolescence, as a category of the human, works to contain? What adolescence, as both a lived experience and social and developmental entity must endure, I argue, is the nostalgic hope for an adult world reconciled as free from conflict and human suffering. The paper conceptualizes how difficult it is for adults to separate their own conflicts of making a relationship to history from those of the adolescent learner and to encounter the adolescent as more than a story of historical consolation
Developing Ecological Habits of Mind
Get PDFThis paper describes a two-part study. The first part of the study documents the experiences of nine school-based artists who took part in a six-day professional development workshop on ecology and the arts at an off-grid wilderness facility. The course was designed to increase artist-educators’ awareness of issues surrounding energy use and consumption as well as to provide them with direction for approaching these topics through arts-based learning in schools. One of the sessions introduced an electronic portfolio as a tool for supporting arts-based learning on topics dealing with ecology and the environment. Data were collected from the artist-educators through observations, field notes, and semi-standardized interviews. Participants also completed an on-line survey regarding various energy conservation and consumption issues. The data for the first part of the study revealed how the artist-educators anticipated interacting with teachers and students upon returning to their local schools, both in terms of content related to energy conservation and in the ways that they would approach this topic through their respective art forms. In the second part of the study, the electronic portfolio was used to promote self-regulated learning with Grade 5 students in a public elementary school in Toronto, Ontario while they studied energy and ecology through an arts-based approach to these topics. Students worked with one of the participants who took part in the six-day professional development workshop. Together with their teacher, they explored solar power and wind turbine energy and presented their learning through dance. As for the first part of the study, classroom-based data were comprised of observations, field notes, and interviews. In addition, a pre- and post-questionnaire was used to ascertain the degree of self-regulatory practices used by the students. Students expressed considerable enthusiasm for the tool and demonstrated significant growth in understanding how to set goals and critique the work of their peers
Apprenticing Teachers Reading: The Cultural Significance of Juvenile Melodrama
Get PDFThis article presents a study that reveals the educational significance of melodrama as a moral aesthetic, specifically in relation to work with literacies around identity in the teacher education classroom. Using methods of Lacanian discourse analysis and genre analysis, it unmasks the way two-award winning juvenile historical fictions depend on melodrama to instigate their narrative appeal. It unravels the skein of melodrama’s particularity and complicated affective potential for teachers who want to work in liberating ways with youth fiction in the classroom