Reconsidering Canadian Curriculum Studies

Comprised of chapters written by established Canadian curriculum scholars as well as junior scholars and graduate students, this collection of essays provoke readers to imagine the different ways in which educational researchers can engage the narrative inquiry within the broader field of curriculum studies.

Comprised of chapters written by established Canadian curriculum scholars as well as junior scholars and graduate students, this collection of essays provoke readers to imagine the different ways in which educational researchers can engage the narrative inquiry within the broader field of curriculum studies.

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 important collection addresses the current state of curriculum studies in Canada. It is divided into three parts, focusing respectively on social identities, cultural perspectives, and Indigenous and environmental perspectives. With contributors from universities across Canada, and with topics ranging from the incorporation of Indigenous knowledge to political freedom in the classroom, from sex education to the practice of close writing, Contemporary Studies in Canadian Curriculum is an invaluable exploration of the principles and practices of curriculum theory.

The largest specialization in faculties of education in Canada is curriculum studies. Curriculum Studies in Canada represents the present preoccupations of curriculum scholars in Canada. Set against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, contributors engage with significant themes, among them ongoing efforts at justice for Indigenous Peoples, the continuing arrival of immigrants and refugees, Canada’s complex relationship to the United States, and issues related to the climate crisis. Addressing such realities through the field of curriculum studies and the school curriculum is critical at this historical conjuncture given the complex and shifting intersections of local and global dynamics restricting education. To this end, contributing scholars serve as intellectual activists to address the critical need for understanding curriculum responsive to the vexed relations among schools, nation-building, social reconstruction, and identity development. Their activism yields more sophisticated understandings of what it means to be educated in Canada. Contributors trace the legacy of their work and reflect on their present scholarly preoccupations in light of their past endeavours. In doing so, Curriculum Studies in Canada offers an invitation to readers: to study, remember, dialogue, and navigate an uncertain world with them.