Curriculum Epistemicide

Around the world, curriculum – hard sciences, social sciences and the humanities – has been dominated and legitimated by prevailing Western Eurocentric Anglophone discourses and practices. Drawing from and within a complex range of epistemological perspectives from the Middle East, Africa, Southern Europe, and Latin America, this volume presents a critical analysis of what the author, influenced by the work of Sousa Santos, coins curriculum epistemicides, a form of Western imperialism used to suppress and eliminate the creation of rival, alternative knowledges in developing countries. This exertion of power denies an education that allows for diverse epistemologies, disciplines, theories, concepts, and experiences. The author outlines the struggle for social justice within the field of curriculum, as well as a basis for introducing an Itinerant Curriculum Theory, highlighting the potential of this new approach for future pedagogical and political praxis.

Towards a Just Curriculum Theory: The Epistemicide responds to a need for ‘alternative ways of thinking about alternatively’ about education and curriculum. It challenges the functionalism of both dominant and specific counter-dominant education and curriculum perspectives and in so doing suggests an Itinerant Curriculum Theory (ICT) as a new path for the field. The volume brings challenges critical educators to decolonize and to deterritorialize, providing scholars and educators a more nuanced analysis. By offering strategies to achieve a just curriculum theory, and by positioning curriculum theory to establish social and cognitive justice, this book aims to educate a more just and democratic society. With contributions from leading scholars across the field education, this volume argues that to deny the existence of any epistemological form beyond the Western mode can be a form of social fascism, which leads to an uncritical reading of history. Together, the essays offer and encourage a more deliberative, democratic engagement that seeks to contextualize and bring to life diverse epistemologies, value-sets, disciplines, theories, concepts, and experiences in education and beyond.

This book advances new ways of thinking about emergence and impact of Itinerant Curriculum Theory (ICT). Written by authors based in Algeria, Brazil, Chile, China, Estonia, South Korea, Spain and the USA, the chapters examine the opportunities and challenges paved by ICT in the struggle to open up and decolonize curriculum policies. The contributors show how ICT can help us to pave a new way to think about and to do curriculum theory and announce ICT as a declaration of epistemological liberation, one that helps to resist Eurocentric dominance. The chapters cover topics including, ecologies of the Global South, education discourse in South Korea, China's Curriculum Reform, and the history of colonialism in the Middle East. Building on the work of Antonia Darder, Boaventura de Sousa Santos and others, this book posits that the future of the field is the struggle against curriculum epistemicides and this is ultimately a struggle for social justice. The book includes a Foreword by the leading curriculum historian William Schubert, Professor Emeritus of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois at Chicago, USA.

Since its original publication, Conflicts in Curriculum Theory has firmly established itself as the key volume that not only advanced alternative ways to think about education and curriculum but also introduced innovative scholarship and a radical conceptual grammar for the field. In this revised second edition, Paraskeva addresses current epistemological shifts and avenues within and beyond counter-dominant Eurocentric curriculum perspectives. In this second edition, which includes a new introduction, he provides a critical examination of the modern Eurocentric curriculum and introduces readers to new theoretically rich concepts of "curriculum momentism," "curriculum involution", and "curriculum Occidentosis", pushing the curriculum debate far beyond the classical Eurocentric matrix.

This book brings together voices and perspectives from across the world and draws in a new generation of curriculum scholars to provide fresh insight into the contemporary field. By opening up Curriculum Studies with contributions from twelve countries—including every continent—the book outlines and exemplifies the challenges and opportunities for transnational curriculum inquiry. While curriculum remains largely shaped and enabled nationally, global policy borrowing and scholarly exchange continue to influence local practice. Contributors explore major shared debates and future implications through four key sections: Decolonising the Curriculum; Knowledge Questions and Curriculum Dilemmas; Nation, History, Curriculum; and Curriculum Challenges for the Future.

Social Justice Design and Implementation in Library and Information Science presents a range of case studies that have successfully implemented social justice as a designed strategy to generate community-wide changes and social impact. Each chapter in the collection presents innovative practices that are strategized as intentional, deliberate, systematic, outcome-based, and impact-driven. They demonstrate effective examples of social justice design and implementation in LIS to generate meaningful outcomes across local, regional, national, and international settings. Including reflections on challenges and opportunities in academic, public, school, and special libraries, museums, archives, and other information-related settings, the contributions present forward-looking strategies that transcend historical and outdated notions of neutral stance and passive bystanders. Showcasing the intersections of LIS concepts and interdisciplinary theories with traditional and non-traditional methods of research and practice, the volume demonstrates how to further the social justice principles of fairness, justice, equity/equality, and empowerment of all people, including those on the margins of society. Social Justice Design and Implementation in Library and Information Science will be of great interest to LIS educators, scholars, students, information professionals, library practitioners, and all those interested in integrating social justice and inclusion advocacy into their information-related efforts to develop impact-driven, externally focused, and community-relevant outcomes.