Currere and Praxis
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Editor’s introduction
Get PDFIn this issue we learn more about currere and praxis in Africa, America, and Mexico. While acknowledging that the Estados Unidos y México are also América - as are all the nations in the Western Hemisphere - I’ll proceed in that initial alphabetical order.
In the first article, Ünal Deniz explores the career experiences of 12 local Ivorian teachers working in international schools in Côte d’Ivoire through Pinar’s currere methodology. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 12 teachers working in international schools in Côte d’Ivoire - analyzed across four temporal and subjective dimensions, e.g. regressive, progressive, analytical, and synthetical— Ünal Deniz’s intriguing research investigates teachers’ coping with complex institutional dynamics while constructing professional identities within an international educational setting. From his interviews Professor Deniz discovered a series of barriers these teachers faced, among them (1) credential devaluation, (2) salary inequities, and (3) exclusion from leadership opportunities, each reflecting colonial legacies and localized hierarchical structures. Despite these barriers, teachers devised strategic responses, including (1) contextual behavior adaptation, (2) selective information sharing, and (3) collective organizing. Deniz documents these teachers’ “internal transformations” by means they judged success according to their students’ learning rather than their own professional advancement, all the while also engaging in community-school bridge building and policy advocacy. Far from being discouraged, Deniz discovered that these teachers acted as agents of educational improvement rather than succumbing to inequitable practices. His noteworthy research contributes to the international education literature by centering marginalized voices and demonstrating how currere method enables understanding of professional life as an ongoing negotiation between individual agency and institutional constraints. Professor Deniz’s article is a powerful testimony to these teachers’ inner strength, their commitment to the children they teach as well as to the communities wherein their school is located.
Peaches Hash describes how an instructor of undergraduate writing courses within a public university in the United States used arts-based writing assignments to enact the currere process. Throughout the semester, students were asked to complete artistic representations of writing prompts to juxtapose with their assignments, inviting them to incorporate autobiographical elements, thereby demonstrating pedagogically that the process of currere can function as a curricular method within the undergraduate writing classroom.
Also working in the United States, Jennifer L. Schneider and Hongyu Wang point to a rarely acknowledged aspect of currere studies, namely that currere and the contemplation it encourages resistance to the corporatized forces of efficiency, measurement, and control currently deforming education at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels. They draw a contrast between the two traditions, currere centering autobiographical inquiry to reconstruct self and society while contemplation cultivating embodied stillness, relational awareness, and spiritual openness. They point out that scholarship has explored each tradition separately, yet little scholarship attends to what their generative interplay can bring. The authors argue that acknowledging the interrelationship between currere and contemplation can “deepen and enrich educational life.” Drawing on theory, classroom practice, and qualitative research, Schneider and Wang explore how wedding currere and contemplation can (1) unsettle instrumentalist logics, (2) contest efforts to flatten the inner world, (3) foster integrative personhood, and (4) cultivate intergenerational nonviolence, thereby provide portals to a lived experience of curriculum attuned to “emergence, ethical presence, and the transformative possibilities of lived time,” a “praxis of depth, openness, and relational compassion.”
Last but by no means least, Drs. Rita Guadalupe Angulo Villanueva aand Nehemías Moreno Martínez engaged in a two-voiced autobiographical research study, one the voice of a curriculum theorist and the second a mathematics educator with an undergraduate background in physics. The authors are currently conducting curriculum development for graduate studies in education and teaching at the Faculty of Sciences of the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosí, Mexico. The two researchers examine curriculum concepts, among them (1) lived curriculum, (2) curriculum design and evaluation, (3) continuous curriculum updating, as well as (4) craft-based processes in lived curriculum and in scientific-didactic conceptual structures,. They discovered that the “central tension” throughout their curricular construction has been between the lived and prescribed curriculum, from which the authors formulated an Emergent Curriculum Code which provided the foundation for a multidisciplinary, intercultural, and hybrid curriculum currently being offered in a Mexican university graduate program.
My congratulaations to each author upon the publication of their important research
Unveiling the stories that illuminate our path: The pedagogical significance of autobiographical study and the method of currere
Get PDFIn today’s educational landscape, instrumentalist ideologies embedded in politically entrenched school curricula often overshadow the richness of diverse human experiences, perpetuating colonial shadows within educational experiences. In this paper, through the sharing of our juxtaposed autobiographical stories, we intend to exhibit the pedagogical significance of autobiographical inquiry and the method of currere as empowering individuals to transcend the limitations of an arrested self – a persona moulded by a factory-like schooling system that merely serves instrumental ends. We seek to address the question: How might the process of autobiographical study and the method of currere impact pedagogical praxis attuning it to individual lived experiences? By examining the specificities of each event in an individual\u27s life and reflecting on the interplay between personal experiences and education, teachers and students can better comprehend their world through the lens of their lived experiences. Therefore, this paper underscores the pedagogical importance of autobiographical study and the method of currere encouraging educators to attune with an educational praxis anchored in personal experiences. Furthermore, it introduces the transformative potential of these methods to reimagine the different possibilities of praxis in education
Working from within: Currere, contemplation, and lived experience
Get PDFCurrere and contemplation both offer resistance to the forces of efficiency, measurement, and control in education. While currere centers autobiographical inquiry to reconstruct self and society across nonlinear time, contemplation cultivates embodied stillness, relational awareness, and spiritual openness. Scholarship has explored each separately, yet little attends to what their generative interplay can bring. This paper argues that bringing currere and contemplation together can deepen and enrich educational life: currere gains a fuller attunement to embodiment, subjective vitality, and sacred interconnectedness, while contemplation expands its temporal and narrative work by attending to curriculum as lived experience. Drawing on theory, classroom practice, and qualitative research, we explore how currere and contemplation coming together can unsettle instrumentalist logics, contest the efforts to flatten the inner world, foster integrative personhood, and cultivate intergenerational nonviolence. By refusing containment within technique or linear self-story, their blending opens a curriculum life attuned to emergence, ethical presence, and the transformative possibilities of lived time. This convergence offers educators and learners a praxis of depth, openness, and relational compassion
The heart of the matter: Jean-Luc Nancy
Get PDFCurriculum theorists write about things that no one wants to talk about. Currere is not just about lived experience, but it is also about death. And it is this that no one wants to talk about. This is what Heidegger called Being-Toward-Death. I write about a professor who died several days before his seminar began. That professor was Jean-Luc Nancy who was Jacques Derrida’s student. Derrida is a familiar name to curriculum theorists, but Jean Luc-Nancy might not be. Christopher Fynsk—a well-known philosopher and friend of Nancy’s—had the courage to teach Nancy’s seminar only a few days after Nancy died. I took that seminar. The year was 2021. The seminar was held at the European Graduate School. In that seminar I began studying Nancy’s work. This paper is an introduction to Nancy’s work
ARTiculating currere: Arts-based methods and methodology to facilitate and understand biographic situations
Get PDFThis article explores how an instructor of undergraduate writing courses within a public university used arts-based writing assignments to facilitate the currere process. Throughout the semester, students were asked to complete artistic representations of writing prompts to pair with their assignments. Students completed narrative, analytic, and research-based writing assignments with artistic components. The art-making invited students to include biographical elements of their identities into their compositions, which enabled them to engage with the currere process. Additionally, the instructor’s own knowledge of currere made it possible for her to understand her students’ depth of educational experiences within her curriculum. Through practitioner action research that closely followed voluntary student participants over a semester, this article explores connections between art-making and currere as well as ways the process of currere can function as a curricular method within the undergraduate writing classroom
From the search for a distinct curricular understanding to the curricular voice of a “we”
Get PDFThis text presents a two-voiced autobiographical research study, combining the perspectives of: (1) an education scholar specializing in curriculum theory research, and (2) a mathematics educator with an undergraduate background in physics. Both hold doctoral degrees and are currently developing a curriculum project for graduate studies in education and teaching, which has recently been launched at the Faculty of Sciences of the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosí, Mexico. The research explores the contextual construction of theoretical curriculum categories: lived curriculum, curriculum design and evaluation, continuous curriculum updating, craft-based processes in lived curriculum, scientific-didactic conceptual structures, and emergent curriculum code. These categories were developed over one decade, with each one significantly shaped by its specific social and educational context. The central tension throughout this curricular construction has been between the lived curriculum and the prescribed curriculum. This tension has enabled the adoption of interstitial resistance as a political project encompassing curricular, institutional, and classroom dimensions. The categories, emerging from epistemic thinking, have facilitated the proposal of an Emergent Curriculum Code as a new formative ideal. This conceptual framework has served as the foundation for creating a multidisciplinary, intercultural, and hybrid curriculum currently offered in a university graduate program
Pedagogy, demagogy, and subjectness: Encounter and responsibility
Get PDFThe article delves into the nuanced relationship between pedagogy and demagogy, analyzing how they shape the educational experience. It highlights that when pedagogy loses its existential focus, it risks turning into demagogy, prioritizing control over education\u27s transformative potential. The author argues for a pedagogy that values subjectivity, intuition, and the inherent uncertainty of educational encounters. Using poetic language, the author portrays teachers as oscillating between the roles of artists and entertainers, when addressing the responsibility consequent of the subjective encounter. The piece suggests that educational encounters should be approached with the same wonder as one feels when encountering the sea and other elemental beings, recognizing the interplay between the vastness of existence and human life\u27s limitations. The astonishment consequent of these encounters engages both students and teachers in a shared journey of self-discovery, uncovering new facets of their identities through their interactions. Through autobiographical narrative and philosophical discourse, the work emphasizes the need for educators to engage deeply with the subjective dimensions of teaching, fostering spaces where both teachers and students can explore their identities and responsibilities in relation to each other and the world
Local teachers’ career experiences in international schools: A currere study from Côte d’Ivoire
Get PDFThis phenomenological study explores the career experiences of 12 local Ivorian teachers working in international schools in Côte d’Ivoire through Pinar’s currere methodology. Drawing on in-depth interviews analyzed across four temporal dimensions—regressive, progressive, analytical, and synthetical—the research investigates how local teachers navigate complex institutional dynamics while constructing professional identities within international education contexts. Findings reveal systematic barriers including credential devaluation, salary inequities, and exclusion from leadership opportunities that reflect colonial legacies and hegemonic structures. Despite these challenges, participants developed various strategic responses, including contextual behavior adaptation, selective information sharing, and collective organizing. The study documents internal transformations where teachers redefined success around student-centered outcomes rather than hierarchical advancement, while simultaneously engaging in external transformation efforts through community-school bridge building and policy advocacy. The findings suggest that local teachers function as agents of institutional change rather than passive recipients of inequitable practices. The research contributes to international education literature by centering marginalized voices and demonstrating how currere methodology enables understanding of professional identity construction as an ongoing temporal negotiation between individual agency and structural constraints. The study provides insights for policy reforms in hiring practices, compensation structures, and recognition systems to better support equity in international education contexts
Living our subjective presence: An interview with William F. Pinar
Get PDFThis paper is a narrative account of the conversation that took place at Pinar’s house, on April 4, 2023, focusing on a few themes that emerge from his 2023 book A Praxis of Presence in Curriculum Theory: Advancing Currere Against Cultural Crises in Education as well as the dialogue between us, including “subjective presence,” “study,” and “knowledge of most worth”. This paper hopes to experience Pinar’s calling not only in reverberating textual conversations but also in the author’s embodied lived experiences in the interview. This paper invokes several lived moments the author shared with Pinar and gives a glimpse of the person behind his text, in other words, to humanize the text. This would echo the humanist emphasis embedded in the reconceptualization of curriculum studies. This interwoven feeling, reading, thinking, and writing, I believe, are in itself a very pedagogical attempt to “concretize” the abstract and go beyond and behind the text. This article concludes with a discussion of the implications of embracing the subjective presence for teachers’ pedagogical praxis