Journal of Curriculum Theorizing
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Dreams of the Past: The Work of Dreaming and Historical (un)Consciousness in History Teacher Education
No full textWhat We (Un)Do with Dreams: Symbolizing Incompleteness Within the Work of Becoming in Teacher Education
No full textConceptual Research in Theoretical Studies: Intersections of Human Education and Curriculum
No full textThis paper examines Daisaku Ikeda’s perspective and practice of ningen kyoiku, or “human education.” Ikeda and the Soka tradition of education informing his perspective and practice have gained increasing purchase in the field of Curriculum Studies (Goulah & Ito, 2012; He, Schultz, & Schubert, 2015). Here, Cornell applies peace education pioneer Betty Reardon’s (2017) approach to understanding the alternative mode of thinking present in Ikeda’s philosophy and practice of peace to his philosophy and practice of human education. For Reardon, these modes include “values, i.e., moral and ethical principles and standards; concerns, i.e., problems that violate the values; proposals, i.e., ideas for overcoming or resolving the problems; actions, i.e., steps to implement the proposals; and consequences, i.e., potential outcomes of the actions” (Reardon, 2017, n.p.). Building off this framework, Goulah (2019) identifies a sixth mode of thinking, Buddhist philosophy, and indicates that Ikeda incorporates Buddhist philosophy to shed light on the problems and challenges he discusses. Cornell argues that these six modes of thinking present in Ikeda’s perspective on human education indicate his fundamental intent of outlining a vision in which human becoming, or what he calls “human revolution,” should be the central focus of all human endeavor and a central principle of Curriculum Studies. Salient to the field of Curriculum Studies, Schubert (2009) asks, “What is worth knowing, needing, experiencing, doing, being, becoming, sharing, contributing, and wondering?” (p. 22). Cornell concludes that the intersection of these questions in relation to human revolution and human becoming in education lead to the need for teacher agency in schools as learning cultures of human becoming
Shady Figures and Shifting Grounds for Re/Truthing: Channeling McLuhan’s Posthuman
No full textA dramatic shift in ground across the American political and social landscape is taking place, the kind that happens when a figure such as Trump conducts himself in the media, including by Twitter. In describing approaches to navigating a changing world through media, Marshall McLuhan employed the concept of figure/ground to evaluate media and their effects: a pursuit in honing perceptions. In curriculum theory, we employ figure/ground analysis to better recognize when a traditionally accepted humanist lens as figure has largely precluded recognition of a posthuman grounding that now thoroughly structures the conditions of the developed world’s existence (Sharon, 2014). How do we as educators address McLuhan’s prescient concerns over networked technologies and shifting media brought about by the electric age and now deployed by the likes of Trump, his administration, network news, and a disenfranchised American populace
Introduction: An Invitation to Complicated Conversations
No full textThe Journal of Curriculum Theorizing has a rich history of publishing interdisciplinary articles that expand notions of curriculum theorizing while seeking to impact classroom practice. In this special edition, we invited scholars from the fields of Curriculum Studies and Disability Studies to present work about the curriculum of dis/ability. The scholars featured in this special edition have taken up the call in a variety of ways, including auto-ethnographical reflection, analysis of existing curricula, arts-based theorizing, and reflections on classroom interactions. Through these works, we offer not a prescriptive approach to infusing Disability Studies into Curriculum Studies (or vice-versa), but rather an invitation to our readers to theorize through intersectional and interdisciplinary lenses
Cross-Atlantic Discourses in Celebrity Coming Out Stories: The Cases of Ricky Martin and Tiziano Ferro
No full textIn 2010, Ricky Martin, a popular Puerto Rican/American singer, published an online letter announcing his homosexuality to his fans. Six months later, Tiziano Ferro, a well-known Italian pop singer, also published his own coming-out letter in an Italian daily. In this paper, the authors examine these letters in order to delineate discourses of gay identity as well as emergent neoliberal framings of homosexuality—on both sides of the Atlantic. They show how Martin’s and Ferro’s coming out announcements are characterized by hegemonic discourses of homonormativity centered on private, not public, expressions of sexuality. The authors further show how those discourses are characteristic of slightly different situated economic forces and policies of neoliberalism, based on location, framing constructions of sexual identity
The Possibility of a Disability Studies in Education Continuing Education Course: A Deleuzoguattarian Stratoanalysis
No full textDisability Studies in Education (DSE) questions deficit-based views of disability, the notion that disability resides within individuals, and technologies of disablement. As teacher educators, Rands and Sheldon used qualitative document analysis to investigate the feasibility of teaching a DSE-based continuing education course using a particular online platform. The theoretical framework for interpreting the findings drew on Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concepts of stratoanalysis and double articulation, learning and common sense, lines of flight, as well as Michael Warner’s conceptualization of publics and counterpublics. Overall, rather than taking on a form of expression that aligns with DSE-based views of disablement, the course documents reinforce oppressive dominant views of disability. The documents revealed several constraining aspects of the infrastructure that, in combination, made teaching a DSE-based course unlikely. Although there is considerable potential for using virtual platforms for reaching teachers who do not have access to traditional university-based courses, this study offers a cautionary note to teacher educators considering partnering with third-party companies. However, the study also offers inspiration for those seeking to develop DSE-based courses; by engaging with the problematic nature of an existing platform, it is possible to embark on lines of flight and design courses that better match DSE notions
Speculative Fiction, Post Human Desire and Inquiry of Currere
No full textEvery generation has its monsters. They evoke our deepest desires, our fears, and our curiosities. They are the unknown…the uncontrollable; fraught with terror and possibility. Possibility oftentimes emerges through fiction. Fiction is not the opposite of fact; it is the opposite of finitude. While it is defensible to assert that reality exists beyond texts, much of what we think of as “real” is—and can only be—apprehended through fictional texts. Monsters are us. They reflect and refract our fragmented collective and individual identities. Blood’s Will: Speculative Fiction, Existence and Inquiry of Currere (McNulty, 2018) which is the focus of this presentation, offers a philosophical treatise by virtue of its speculative fiction genre, which enables the author and the characters to examine inquiry and existence in imaginative ways not limited by definitive proofs. This narrative inquiry novel centers on a complicated love story between a mortal woman and vampire. But the story is also about free will, identity, and possibilities of existence. The vampire’s existence serves as a fictionalized example of the inquiry of currere and the exploration of “possibility” that depends not on being rationalized, but on being “poeticized,” as happens through speculative fiction. In this story, currere is perceived through the role of the author’s own autobiography in shaping the story. Campbell and Finn (the main characters) both explore (process, cycle, examine, and return to) their intertwined life journeys as an example of how fictional characters can exemplify the four stages of currere inquiry. Choosing a love-story-in-crisis—between a mortal and supernatural character was intentional, as the options and issues illustrated in their relationship are distinctly different than they would have been had both characters been limited by mortality. The process of writing a work of auto-fiction, as well as the narrative of this story itself, both serve as process of inquiry as possibilities, which embodies, “the middle passage, that passage in which movement is possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar, to estrangement, then to a transformed situation” (Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery, & Taubman, 1995, p. 548). Given that the vampire “never dies,” one might assume the journey across and between the four stages could go on in perpetuity. What possibilities might lie beyond our current finitudes? The role of un-death provided the trope necessary to examine the more existential questions that confront us mortals—the author wrestles with the same questions as the characters. Both the writing process and narrative product remind us that, “We are not the stories we tell as much as we are the modes of relations our stories imply, modes of relations implied by what we delete as much as what we include” (Pinar, 1994, p. 218). The role of the novel in inquiry is to implode boundaries, to invite possibility, and offer an example of writing our ficto-currere. Campbell’s ultimate “un-demise” embodies the notion of this possibility beyond freedoms and limits …a “transformed” situation; her transformation signifying transformative possibilities of inquiry of self and fictional texts
Inspiriting the Proleptic: Spirituality in a Postmodern Curriculum to Advance Well-Being in Schools
No full textThis paper examines the integration of curriculum as theological text in the classroom as a mechanism to promote well-being in schools. Specifically, Elfreich draws upon Slattery’s (2013) postmodern framework of proleptic eschatology in an effort to promote an inspirited version of Pinar’s currere. As such, currere(ing) the spirit creates a space for transcendence within education that acknowledges the interdependent nature of who we are in relation to others. Finally, in keeping with a postmodern framework, Elfreich provides a reflexive, auto-biographical narrative of the proleptic in relation to curriculum and well-being as an attempt to exemplify the interconnected nature of past, present, and future
Cinema of the Monstrous: Disability and “Eye-Feel”
No full textThis paper explores the role of embodied visuality in the formation of stigma toward representations of mental illness in Hollywood movies. Including Foucauldian theory and perspectives from the disciplines of disability studies and media literacy, this paper advocates for the use of curricular materials that may offset monstrous and otherizing portrayals of persons with psychiatric disablilities