Journal of Curriculum Theorizing
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"Oklahoma was empty": Storying Land in Oklahoma Land Run Settler Memory
No full textSchooling as an institution has long been looked to as sites that construct and reproduce social inequities. This work of schooling as an institution is partly rooted in the reproduction of cultural memory, especially that of whiteness, capitalist patriarchy, and settler colonialism as a way to justify ongoing settler presence. In this paper, one such example is examined to illustrate the ways in which Oklahoma elementary school Land Run re-enactments do particular work to reify whiteness and settler colonial memory. I draw on Bruyneel’s conceptual framing of 'settler memory' to understand how adults who participated in Land Run re-enactments as children remember and make meaning of this event now, particularly in the storying of land. In utilizing a critical ethnographic inquiry with adult Oklahomans’ experiences and meaning-making, I find that adults 1) look to the ways this curricular experience instilled an affective belonging or othering rooted in white spatialization, 2) make meaning from Indigenous erasure, and 3) make connections around land theft rooted in whiteness. The Oklahoma Land Run re-enactments serve as one contextual example of a larger narrative of Indigenous dispossession, producing particular narratives in the storying of land and settler presence that call for greater interrogation
Speculative Fiction and Curriculum Theorizing: What could/should schools and classrooms of the future look like?
No full textA Curriculum of Illusion and the Miraculous During DreadFul(l) Times
No full textThe current milieu feels dreadful and full of that dread: gun violence and cis-heterosexism in the United States (and elsewhere), as well as the global climate crisis. Given our dread-full situation, what might we do to “keep going” from an ethical standpoint? On our minds is what we are calling a curriculum of illusion and the miraculous, which weaves together Jean Baudrillard’s illusion with Robert Orsi’s call to reclaim the language of immanence—the miraculous. This theoretical piece suggests that the loss of illusion and immanence forecloses the possibilities of imagination, and that repairing that loss is a pressing educational endeavour. Curriculum is the story we tell about the past and present that shapes our impressions of reality and possible futures, and consequently a curriculum of illusion and the miraculous helps tell a story that encourages persistence in the face of dread, but without being rigid in conceptualization or implementation
The Politics of Education: A Refusal to Live without Praxis
No full textThis article looks at the place of curriculum in the maintenance of the concretized myth of white supremacy. Curriculum is positioned as political, social, and economic tool that is inseparable from the establishment and maintenance of the various modes of white supremacy, rather than a neutral document. Curriculum is a historical, and historically white supremacist document
Time of Wonder: Biophilia and Children's Literature
No full textFrom early childhood, picture books have captivated us with a spectrum of characters playing out plot lines in places both far and near. More specifically, many of these books, with their aesthetic and efferent elements of words and images, have come together to evoke and inspire our love of Nature and respect the potential role Nature can play in our daily lives—formally known as biophilia. In a back and forth sequence within the pages that follow, each of us presents and responds with both word and image, to 3 picture books that have all played roles in reaffirming our love and respect of the natural world. In particular, our work will be theoretically grounded in Rosenblatt’s reader response, methodologically supported by auto-bibliography as a form of narrative inquiry, and grounded in biophilia. 
Remembering the Architects of Sesame Street: Biopolitics, Blackness, and Preschool in the 1960s
No full textThis conceptual article critically examines the formative years of Sesame Street (1966-1970) as an in-depth exploration of edutainment, centering analysis on the people or “architects” (Watkins, 2001), processes, and ideology involved in the production of the curriculum of the first season. Unpacking the complexities and contradictions within Sesame Street’s historic representations of marginalized populations, this analysis synthesizes interdisciplinary scholarship, documentaries, primary sources, and “grey literature” to trace the tangled threads of power from private equity and corporate philanthropy to the intended homes of Black families. It considers the early years of Sesame Street as they contributed to the biopolitical turn in preschool discourses via neuroscience, the seemingly forgotten possibility of Head Start expansion, and the emergent sovereignty of the market under neoliberal politics. In looking toward the future of edutainment or other educational technology innovations, researchers and stakeholders in education are urged to carefully consider the organizations, individuals, and processes of curriculum design and implementation
Queer Ecologies: One Year Later
No full textReflecting on a soundart installation one year later troubles the question, “What are we going to do?,” decentering objectives with justification. Nested “laters” anticipate and evoke memories of past futures and future pasts, challenging direct study of crises and catastrophic predictions that reproduce an anthropocentric fixation on “What knowledge is of most worth?” Knowing and sharing things is magical, empowering, and individually self-fulfilling. Yet we can learn from those indigenous traditions in which magicians and shamans simultaneously offer prayers and ritual gestures to other animals, and to the powers of the earth and sky. The obligation is to ensure from the edges of our village that boundaries between human culture and the rest of nature stay porous and overlapping. Sharing what we know will not save the world. Developing forms of leadership, entrepreneurship, and civic engagement that enrich and expand reconnection with stewardship has a chance to do so