Journal of Curriculum Theorizing
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Language Ideologies and Curriculum Studies: An Empirical Approach to 'Worthwhile" Questions
No full textFor four decades critical modes of curriculum inquiry have inspired and informed new theoretical directions toward thinking about 'worthwhile' questions, Ideology and their relevance toward understanding social inequities and the educational disparity between dominant and non-dominant populations. However, in recent years, the viability and relevance of these modes of inquiry have been questioned on the basis of language accessibility and other 'practical' considerations which threaten to make curriculum inquiry as a field 'moribund.' In this conceptual paper, I argue for a grounded approach to the 'worthwhile' questions and in particular the notion of Ideology in curriculum inquiry. More specifically, I propose the language ideologies (LI) approach as a way to foreground many of the 'worthwhile' questions surrounding Ideology in an empirical, hence more 'practical' manner through the prism of 'language' and its extension: discourse and narrative analysis. Using the discourse analytic approach afforded by LI, I illustrate my case with multiple vignettes from studies of classroom discourse, interviews with teachers about contested language issues (i.e. bilingual education & African American Vernacular), and historical debates surrounding the status of languages other than 'Standard' English in the United States
Rationality, Governmentality, Natio(norm)ality? Shaping Social Science, Scientific Objects, and the Invisible
No full textThe discipline of education in Anglophone-dominant contexts has always grappled with a kind of status anxiety relative to other disciplines. This is in part due to the ways in which evidence has been thought about in the theoretico-experimental sciences relative to the ethico-redemptive ones. By examining that which was considered to fall to the side of science, even of social science, this paper complexifies contemporary debates over educational science and research, including debates over evidence-based education or assumed divisions between the quantitative/qualitative and empirical/conceptual. It reapproaches historical vagaries in discourses of vision that underscore the arbitrariness of approaches to social scientific research and its objects. A less-considered set of spatializations and regionalisms in social scientific conceptions of rationality especially are exposed through a close reading of the Harvard University philosopher William James' more marginalized texts
Kissing G.I. Joes: Critical Media Literacy Episodes and Wide-Awake, Critical Connoisseurship
No full textThis article explores the actions, as well as the thoughts, of teachers who are interested in - and prepared to engage in - critical pedagogy and the potential for using critical media literacy as a framework for this pedagogy. This article investigates the notion that there is a recognizable and describable "mindset" that a teacher can have in order to prepare the type of learning environment in early childhood educational settings that creates a curriculum space for critical pedagogy; in this case we investigate the words and actions of such a teacher. We argue that this "mindset," which we are calling wide-awake, critical connoisseurship, when employed in the classroom, lends itself particularly well to teacher engagement as a facilitator for students in critical media literacy episodes. We argue that these episodes, when engaged in by teacher and student[s] can then lead to critical media literacy projects.
Improvisation-based Pedagogies: Changing Thoughts on Learning
No full textThe adoption of pre-determined standards and objectives in curricular design has important implications for how classroom knowledge is framed and subsequently dictates possible forms of interaction amongst students. This paper, in contrast to prevailing efforts to standardize learning outcomes, uses improvisation as a concept-metaphor to argue that curricula must be partially indeterminate if they are to take into account learners' subjectivities and interpretations. I problematize the value of abstract knowledge by drawing upon Isocrates' notion of kairos and Aristotle's notion of phronesis, which imply that any holistic understanding of knowledge must account for the interdependency between the knower and the unfolding context. Integrating transactional and dynamic educational theories of Dewey and Whitehead, I present jazz as a model for classroom interaction and articulate social and cognitive benefits of process drama as an improvisation-based approach to argue that a generative approach to indeterminacy is vital to a reconceptualization of praxes
Knitting Curriculum: Storied Threads of Pre-Service Art Teaching
No full textIn this paper, we explore a knitted curriculum. Connecting the traditional craft of knitting with meaning-making, art, and activism, we attempt to understand live(d) curriculum through two pre-service teachers' unique experiences. Based on a larger qualitative study that studies how pre-service art teachers make meaning and sense of their student teaching experiences, we investigate how student-teachers challenge traditional attitudes toward knitting and art, and explore the role knitting played in their development as art teachers. While the focus of the paper is on knitting as a curricular subject, we also rethink curriculum metaphorically through a knitted framework. Conceptualizing curriculum as "knitted" provides insight into the relational, embodied aspects of curriculum-how curriculum exists within and around each teacher and student in their everyday lives and the embedded intertwined threads of culture and society
Education as a Journey: Exploring the Third Space of Hongyu Wang's The Call from the Stranger on a Journey Home
No full textIn this essay I examine Hongyu Wang's 2004 book, The Call from the Stranger on a Journey Home: Curriculum in a Third Space. Wang draws on the work of numerous thinkers on topics ranging from psychoanalysis and philosophy to literature in order to articulate her understanding of the third space. She has been particularly influenced by the writings of Michel Foucault, Confucius, and Julia Kristeva. After examining the central tenets of Wang's book, I situate it within the larger picture of theory and philosophy and explore how other authors have described third space both in and outside of educational discourses. Lastly, I will point to what I see as the possibilities and challenges of dwelling in a third space and its implications for education
Educating the Citizen of Empire
No full textIn this article we conceptualize an education that would be consonant with a contemporary notion of global citizenship, that we call a Citizen of Empire. Drawing from the work of Hardt and Negri in their book Empire, we argue that global society is a virtual space manufactured through the biopolitical generativity of the people on a global scale. A global citizen engages in acts of political, cultural and economic creativity to generate the global society of Empire from the ground up. We argue that an education that is consonant with this kind of citizenship would be consistent with Ivan Illich's proposal for a deschooled society. A deschooled education foregrounds poesis over praxis as it links people together through globally articulated learning webs that places individuals into relationship across differences of space and time
The More She Longs for Home, the Farther Away it Appears: A Paradox of Nostalgia in a Fulani Immigrant Girls' Life
No full textNostalgia has long been a common coping strategy for loss of the familiar among immigrants. This article explores how a Fulani first-generation immigrant girl negotiated various types of nostalgia grounded in (a) collective memory of America, (b) collective memory of the Fulani community, and (c) personal memories of homeland, and how such negotiation shaped her future aspiration. The data in this article are drawn from a larger study, on first-generation immigrant girls' future aspirations, which was conducted from 2005 to 2008. The findings demonstrate that the participant's critical examination of her personal memories of home as well as ethnic community's nostalgia together reinforced her desire to return to her homeland in a new role as a professional woman. However, uncritical participation in American nostalgia as a method of achieving this dream led her to fall into a paradox. Based on the findings, the article suggests a new practice of nostalgia that is collective and focused on the present
Learning How to Love the World: Richmond and Snowber's Landscapes of Aesthetic Education
No full text In Landscapes of Aesthetic Education, Stuart Richmond and Celeste Snowber (2009) explore how aesthetic experiences can help us learn how to love the world, both in schools and in our everyday lives. The thirteen essays contained in the book provide insights into the theory and practice of aesthetic education, as well as reflections on how the two artist-educators experience the aesthetic in their own lives and incorporate aesthetics into their teaching, mentoring, research, and art. What emerges is two complementary and yet very different visions of aesthetic experience and education, provocative accounts of what loving the world might mean, how we can learn to do it, and how we can teach it