aare theory workshop 2012

(Post)ReconceptualistCurriculum Theorizing

Dr Robert J. ParkesBEd (Hons) Sydney, PhD Newcastle

Senior Lecturer in Curriculum StudiesThe University of Newcastle, Australia

Founding Member of HERMES Research Group

Historical Experience, Representation, Memory, and Education Studies

Email: [email protected]

What is curriculum?

All of the learning planned and directed by the school to attain its educational goals.1

Refers to the learning experience of students, as expressed or anticipated in goals and objectives, plans and designs, and their implementation.2

1. Tyler, R. W. (1949). Basic principles of curriculum and instruction. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Or see: Tyler, R. W. (2004). Basic principles of curriculum and instruction. In D. J. Flinders & S. J. Thornton (Eds.), The curriculum studies reader (pp. 51-60). New York: Routledge.

2. Skilbeck, M. (1984). School based curriculum development. London: Harper & Row Ltd.

The most common answer to this question:

The Syllabus as a set of educational prescriptions[ Usually a set of official Aims, Knowledge, Skills, & Values ]

So what is the curriculum?

the collection of all school subjects?

the Syllabus for a specific school subject or Key Learning Area?

a Scope and sequence that maps how the syllabus prescriptions will be met in an individual school?

a Unit of Work that outlines the teaching and learning strategies and goals for a specific set of syllabus topics?

Lesson Plans for individual lessons that work towards the achievement of unit goals?

The Explicit, Planned, or Official Curriculum

“Currere”the lived experience of

education?

What the teacher actually does to enact the lesson plan during a specific class or period?

What students actually experience in the classroom during a specific lesson . . . or even over the course of their entire schooling?

Pinar, W. F. (1975). Currere: Towards reconceptualization. In W. F. Pinar (Ed.), Curriculum theorizing: The reconceptualists. Berkeley, CA: McCutchan.

Image from Paramount Picture’s School of Rock

EtymologyCourse of the Circus Maximus Race Track, Running Race

Kleibard’s MetaphorsProduction, Growth, Travel

Tracking Meanings of Curriculum[Curriculum as ‘the course’]

Circus Maximus

Kliebard, H. M. (1975). Metaphorical roots of curriculum design. In W. Pinar (Ed.), Curriculum theorizing: The reconceptualists (pp. 84-85). Berkley, CA: McCutchan Publishing Corporation.

Piccadilly Circus

Does the end have to be known in advance? (Re-Tooling the Metaphor) Circus, Road Trip, Map, Rhizome, or Lines of Flight?

3-Ringed Circus

What is curriculum theory?

A field of study? Curriculum theory is a distinctive field of study, with a unique history, a complex present, an uncertain future. (Pinar, 2004, p. 2)

A method of scholarly inquiry?

A theory or theories?

Curriculum theorizing is not singular but . . . multiple, fractured and contested. (Wright, 2000)

Curriculum discourse should be marked by richness, diversity, discordant voices, fecundity, multiple rationalities, and theories, and should be touched by humanity and practicality in a hundred thousand contexts. (Morrison, 2004, p. 487)

Pinar, W. F. (2004). What is curriculum theory? Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

Wright, H. K. (2000). Nailing jell-o to the wall: Pinpointing aspects of state-of-the-art curriculum theorizing. Educational Researcher, 29(5), 4-13.

Morrison, K. R. B. (2004). The poverty of curriculum theory: A critique of Wraga and Hlebowitsh. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 36(4), 487-494.

1. Kemmis, S., & Fitzclarence, L. (1986). Curriculum theorizing: Beyond reproduction theory. Geelong, Victoria: Deakin University.

2. Green, B. (2010). Rethinking the representation problem in curriculum inquiry. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 42(4), 451-469.

What is the function of curriculum?

Lessons from the Deakin School

The double problem1 of the relationship between:

theory and practice [curriculum provides a set of representations of a ‘world outside’]

education and society [curriculum operates as a site of cultural reproduction]

Re-examing the work of Ulf Lundgren and the Deakin School, Green2 refers to this as the unresolved problem of representation and reproduction.

Gundem, B. B., & Hopmann, S. (Eds.). (2002). Didaktik and/or curriculum: An international dialogue. New York: Peter Lang.

The Key Curriculum Question/s

Anglo-American Curriculum Tradition: What knowledge is of most worth?* [What should be taught?]

European Bildung-Influenced Didaktik Tradition: What will the student become? [What should the student become?]

* Whose knowledge is being taught?

North America Curriculum Field

Historical Moment State of the Field

1918-1969Curriculum Development

The field’s inauguration and paradigmatic stabilization as ‘curriculum development’

1980-PresentThe Reconceptualization

The field’s reconceptualization from curriculum development to curriculum studies, and interdisciplinary academic field paradigmatically organized around ‘understanding curriculum’

1990-Present(Post)Reconceptualist Theory

• Queer Theory• Postcolonial

Theory• Postmodernis

m2000-PresentInternationalization

The field’s internationalization.

An Australian Story: Green, B. (2003). Curriculum inquiry in Australia: Toward a local genealogy of the curriculum field. In W. F. Pinar (Ed.), Handbook of international curriculum research (pp. 123-141). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Before The Reconceptualization:

The Tyler Rationale (1949)

What educational purposes should the school seek to attain?

How can learning experiences be selected which are likely to be useful in attaining these objectives?

How can learning experiences be organized for effective instruction?

How can the effectiveness of learning experiences be evaluated?

Ratio

nal

Inst

itutio

nal

Tech

nical

Effici

ent

Curriculum is all of the learning planned and directed by the school to attain its educational goals.

After The Reconceptualization:

Understanding Curriculum as Text

Cleo CherryholmesPeter Taubman

Jacques Daignault

Dwayne HuebnerPatrick Slattery

Michael AppleHenry Giroux Cameron

McCarthyWilliam F. Pinar

Elliot EisnerElizabeth Vallance

Bernadette BakerTom Popkewitz

Herbert KleibardIvor Goodson

Janet MillerMadeline R. GrumetWilliam F. Pinar

William A. ReidHerbert Kleibard

Madeline R. GrumetWilliam F. PinarIvor Goodson

The bible ofReconceptualist Curriculum

Theory

Pinar, W. F., Reynolds, W. M., Slattery, P., & Taubman, P. M. (1995). Understanding curriculum. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.

Example: The International Baccalaureate Curriculum Map

Curriculum as cartography?

Parkes Comment: The curriculum imagination is dominated by maps and visions. Here is an explicit map, but the curricularist is always offering a vision of the course, whether they diagram it or not.

Mapping the FieldWhere do your interests lie? Who do you

read?

DeMarrais and LeCompte (1995) have suggested that curriculum scholars are inevitably:

1. social transmissionists concerned with the efficacy of curriculum as ‘knowledge transfer’ from one generation to the next;

2. interpretativists concerned with ‘understanding’ curriculum, its generation, evolution, operation and effects; curriculum as “lived experience”;

3. social reconstructionists concerned to use curriculum as a vehicle of liberation and emancipation, societal transformation, individual empowerment, and/or cultural critique.

Critical Pedagogues

Giroux/McLaren

Curriculum Developers

Tyler/Bobbit/Tanner

The Reconceptualists

Pinar/Grumet/Miller

Finding Your Location in the Field

Where do we place Michael Apple?

Reconceptualist Curriculum

Theory

Critical Pedagogy

Sociology of

KnowledgeCritical

Reproductionists?Young/Bernstein/Bordieu

Critical & Feminist Pedagogues

Giroux/McLaren/Luke/Lather

The Reconceptualists

Pinar/Grumet/Miller

What Does Reconceptualist Theory

Look Like?

Historical Inquiry

Philosophical Inquiry

Literary Theory

Hermeneutics

Gough, N. (1998). Reflections and diffractions: Functions of fiction in curriculum inquiry. In W. F. Pinar (Ed.), Curriculum: Toward new identities (pp. 94-127). New York: Garland.

Slattery, P. (2002). Hermeneutics, subjectivity, and aesthetics: Internationalizing the interpretive process in curriculum research. In W. F. Pinar (Ed.), The handbook of international curriculum research. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

A Genealogy of Hermeneutics

Biblical

Exegesis

Schleiermach

er

1768-1834

Dilthey

1833-1911

Heidegger

1889-1976Gadamer

1900-2002

Nietzsche

1844-1900

Ricoeur

1913-2005

Derrida

1930-2004

Understand

any

passage of

text only in

context of

whole.

Understand any

text by placing it

in its historical

context.

We can never step

outside of our

tradition, which

provides the horizon of

our understanding

(prejudices). Thus self-

understanding is

critical.

There is no outside text.

Texts repeat other texts.

We cannot exhaust meaning.

Original meaning cannot be

recovered with any confidence.

Von Ranke

1795-1886

Droysen

1808-1884

Sources must

be verified.Understanding comes

through empathy.

Our morals have a

genealogy.

Lived

experien

ce can

be read

as a text.

0The Hermeneutic Circle

and the Fusion of Horizons

Reading the text in relation to its contextReading the part in relation to

the whole

Recognizing how this text is also part of our context and how our reading is shaped by our

own prejudices and biases

Currere and Curriculum as Autobiographical Text

The method of currere reconceptualized curriculum from course objectives to complicated conversation with oneself (as a 'private' intellectual), an ongoing project of self-understanding in which one becomes mobilized for engaged pedagogical action—as a private-and-public intellectual – with others in the social reconstruction of the public sphere. (Pinar, 2004)

Pinar, W. F. (2004). What is curriculum theory? Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

The Method of Currere

The Regressive Step involves returning to the past to remember particular educational or life experiences and they continue to cast their shadow or leave their traces on our attitudes and beliefs in the present (particularly how they shape our understanding of education, or learning, or teaching, etc.). Here we may connect our personal experiences into the larger socio-historical network of which they are a part.

The Progressive Step invites the researcher to think about where they are headed in the future; what they expect from the future; what they would like to see happen in the future; where things in their life seem to be heading.

The Analytic Step involves analyzing the here and now (independent of but recognising the influence of the past and future anticipations) and is designed to create a subjective space of freedom from the present. You may see the moment of right here and now as the historical moment in which we live.

The Synthetic Step is the final move which involves analyzing the present in light of the knowledge and understanding gained from steps 1, 2, and 3. Many educators may use the first three steps to visualize and analyze their journey of becoming an educator or researcher, and the method is designed to reduce the role distance one has between themselves as teacher, learner or researcher, and what they are teaching, learning, or researching.

Pinar, W. (1994). The method of currere. In W. Pinar (Ed.), Autobiography, Politics and Sexuality: Essays in Curriculum Theory 1972-1992 (pp. 19-27). New York: Peter Lang.

‘Critical Moments’Writing a Curriculum History

Emergence – What were the Conditions of Possibility? Context? and Conditions?

Representation – What is Said? Unsaid? and Unsayable?

Reception – How has this discourse been: Received? Embraced? Resisted? Appropriated? Transformed?

Reconceptualisation – How could things be otherwise?

This is my own contribution to understanding how a curriculum history – that is, tracking the emergence, meaning and reception of an educational idea or a particular curriculum vision – might be written up. It represents the order of chapters, not the order of the process, necessarily! If you want to cite, then cite as: Parkes, R. J. (2012). (Post)Reconceptualist Curriculum Theorizing. A workshop presented at the AARE Utility of Theories Workshop, University of Queensland, St Lucia, 18-20 May.

Appropriating Philosophical Methods for Curriculum

InquiryAnalysing a term or concept, showing its multiple uses and meanings, for the primary purpose of clarification.

Critiquing a term or concept, identifying internal contradictions or ambiguities in uses of the term.

Exposing the hidden assumptions underlying a particular view or broader school of thought.

Reviewing a specific argument offered elsewhere.

Questioning a particular educational practice or policy.

Proposing the ends or purposes education should achieve, either in terms of benefits to the person, to the society, or both.

Speculating about alternative systems or practices of education, whether utopian or programmatic, that contrast with and challenge conventional understandings and practices.

Imagining through a thought experiment a situation, to determine which features are relevant to changing its pertinent character.

Interpreting trough a close reading of a philosophical or literary text with an eye more towards explication and understanding of its complex meanings than analysis or critique.

Synthesising disparate research from philosophy itself or other fields (ie. politics, psychology, sociology, etc.) to find meanings and implications for educational theory and practice.

Green, J. L., Camilli, G., & Elmore, P. B. (Eds.). (2006). Handbook of complementary methods in education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. – See Nicholas Burbules chapter on Philosophical Inquiry.

Deconstruction as Method?

Duality search Explore binaries and bipolar terms used in a text. Mention of one term (smart) implies its opposite (dumb).

Reinterpret the hierarchy. Reverse any logical hierarchy constructed by the text.

Rebel voices What voices are not being given expression? Which voices are given central importance and which are marginalised?

Other side of the story Reverse the story so that the other side is told.

Deny the plot Change the mode of emplotment (tragic to romantic, comedic to ironic, etc.)

Find the exception Break the text’s self-imposed rules, making them seem absurd.

Trace what is between the lines

Articulate what is implied or not said.

Resituate Re-author the text. Reveal how our ways of reading are conditioned.

Deconstruction is not a method, as such, but a way of challenging received ways of interpreting texts (from Derrida)

Boje, D. M. (2001). Narrative methods for organizational and communication research. London: SAGE Publications.

The Critique ofReconceptualist Theory

Pragmatic Critique of Reconceptualist Theory

Wraga, W. G., & Hlebowitsh, P. S. (2003). Towards a renaissance in curriculum theory and development in the USA. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 35(4), 425-437.

Hlebowitsh, P. S. (1999). The burdens of the new curricularist. Curriculum Inquiry, 29(3), 343-354.

Wraga, W. G. (1999). "Extracting sun-beams out of cucumbers": The retreat from practice in reconceptualized curriculum studies. Educational Researcher, 28(1), 4-13.

Reconceptualist Defense

Morrison, K. R. B. (2004). The poverty of curriculum theory: A critique of Wraga and Hlebowitsh. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 36(4), 487-494.

Westbury, I. (2005). Reconsidering Schwab's "Practicals": A Response to Peter Hlebowitsh's "Generational Ideas in Curriculum: A Historical Triangulation". Curriculum Inquiry, 35(1), 89-101.

Wright, H. K. (2005). Does Hlebowitsh Improve on Curriculum History? Reading a Rereading for Its Political Purpose and Implications. Curriculum Inquiry, 35(1), 103-117.

Sociology of Knowledge Structuralist Curriculum Theorizing

The Two Main Concerns in this type of Curriculum Work:

Powerful Knowledge vs Knowledge of the PowerfulVertical vs Horizontal Knowledge Structures (Framing and Translating

across Contexts)

Vertical and HorizontalKnowledge Structures

Horizontal Knowledge Structures

Everyday “common-sense” knowledge, that is typically oral, local, context dependent and specific, tacit, multi-layered, and contradictory across but not within contexts.

Culturally specified knowledges and practices.

Bernstein, B. (1999). Vertical and horizontal discourse: An essay. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 20(2), 157-173. Note, that Vygotsky made a very similar distinction in the 1930s, when he referred to “everyday” and “scientific” knowledge, and based a good deal of his psychology on the pedagogical implications of such a distinction. See: Vygotsky, L. S. (1934/1997). Thinking and speech (N. Minick, Trans.). In R. W. Rieber & A. S. Carton (Eds.), The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky (Vol. 1: Problems of general psychology, pp. 39-288). New York: Plenum Press.

Vertical Knowledge Structures

Either coherent, explicit, and systematically principled structure, hierarchically organised, as in the sciences.

Or a series of specialised languages with specialised modes of interrogation and specialised criteria for the production and circulation of texts, as in the social sciences and humanities.

Curriculum as Induction into Powerful Knowledge

Young (2007) argues that the curriculum’s job is to induct students into “powerful knowledge”16 (not just “knowledge of the powerful”). Key features of “powerful knowledge”:

it provides reliable and in a broad sense provides ‘testable’ explanations or ways of thinking;

it is the basis for suggesting realistic alternatives;

it enables those who acquire it to see beyond their everyday experience;

it is conceptual as well as based on evidence and experience;

it is always open to challenge;

it is acquired in specialist educational institutions, staffed by specialists;

it is organised into domains with boundaries that are not arbitrary and these domains are associated with specialist communities such as subject and professional associations, and in that way is typically discipline-based.

Young, M. (2007). Bringing knowledge back in: From social constructivism to social realism in the sociology of education. London: Routledge.

Poststructural Curriculum Theorizing

Curriculum Discourse Analysisor

Curriculum Inquiry as a History of Pedagogic Ideas

Pacheco, J. A. (2012). Curriculum studies: What is the field today? Journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies, 8(1). Page numbers not provided by the online journal for some reason!

(Post)ReconceptualistCurriculum Theory?

Morris, M. (2005). Back up group: Here comes the (post)reconceptualization. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 21(4).

(Post)ReconceptualistCurriculum Theory?

What is the object of (post)reconceptualist curriculum inquiry?

Curriculum text [ The archive ]

Curriculum as text [ Lived experience read as text ]

Curriculum as discourse [ Systems of rationality ]

Curriculum discourse [ ‘Messages’ that are circulated ]

This is my own contribution to understanding how curriculum can be read as text and discourse. If you want to cite, then cite as: Parkes, R. J. (2012). (Post)Reconceptualist Curriculum Theorizing. A workshop presented at the AARE Utility of Theory(ies), University of Queensland, St Lucia, 18-20 May.

What is poststructuralism?

A school of thought?

A diverse array of philosophers informing poststructuralist research (Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Barthes, Butler, and others)

Key names amongst poststructuralist scholars who have addressed curriculum or pedagogic concerns (Lather, Cherryholmes, Davies, McWilliam, Lee, Green, Peters, Gough, Taubman, among many others)

Has been developing and mutating internationally for the last 25 years

Petersen, E. B. (2011). Poststructural theory for empirical research. A workshop presented at the AARE Utility of Theory(ies) Workshop, The University of Newcastle, 13-15 May.

Can Poststructuralism be defined?

Post-Foundationalism – a rejection that there is any absolute foundation or metaphysical platform outside of history or discourse from which to cast authoritative statements.

Post-Universalism - a distrust of ‘totalizing discourses’ that cocoon diverse phenomena inside an all-encompassing grand explanatory narrative; and/or that present themselves as a singular truth ignoring their own historicity.

Post-Realism – a rejection of representations that claim to unproblematically mirror a real world outside of the systems of representation we use to understand it.

Post-Essentialism – a rejection of the idea that there is, or can ever be, a universal human subject that is divorced from history, culture and society.

Post-Relativism - a rejection of the idea that respect for difference and diversity means that all viewpoints are equally valid. The arbiter and the object of their gaze are always situated.

Parkes, R. J., Gore, J. M., & Elsworth, W. A. (2010). After poststructuralism: Rethinking the discourse of social justice pedagogy. In T. Chapman & N. Hobbel (Eds.), Social justice pedagogy across the curriculum: The Practice of freedom (pp. 164-183). New York: Routledge.

What is a discourse?

Statements with constitutive effects.

Statements that constitute, construct, incite, and induce, rather than simply document and describe, reality.

Discourse constitutes the object of which it speaks. (Foucault, 1972)

Foucault (1969/1972) used to discourse to mean: the general domain of all statements an individualizable group of statements a regulated practice that accounts for a number of statements. (p. 80)

Discourse is more than language: Bodies of knowledge, practices of meaning-making, actions, feelings, which produce ‘regimes of truth’.

Authoritative statements . . . what experts say when they are speaking as experts. (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1982)

Dreyfus, H. L., & Rabinow, P. (1982). Michel Foucault: Beyond structuralism and hermeneutics. Brighton, Sussex: The Harvester Press.

Foucault, M. (1969/1972). The archaeology of knowledge. London: Routledge.

Curriculum as an archive of statements and practices that are historically located within systems of ideas that inscribe particular forms of rationality. (Parkes, 2011)

According to Popkewitz (2001), “Curricula are historically formed within systems of ideas that inscribe styles of reasoning, standards, and conceptual distinctions in school practices and its subjects” (p. 151).

Curriculum must therefore be understood as “a practice of governing and an effect of power” (p. 151), that is implicated in the constitution of particular kinds of rationalities and subjectivities by what it includes and neglects.

Curriculum as Discourse

Parkes, R. J. (2011). Interrupting history: Rethinking history curriculum after 'the end of history'. New York: Peter Lang.

Popkewitz, T. S. (1997). The production of reason and power: curriculum history and intellectual traditions. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 29(2), 131-164.

Curriculum Discourses

Statements about: forms of knowledge and ways of knowing – the

‘nature’ of what is to be taught and how it is learnt (epistemology);

pedagogical decision-making processes and educational realities – what can be taught and learnt within the limits of the educational situation (ontology); and

valued skills, concepts, and experiences – what is currently being, or should be taught (axiology).

Parkes, R. J. (2011). Interrupting history: Rethinking history curriculum after 'the end of history'. New York: Peter Lang. (This is Macdonald with a Parkes poststructuralist spin. Ie. Recasting the above commitments as discourses).

Macdonald, J. B. (1975). Curriculum theory. In W. Pinar (Ed.), Curriculum theorizing: The reconceptualists (pp. 5-13). Berkley, CA: McCutchan Publishing Corporation.

The Three Curricula thatall Schools Teach

To understand curriculum we must explore“what is valued and given priority and what is devalued and excluded” (p. 297).1

Explicit Implicit / Hidden NullThe official written syllabi, programmes, lesson plans, and policies.

The learning of attitudes, norms, beliefs, values and assumptions often expressed as/by rules, rituals and regulations… common-sense knowledge… rarely questioned or articulated.2

What is not included in the curriculum and consequently those ideas and skills that are withheld from students that they might otherwise have used.3

Whose interests are being served by the explicit, implicit, and null curriculum?1. Cherryholmes, C. H. (1987). A social project for curriculum: Post-structural perspectives. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 19(4), 295-316.2. Seddon, T. (1983). The hidden curriculum: An overview. Curriculum Perspectives, 3(1), 1-6. 3. Eisner, E. W. (1979). The educational imagination: on the design and evaluation of school programs. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co. Inc.

Constructions of Curriculum[or Different answers to the double problem of curriculum]

1. Eisner, E. W., & Vallance, E. (Eds.). (1974). Conflicting conceptions of curriculum. Berkley, CA: McCutchan Publishing Corporation.2. Schiro, M. S. (2008). Curriculum theory: Conflicting visions and enduring concerns. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications.

Eisner’s Model1 Schiro’s Model2

academic rationalism concerned with “enabling the young to acquire the tools to participate in the Western cultural tradition.” (p. 12)

Academic Idealist Curriculum

the development of cognitive processes concerned with “the refinement of intellectual operations.” (p. 5)

Techno-Rationalist Curriculum

technology concerned with “finding efficient means to a set of predefined, unproblematic ends.” (p. 7)

self-actualization concerned with education “as an enabling process.” (p. 9)

Learner-Centred Curriculum

social reconstruction concerned with “social reform and responsibility to the future of society.” (p. 10)

Social Reconstructionist Curriculum

A Study of Curriculum Discourse

How do teachers respond to and negotiate these multiple and conflicting curriculum ideologies?

Schiro (2008)

Dualistic

Hierarchical

Relativistic

Contextual

Social Reconstructionist

Academic Idealist

Learner Centred

Techno-Rational

Conflicting Curriculum Discourses

Social ReconstructionistTransformation Focused

Academic IdealistSubject or Discipline Focused

Learner CentredStudent focused

Techno-RationalEffective Reproduction

Focused

Sitting With Discursive Tensions?(Parkes’ spin on Schiro’s schema)

Dualistic – Mine is right and yours is wrong

Hierarchical – Mine is better than yours

Relativistic – They’re all good

Contextual – Each one is good for a different situation

Genealogical Curriculum Inquiry

Contemporary problem (or problematisation of taken for granted)

Identifying contemporary discourses and their variety of interpretations (systematic hermeneutic analysis)

Tracking the emergence and reception of curriculum discourses (historicisation)

Exploring how things might have been otherwise (philosophising)

Proposing alternatives (theorizing)This is my own contribution to understanding how a genealogical curriculum inquiry project might be carried out or written up. If you want to cite, then cite as: Parkes, R. J. (2012). (Post)Reconceptualist Curriculum Theorizing. A workshop presented at the AARE Utility of Theory(ies), University of Queensland, St Lucia, 18-20 May.

And that there is the possibility of

thinking differently now!

Reveals that we have thought differently at

different times

The Process of Curriculum Inquiry

Historicization & PhilosophizingProjects

Critical ReconstructionProjects

DenaturalizationProjects

A history of curriculum &

pedagogic ideas

My version of: Baker, B., & Heyning, K. E. (2004). Introduction: Dangerous coagulations? Research, education, and a traveling Foucault. In B. Baker & K. E. Heyning (Eds.), Dangerous coagulations? The uses of Foucault in the study of education (pp. 1-79). New York: Peter Lang.

Curriculum Discourse in the Contemporary University

What is the effect of the presence of both academic rationalist and student-centred curriculum discourses in contemporary higher education?

Academic Developmental View

Student Consumer ViewTeaching as a service

No Pre-Requisites

Parkes, R. J., & Petersen, E. B. (2010). The collision of vertical and horizontal curriculum discourses in contemporary higher education. Paper presented at the ‘Making a difference: Celebrating 40 years of educational research’ the annual conference of the Australian Association for Research in Education, 28 November - 2 December.

What does ‘good’ curriculum theory look

like? Methodological and Epistemological fidelity?

Argumentative alignment (realism and structuralism often sneaks in)?

Is it interesting? Does it ‘disrupt the taken for granted’, does it enable ‘lines of flight’

Petersen, E. B. (2011). Poststructural theory for empirical research. A workshop presented at the AARE Utility of Theory(ies) Workshop, The University of Newcastle, 13-15 May.

Recent Curriculum Reforms through the Lens of Curriculum

Theory

What type of curriculum discourse underpins Queensland’s New Basics and Rich Tasks?

What type of curriculum discourse underpins the structures of the new Australian Curriculum?

What type of curriculum discourse underpins NAPLAN and other forms of national testing?

What type of curriculum discourse underpins the NSW Quality Teaching model?

What type of curriculum discourse underpins the Early Years Learning Framework?

What are the dominant curriculum discourses circulating in contemporary Australia?

Whose interests do these discourses serve?

If other discourses were dominant, what might the construction of contemporary curriculum look like?

Reading Curriculum as Postcolonial Text

(Post)Reconceptualist Curriculum Theorizing III

Schwab’sCommonplaces

Subject Matter – Consideration of the scholarly materials and the discipline from which they come

Learners – Consideration of the capacities and experience of the students, particularly what is likely to come easy to them and what will be difficult.

Teachers – Consideration of teacher dispositions and ways of teaching.

The Milieu – Consideration of the family, community, culture, and nation in which the learning will take place.

Curriculum Specialist – Who has the task of considering and ensuring balance between the various commonplaces.

Schwab, J. (1969). The practical: A language for curriculum. School Review, 78(1), 1-23.

Schwab, J. (1973). The practical 3: Translation into curriculum. The School Review, 81(4), 501-522.

Key Postcolonial Concepts

Authenticity

Diaspora

Desire

Ambivalence

Hybridity

Orientalism

Interpellation

Whiteness

Decolonization

Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G., & Tiffin, H. (2000). Post-colonial studies (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.

A Heuristic? Four Phases ofPostcolonial Resistance

Interpellation

Rejection

Interjection

Interpolation

Ashcroft, B. (2001). Post-Colonial transformation. London: Routledge.

Ashcroft’s concept applied as a heuristic in a curriculum inquiry project: Parkes, R. J. (2007). Reading History curriculum as postcolonial text: Towards a curricular response to the history wars in Australia and beyond. Curriculum Inquiry, 37(4), 383-400.

Interrupting History: A Critical-Reconceptualisation of History Curriculum after ‘the End of History’

Systematic Analysis: Extracts all the uses of the relevant term from the corpus (including Hermeneutic analysis).

Deconstruction: Bringing the divergent perspectives into dialogue with each other (a form of radical hermeneutics).

Historical Inquiry: Case study of an attempt to implement selected principles.

Curriculum Reconceptualisation: Using poststructural theory to rethink the problem.See: Parkes, R. J. (2011). Interrupting history: Rethinking history curriculum after 'the end of history'. New York: Peter Lang.

Southern Theory

General theory – “theorising that tries to formulate a broad vision of the social, and offer concepts that apply beyond a particular society, place or time” (p28).

Tends to be produced in the metropole, hence he labels it “northern theory”.

Connell’s (2007) challenge to social theorists: “doing theory in a globally inclusive way” (p 48).

Connell, R. (2007). Southern theory: The global dynamics of knowledge in social science. Crows Nest, NSW: Allyn & Unwin.

Is Reconceptualist Theory Northern or Metropolitan by virtue of its locale?

Connell critiques general theory on the basis that it ignores time, is “date-free” and “continuous”.

Texts of general theory include exotic items from the non-metropolitan world, but they do not introduce ideas from the periphery (p. 64).

Grand erasure of the south.


Can we have Southern Reconceptualist Curriculum Theory?

Or how a simple grammatical trick can make a significant difference!

If “The Reconceptualisation” of curriculum theory (Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery and Taubman, 2004), occurred in a specific time and place in the United States of America (1970-1979), can we really have Southern Reconceptualist Theory?

Pinar, W. F., Reynolds, W. M., Slattery, P., & Taubman, P. M. (1995). Understanding curriculum. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.

Parkes, R. J. (2008). The postcolonial as a (new) commonplace of Australian curriculum inquiry? Paper presented at the Paper presented at the annual conference of the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE), Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, 30 November - 4 December.

Southern ReconceptualistCurriculum Theory?

Intellectuals in the periphery cannot universalise a locally generated perspective because its specificity is immediately obvious (Connell, 2007, p44).

The first question that gets asked is ‘how far is this relevant to other situations?’ (Connell, 2007, p44).


Knowing one’s placein the curriculum field

We experience being “disciplined” through the peer review process. To publish A* articles we must inevitably write in a way that is intelligible to scholars from the metropole. . . And we must participate in “northern” debates in order to register in the international field. (Where the “international” audience is North American and British… not Fijian or Bhutanese… the majority of Education journals are published out of USA and UK).

Chakrabarty (1997) has asserted the impossibility of writing a ‘history’ of India.

The particular predicament of all settler colony writers is that they work in a language that appears to be authentically their own, and yet is not quite. . . (Kroestch, 1974).

Is it possible to write Australian curriculum theory? And Australian Reconceptualist curriculum theory in particular?


Curriculum Inquiry as aHermeneutic Endeavour

We inevitability read and write from somewhere.

To get beyond Manichaeism (or north-south, centre-periphery, high-low binaries) we have to know our place in the field… and the place of those we read.

Knowing one’s place is about much more than knowing one’s theoretical location as some naval gazing exercise. Only when you know the conditions of possibility for a discourse do you read from a position that can seriously critique it (since knowing the conditions of its production furnishes you with an imminent frame of reference – rather than an absolute one – from which truth claims can be tested).

Knowing your own position, and the methodology of the author, situates both reader and text historically (and geographically), and therefore renders provisional any claims to truth.
