Curriculum Studies

Originally published in 1979 with a second edition in 1985. A basic text for students of education and teachers who are coming to terms for the first time with the nature of the curriculum. It introduces the reader to the professional field that is of concern to all engaged in the practical enterprise of education in a way which provides a ‘feel’ for the preoccupations of the area and a ‘sense’ of its complexities. With annotated further reading included, the book reflects developments in all the major areas in curriculum design and evaluation and in effecting curriculum change, plus research and theory.

A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2012! Critical Curriculum Studies offers a novel framework for thinking about how curriculum relates to students’ understanding of the world around them. Wayne Au brings together curriculum theory, critical educational studies, and feminist standpoint theory with practical examples of teaching for social justice to argue for a transformative curriculum that challenges existing inequity in social, educational, and economic relations. Making use of the work of important scholars such as Freire, Vygotsky, Hartsock, Harding, and others, Critical Curriculum Studies, argues that we must understand the relationship between the curriculum and the types of consciousness we carry out into the world.

This primer for teachers (prospective and practicing) asks readers to question the historical present and their relation to it, and in so doing, to construct their own understandings of what it means to teach, to study, to become "educated" in the present moment. Curriculum theory is the scholarly effort – inspired by theory in the humanities, arts and interpretive social sciences – to understand the curriculum, defined here as "complicated conversation." Rather than the formulation of objectives to be evaluated by (especially standardized) tests, curriculum is communication informed by academic knowledge, and it is characterized by educational experience. Pinar recasts school reform as school deform in which educational institutions devolve into cram schools preparing for standardized exams, and traces the history of this catastrophe starting in 1950s. Changes in the Second Edition: Introduces Pinar’s formulation of allegories-of-the-present — a concept in which subjectivity, history, and society become articulated through the teacher’s participation in the complicated conversation that is the curriculum; features a new chapter on Weimar Germany (as an allegory of the present); includes new chapters on the future, and on the promises and risks of technology.

This timely edited collection asks bold and urgent questions about the complexity, culture, and character of curriculum studies in Canada. Featuring 30 original chapters and 21 short invocations, this volume includes works by both established and new scholars, illustrating the wide range of cutting-edge writing in this area. Weaving together personal essays, poetry, life writing, and other arts-based inquiry modes, Canadian Curriculum Studies highlights the creative, performative, interactive, and imaginative nature of this field. The contributors were asked to provoke conceptions and understandings of curriculum studies by examining their convictions, commitments, and challenges with/in this discipline. By bringing together diverse indigenous and non-indigenous scholarship, the editors invoke the concept of métissage, which is finding a growing resonance both in Canada and abroad. Exploring the idea of curriculum studies as an interdisciplinary field across transnational contexts, this rich text is well-suited to senior undergraduate and graduate courses in curriculum studies and qualitative educational research.

This book reappraises the British and American experience in curriculum studies, the curious way in which it has been dominated by certain ideas and introduces the reader to alternative ways of perceiving, defining and approaching its problems. It provides a radical critique of the whole area, presenting both Marxist and phenomenological perspectives on the current dilemmas that teachers face. The book argues that in order to understand the problems teachers face in coping with the curriculum, we must look at the situation from the point of view of the individual rather than prescribing a norm for all teachers. The dynamic relationship between the individual and the collective and the teacher and the state is one of the fundamental issues in solving the present problems in curriculum studies. The book focuses on this central problem and suggests a variety of ways in which new solutions may be found.

What comes after the reconceptualization of curriculum studies? What is the contribution of the next wave of curriculum scholars? Comprehensive and on the cutting edge, this Handbook speaks to these questions and extends the conversation on present and future directions in curriculum studies through the work of twenty-four newer scholars who explore, each in their own unique ways, the present moment in curriculum studies. To contextualize the work of this up-and-coming generation, each chapter is paired with a shorter response by a well-known scholar in the field, provoking an intra-/inter-generational exchange that illuminates both historical trajectories and upcoming moments. From theorizing at the crossroads of feminist thought and post-colonialism to new perspectives that include critical race, currere, queer southern studies, Black feminist cultural analysis, post-structural policy studies, spiritual ecology, and East-West international philosophies, present and future directions in the U.S. American field are revealed.

Highlighting Rita L. Irwin’s significant work in the fields of curriculum studies and arts education, this collection honors her well-known contribution of a/r/tography to curriculum studies in the form of arts based educational research and, beyond this, her contributions towards understanding the inseparability of making, knowing, and being. Together the chapters document an important beginning, as well as an ongoing transitional time in which curriculum understood as aesthetic text is awakening to the ways in which art practices stimulate a social awareness at the level of other embodied practices. Organized in three themes, gathering, transforming, and becoming, this volume brings together a selection of Irwin’s single and co-authored essays to offer a variety of rich perspectives to scholars and students in the field of education who are interested in the ways in which arts-based research allows the possibilities of bringing together the artistic, pedagogical, and scholarly selves of an educator.

Offering an accessible entry into curriculum theory, this book defines and contextualizes key concepts for novice and experienced students. Leading scholars in curriculum studies provide short anchor texts that introduce, define, and situate contemporary curriculum theory constructs. Each anchor text is followed by two concise, creative keyword responses that demonstrate varied perspectives and connections, allowing readers to reflect on and engage with the personal relevance of these fundamental concepts. Useful to instructors and scholars alike, this book explains keyword writing as a teaching and learning strategy and invites readers to enter the complicated conversations of contemporary curriculum theory through their own creative, personal responses. Featuring wide-ranging, nuanced, and varied commentary on major relevant themes, as well as discussion questions for students, this book is an essential text for doctoral and masters-level courses in curriculum studies.