CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION 87001-11386
THEORY AND RESEARCH IN CURRICULUM
Thursdays, 4:30-7, 102 White Hall
Professor Henderson
404 White Hall, 330-672-0631, jhenders@kent.edu
Course Overview
This course is designed to introduce you to the discipline of curriculum studies. This
introduction is organized around a historical and thematic analysis. The historical analysis,
which serves as a backdrop for the thematic analysis, is a recent memoir of American
curriculum studies. The thematic analysis highlights four key curriculum discourses:
practical reasoning, postmodernity, critical theory, and mythopoetics. It is a scaffold for a
certain breadth of curriculum knowing.
Once you complete this introduction to the discipline of curriculum studies, you will
critically and/or creatively apply what you have learned to your own curriculum research
interests. In general, you will think about how the breadth of curriculum understanding you
have acquired informs problem definitions and research methodologies in education. More
specifically, you will use the thematic analysis to critically analyze a dissertation project or
other research activity and/or to conceptualize an educational problem and a way to
research this problem.
The course is organized around the following sequence of topics:
 Historical analysis of curriculum studies: Turning points in the American
community. Personal anecdotes and handouts: Influential curriculum study
projects.
 Thematic analysis of curriculum studies: practical reasoning, postmodern
complexity, critical theory and mythopoetics.
 Applying this thematic analysis to the “study” of the “problem” of democratic
curriculum wisdom.
 A further exploration of the four themes.
 Applying the thematic analysis to “research” on a selected educational “problem.”
Required Course Reading
Doll, M. A. (2000). Like letters in running water: A mythopoetics of curriculum. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates. (D)
Fleener, M. J. (2002). Curriculum dynamics: Recreating heart. New York: Peter Lang. (F)
Henderson, J. G., & Kesson, K. R. (Eds.). (1999). Understanding democratic curriculum
leadership. New York: Teachers College Press. (HKa)
Henderson, J. G., & Kesson, K. R. (In press). Curriculum wisdom: Educational decisions in
democratic societies. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill/Prentice Hall. (HKb)
Marshall, J. D., Sears, J. T., & Schubert, W. H. (2000). Turning points in curriculum: A
contemporary American memoir. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill/Prentice Hall. (MSS)
Martusewicz, R. A., & Reynolds, W. M. (1994). Inside/Out: Contemporary critical perspectives in
education. New York: St. Martin’s Press. (MR)
Reid, W. A. (1999). Curriculum as institution and practice: Essays in the deliberative tradition. Mahwah,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. (R)
Course Evaluation
First paper: Describe and critically analyze a selected theme as discussed in the required
text; describe and critically assess the application of that theme in one or more
selected fields of study. First paper is due October 31st and counts as 45% of your
grade.
Second paper: Working with all four themes, critically analyze a dissertation project or other
research activity and/or conceptualize an educational problem and a way to research
this problem. Second paper is due December 12th and counts as 45% of your grade.
Course Schedule
Date
Topics
Background Reading
8/29
Course overview. Introducing the two papers.
9/5
Historical analysis: Turning points.
MSS, Foreword-III
9/12
Historical analysis: Turning points.
MSS, IV-V
9/19
A thematic analysis of curriculum studies.
HKa, 3-6
9/26
An application of this thematic analysis.
HKb, 1 & 3
10/3
Team collaborations.
10/10
Practical reasoning and its applications.
R, selected chapters
10/17
Critical theory and its applications.
MR, selected chapters
10/24
Postmodern complexity and its applications.
F, selected chapters
10/31
Mythopoetics and its applications.
11/7
Critical/creative analysis.
11/14
Critical/creative analysis.
11/21
Critical/creative analysis.
12/5
Critical/creative analysis.
12/12
Critical/creative analysis.
D, selected chapters
First paper due
Second paper due
AN IDEOLOGICAL CONTINUUM SUPERIMPOSED ON CURRICULUM STUDIES
1. The continuum and "curriculum studies" socialization:
Left_______________________Center______________________Right
*On the Right: Socialization (conscious? unconscious? or?) into a technical, or "Tyler Rationale,"
understanding of curriculum--learning to turn administrative policy into the "institutionally
correct" objectives, content, organization, and evaluation; and/or socialization into a traditional
(“true”) Christian perspective; and/or socialization into Euro-centric “academic rationalism.”
*In the Center: Socialization into a “constructivist” understanding of curriculum--practicing
collegial dialogue over questions of purpose, content, organization, and evaluation. Social
structural inquiry de-emphasized.
*On the Left: Socialization into an understanding of curriculum as a rigorous cultural
study/critique of the sources of disempowerment, which would result in the practice of liberatory
(personal, social, transpersonal) pedagogy.
2. Reconceptualists are curriculum studies people who question "rightist" (esp. Tyler Rationale)
curriculum socialization; they don't think curriculum work should be subservient to educational
administration. They believe that “curriculum leadership” is not owned by any one group of
people.
3. A specific "reconceptualist" definition of curriculum studies:
"Thus, to think about curriculum we must think about culture. To think about
curriculum in complex cultures like our own we must also think about politics. Finally,
to think about politics in complex societies, we must draw upon different intellectual
"cultures" that conceptualize politics in fundamentally different ways" (Donmoyer,
1990, p. 160). (R. Donmoyer, "Curriculum, Community, & Culture" in J.T. Sears &
J.D. Marshall (Eds.), Teaching and Thinking about Curriculum: Critical Inquiries
(pp.154-171). New York: Teachers College Press, 1990.)
3. Illiberal vs. liberal "curriculum studies" background and positioning.
Left_____________________Center_____________________Right
Cherry- Sears &
Schwab; Tyler; Technocracy;
holmes; Marshall; Zumwalt; Walker & Tyler RaPinar;
Henderson & Connelly & Soltis; tionale;
Lather
Hawthorne; Clandinin Hlebowitsh Christian
Schubert
Right
Continuum Overview: Chambers, Kliebard, Pinar & Reynolds, Schubert et al., and Short.
Chambers, J. H. (1990). The Many Different Types of Theory Which Underpin The Study of
Education. Educational Foundations, 4(4).
Cherryholmes, C. (1988). Poststructural Investigations in Education. New York: Teachers College
Press.
Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (1988). Teachers as Curriculum Planners: Narratives of
Experience. New York: Teachers College Press.
Fischer, F. (1990). Technocracy and the Politics of Expertise. Newbury, CA: Sage. (Chapter 1:
"Technocracy and Expertise: The Basic Political Questions;" Chapter 2: "The Neglect of
Normative Reason: Technical Rationality and the Politics of Methodology.")
Henderson, J. G., & Hawthorne, R. D. (in press). Transformative Curriculum Leadership. New York:
Macmillan.
Hlebowitsh, P. S. (1993). Radical Curriculum Theory Reconsidered: A Historical Approach. New
York: Teachers College Press.
Kliebard, H. (1986). The Struggle for the American Curriculum: 1893-1958. New York: Routledge.
Lather, P. (1991). Getting Smart: Feminist Research and Pedagogy With/In the Postmodern. New
York: Routledge.
Pinar, W. (Ed.) (1988). Contemporary Curriculum Discourses. Scottsdale, AZ: Gorsuch Scarisbrick.
Pinar, W. F., & Reynolds, W. M. (1992). Genealogical Notes: The History of Phenomenology and
Post-Structuralism in Curriculum studies. In W. F. Pinar & W. M. Reynolds (Eds.),
Understanding Curriculum as Phenomenological and Deconstructed Text (pp.237-259). New
York: Teachers College Press.
Schubert, W. (1986). Curriculum: Perspective, Paradigm, and Possibility. New York: Macmillan.
Schubert, W., Lopez Schubert, A., Herzod, L., Posner, G., & Kridel, C. (1988). A Genealogy of
Curriculum Researchers. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 8(1).
Schwab, J. J. (1978). The Practical: A Language for Curriculum. In I. Westbury & N.J. Wilkof, (Eds.)
Science, Curriculum, and Liberal Education: Selected Essays. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Sears, J., & Marshall, D. (Eds.). (1990). Teaching and Thinking About Curriculum: Critical Inquiries.
New York: Teachers College Press.
Short, E. (Ed.). (1991). Forms of Curriculum Inquiry. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Tyler, R. W. (1949). Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Walker, D., & Soltis, J. (1986). Curriculum and aims. New York: Teachers College Press.
Zumwalt, K. (1989). Beginning Professional Teachers: The Need for a Curricular Vision of
Teaching. In M.C. Reynolds, (Ed.) Knowledge Base for the Beginning Teacher (pp.173-184).
Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Review of the Reconceptualist Position
1. Organic view of nature. Nature is viewed as an interdependent, holistic, dynamic, ecological
unit. Human beings are integrally embedded in nature. They are not mere outside observers.
2. Individuals as creators of knowledge and culture. Individual human beings are not simply
viewed as receivers of knowledge through the educative process or of culture via socialization....
Rather, human beings interact with their environment, derive knowledge from it, and use that
knowledge to contribute to the cultural milieu.
3. Experiential base of method. Method is a means of inquiry, of finding ways of coming to know
oneself as organically embedded in culture and history and needing to rely more on experience.
4. Preconscious experience. Dominant educational and curricular literatures focus on behavior
and consciousness, and mostly the former. ...[This focus] does not address the preconscious to any
sizeable degree. The preconscious may pertain to Freudian and post-Freudian notions of
subconscious and unconscious factors in personality or to more social and biological dimensions in
Jung's collective unconscious, that is, archetypes derived from historical and mythological
dimensions of the human psyche. It may also pertain to the array of contemporary literature on
body-mind interaction or to spiritual dimensions of the individual and social self.
5. New sources of literature for curriculum. Literature of existentialism, phenomenology, radical
psychoanalysis, critical theory, and to some degree Eastern thought are studied by those in the
paradigm that deals with emancipatory theorizing.
6. Liberty and higher levels of consciousness. Liberty or emancipation is not merely a label
associated with political rhetoric. Rather, it is viewed as a central dimension of the growing person.
...Maxine Greene speaks of "wide awakeness," of seeing through multiple perspectives, of being
more "perspectival," of learning to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar.
7. Means and ends that include diversity and pluralism. As Dewey argued on numerous
occasions, means and ends are not opposite poles; neither are they equivalent to cause and effect.
They are an integral part of the same process.
8. Political and social reconceptualization. Personal and public growth is assumed to be
impossible or least greatly impeded if social and economic conditions so thoroughly constrain the
individual that he or she is unable to move toward higher levels of consciousness. ...The point is that
the likelihood of attaining wideawakeness, of having a chance to become emancipated through
higher levels of consciousness, is today contingent upon socioeconomic class. If the vast majority
of persons is to engage in emancipatory pedagogy, it must be liberated from constraints that
perpetuate forces of oppression. This calls for a paradigm of critical praxis, which requires political
and social reconceptualization and reconstruction.
9. New language forms. The language that one uses has great influence on both communication
and on the way in which one views the world. ...The dominant curriculum language (that of the
theoretic, conceptual empiricist, or social behaviorist) reveals a world of persons as potential
products who are forged on the assembly lines of schools and are judged by methods of quality
control that utilize technical, quantitative jargon.
This synopsis is taken directly from Schubert, W. H. (1986). Curriculum: Perspective, Paradigm, and
Possibility. New York: Macmillan, pp. 178-180.
Schubert's synopsis is adapted from Klohr, P. (1980). The Curriculum Field--Gritty and Ragged?
Curriculum Perspectives, 1(1), 1-7.
Dominant Referents for the "What" and "How" of Curriculum Deliberation: Tyler's Four Curricular
Considerations
(Adapted from Schubert, 1986)
1. Purpose
a. Orientations: global, behavioral objectives, evolving (Deweyan ends-in-view), expressive
outcomes.
b. Criteria for selecting purposes: disciplines of knowledge, personal growth, socialization,
achievement, social change, procedural/administrative concerns (representation, clarity,
defensibility, consistency, feasibility, state mandates).
2. Content or learning experiences
a. Orientations: content as subject matter, content as learning activities, content as learning
experiences.
b. Criteria for selecting content: "great" ideas/structure of the disciplines, learner interest,
societal needs, utility, publisher decision, political pressure, democratic action.
3. Organization
a. Criteria for determining scope: separate subjects, broad field integrations, projects, core,
individual integrations.
b. Criteria for determining sequence: textual organization, teacher preference, structure of
disciplines, learner interest, learning hierarchies, developmental appropriateness.
c. Types of learning environments: self-contained classroom, departmentalization, non-graded,
open-space, cooperative learning, community-based, alternative schooling, non-school
education.
d. Instructional considerations
(1). Teaching: science or art?
(2). Models of teaching: information processing, social interaction, personal, behavioral
(Joyce & Weil).
(3). Arrangements: large group, small group, individualization, team teaching.
4. Evaluation
a. Orientations: goal-based, goal-free, naturalistic (qualitative), educational connoisseurship
and criticism, teacher-as-researcher (action research), theorizing, and responsive.
b. Criteria for judgment: use of quantitative or qualitative methods, short-term, long-term,
student focus, program focus, societal focus, accountability, decision and action.
Discussion Concepts Keyed to Lather, 1991
Critical inquiry: Its purpose is to demystify racism, classism, and sexism. (p.3) It involves the use of
critical reasoning skills, which are contrasted with instrumental reasoning skills (the driving
force of modernism). Critical inquiry is practiced by learning and engaging in a particular
critical discipline--such as what she is developing. (p.3)
De-centering: Developing a multi-centered identity in which you actively explore the plurality of
meaning. (If you are homophobic, you wear a dress for a week. If you are rascist, you
become black for a week. In other words, walk a mile in your ideological enememy's shoes.)
From a de-centered perspective, social discourse like "blacks," "women," and "gays" are
heuristic and not ontological (essentialistic) terms. (pp.120-121) A de-centered subject
doesn't believe in any human essences. Human agency for him/her is grounded in
ideological pluralism.
Deconstruction: Identify the binaries, disrupt the good-bad logic of these binaries, create in its place
a more sophisticated both/and discursive playfulness. (p.13)
Empowerment: Analyzing the sources of one's sense of powerlessness and then acting assertively
to redress these negative circumstances. (p.4)
Enlightenment critique: Wondering about the metaphysical discourse of humanism. To what degree
does all this talk about basic rights and freedoms condone patriarchy, classism (and a
capitalistic system that supports classism), male-oriented discourse (with its logocentrism
and phallocentrism), and a metaphysics of presence (thank you preacher-man for telling me
the truth).
Essentialist discourse (on anything): I know what X is because I have discovered the essence.
(p.28)
False consciousness: Denial that our "common sense" sustains our disempowerment. (p.59)
Fear of relativism: A white male, class-privileged speech act that takes the position that if we can't
know with certitude (if we can't discover the Archimedian standpoints), we can know nothing.
Where there is logocentrism (Derrida's metaphysics of presence), there is the possibility of
this fear. (pp.116-117)
Good critical practice: Take a social, empowering position on curriculum activity and then
deconstruct your actions. Also help your students critique any "text" in your curriculum in
light of their own experiences and purposes. (p.138)
Good educational research: There is an introspection/objectification balance (p.150) This is a
rejection of claims to "certainty, totality and archimedean standpoints [perspectives based on
the UNDOUBTED discovery of truth] outside of flux and human interest...." (p.151) This
balance is maintained by lots of openly ideological collaboration, such as member checks.
Good science: It is narrative, semiotic (based on sensitivity to human meaning constructions),
particularistic (no overblown generalizations), politically- and self-aware. (p.102) It is
critically aware of the power/knowledge (Foucault) aspects of any "normalized" human
discourse. (p.105)
Good theory: Based on a "deep respect for the intellectual and political capacities of the
dispossessed." (p.55) It has "evocative power." (p.61) It celebrates human complexity.
Hegemonic critique: Elites are impositional; but through various sleights-of-hand, they come off as
"leaders" to unquestioning "followers." (p.126) The learn how to "lock" the consciousness of
the oppressed so that they don't know they are oppressed. Hence, the need for a definition
of educational theory as "consciousness" raising.
Ideology: The stories a culture tells itself. (p.2) The concept of ideology has many meanings.
(p.112) Lather's bias on this concept: a poststructural understanding of ideology. (p.119)
Interpretive, phenomenological research paradigm: The perspective that interview data gets at the
truth of a person's "reality." (p.64) Unfortuantely, this paradigm inscribes fundamental
humanist values. (p.113)
Intertextuality: Any author is inevitably inscribed in discourse (enclosed in the web of specific speech
acts) created by others and is preceded and surrounded by other texts, some of which are
evoked and some not. (p.9)
Languacentricity: Another centrism to be deconstructed. [Remember, the ideology of
postmodernism is a belief that all centrisms (ego, species, race-based, sex-based, etc.)
should be deconstructed.] It is the belief that language actually describes the "real" instead
of recognizing that our discourses inscribe (enweb) us in a constructed position on the "real."
(p.124)
Language: It is constitutive (it constructs meaning). It is not transparent, which is the naive belief
that what we say actually represents something "real." We "chair"--there isn't a "chair."
(p.39) Since language is constitutive, "who speaks is more important than what is said."
(p.47) The irony is that whatever is said by whomever always already enables and
constrains. (p.105)
Male discourse: Speech acts based on logocentric thought. I assert that what I say is right and
centrally important. Are you listening to me? To every word I am saying? Are you paying
attention? (The constrast to this type of discourse: subtlety, irony, wit, ambiguity,
indirectness.) (pp.48-49) Male discourse is patriarchial and phallocentric.
Paradox of critical research: How do you openly inquire into people's "reality" while at the same time
telling them that their sense of reality has elements of false consciousness. (p.65) Are
meanings imposed by researchers, or are they mutually constructed by researcher and
researched? (p.110)
Post-feminism: Lather wonders if feminism can be deconstructed too (the binary of us-them) or if
such a move undermines feminist liberatory action. (p.26)
Post-Marxist space: The deconstruction of the base/superstructure binary. Becomes a "Marxism"
which no longer limits its analysis to the ideological game of I-inferred-the-RIGHT-structure.
(pp.24-25)
Post-paradigmatic diaspora: The pluralistic dispersion of "models" that legitimate educational
research, theory, and practice. (p.7) Paradigmatic discourse is a limited speech act. Why
tie yourself down to thinking about models? (p.7 & pp.108-111)
Postmodern identity: Our sense of self is subjected to "regimes of meaning" (Foucault) which we
can critique to a degree. We can make sense of ourselves by drawing on pluralistic
sources. (This is the difference between growing up with the many role models of an
extended family in constrast to the limited role models of a nuclear family.)
Postmodern science: We need inquiry that helps our social intelligence control our technological
prowess and not vice versa (pp.153-4)
Postmodernism: The ideology that critically questions any master narratives. (p.4) We are multivoiced creatures. There is no singular, authoritative voice to tell us who we are. There is no
"human essence" that someone can discern. All dualisms are boring.
Postpositivist era: The assertion that the academic ideology of positivism is no longer viable. There
are no value-free "right" methods for doing research. There are only research choices
based on value positions (conscious or otherwise). (p. 2 & p.51)
Poststructuralism: The academic ideology which takes the position that human discourse is a
constructivist phenomenon (a speech-act) and is, therfore, complex and slippery. People
can never fully mean what they say since what they say is "always already" pointing to other
discourses. Poststructural analysis reveals our situatedness in discursive fluidity--whether
we know it or not. (p.4)
Praxis: The central concept of a philosophy that wants to be practical. Lather wants to "get smart"
about educational praxis that is philosophically aware of the Enlightenment critique. (p.11)
Research as praxis: Research committed to critical inquiry and to the support of emancipatory
projects. This type of research "faces the danger of a rampant subjectivity where one finds
only what one is predisposed to look for...." (p.52)
Research: Should be openly ideological and based on a liberatory advocacy for an oppressed
group. (p.14)
Rigid a priori theory: A type of logocentrism, which is the "sin of theoretical imposition." (p.55) Its
contrast: "dialectical theory building." (p.56)
Structuralism: An ideological category that includes Marxism. It is the belief that through disciplined
inquiry objective-structures-which-determine-human-consciousness can be discovered. It
tends to be a fatalistic belief system. (p.154)
Technology: It's not bad in itself, but it readily closes off people's meaning-making capacities.
(p.145)
Theory of education: Better thought of as "pedagogy": the emancipatory transformation of a
student's "consciousness," which can only happen when there is an active interplay between
teacher, student, and subject matter. (p.15)
Traditional empirical findings: Provide certainty and therefore deny the unthought in any thought.
(p.125)
Validity in praxis-oriented research: Construct research designs and then deconstruct them.
(Otherwise, the design is an example of logocentrism.) Practice a self-criticism on your
selectivity, partiality, and positionality. (p.79) But since deconstructive analysis can itself be
deconstructed, where does it all this critiquing stop? (p.83)
Writing under erasure: To write tentatively and to always be open to subverting anything you
inscribe. You are willing to erase any construction--any discourse--becasue you don't want
to get pinned down by your inscriptive acts. (p.10)
Lather's "Framing the Issues" Contrasted with the Tyler Rationale: Two Very Different
Metacognitive Guides
1. The Tyler Rationale (The Syllabus for ED 360).
a. What educational purposes should the school seek to attain?
b. How can learning experiences be selected which are likely to be useful in attaining these
objectives?
c. How can learning experiences be organized for effective instruction?
d. How can the effectiveness of learning experiences be evaluated?
(R.W. Tyler, Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1949.)
2. Lather's Problem Framing.
a. What's the TRANSFORMATIVE PEDGOGICAL "practice" that solves the pressing social problem?
(See Lather, 1991, pp.15-16.)
b. What's the "theory" (as in theory-practice or PRAXIS) that supports this pedagogical practice?
c. What's the ADVOCACY RESEARCH that supports this theory?
d. What's the value of MULTI-VOICED, EMANCIPATORY living?
Some of Lather's Curriculum Questions (Based on Her Problem Framing)
1. What is the special status of scientific knowledge? What work do we want inquiry to do?
To what extent does method privilege findings? What is the place of procedures in the
claim to validity? What does it mean to recognize the limits of exactitude and certainty,
but still to have respect for the empirical world and its relation to how we formulate and
assess theory? (pp.124-125)
2. How do we use our position as teachers to breach the univocality of the "message," to
restore the ambivalence of meaning and demolish the agency of the code...to break the
pattern of yet another controlling schema of interpretation, even if offered in the name of
liberation? How can we position ourselves as less masters of truth and justice and more
as creators of a space where those directly involved can act and speak on their own
behalf? How do we do so without romanticizing the subject and experience-based
knowledge? (p.137)
3. How do we constitute the object of emancipatory pedagogy? How do we attend to the
social relations of the emancipatory classroom? What practices might help us
deconstruct authority in the liberatory classroom? (p.139)
4. To what extent is the pedagogy we construct in the name of liberation intrusive, invasive,
pressured? To challenge the unequal distribution of power in the classroom is to ask,
Who speaks? For what and to whom? Who listens? Who is confident and comfortable
and who isn't? (pp.143-144)
5. How do we distinguish between thought that has been determined by power and thought
that manages to see that determination...? (p.154)
6. Derrida was asked this question: "Can the theoretical radicality of deconstruction be
translated into a radical political praxis?" (p.163.)
An Interpretation of Theory and Research in Teacher Education Practice: An Integration of
Postmodernism and Pragmatism
1. Theory as ontological presupposition:
"Scientists must work with one or another [ontological] presupposition which underpins
what they expect to be able to discover by whatever methods they use. Scientists may
be quite unaware of these, but they must (logically must) be there. They control the way
explanations develop, the kinds of questions asked, and the matters they will construe
as problems; moreover, by suggesting particular kinds of thinking and not others they
will help scientists to inquire in some directions but restrict or entirely prevent inquiry in
other directions" (J. H. Chambers, "The Many Different Types of Theory Which
Underpin The Study of Education," Educational Foundations, 4(4), Fall, 1990, p.88.)
2. A postmodern ontological presupposition:
Foundational centrisms cannot be justified, i.e., rational centrism, Euro-centrism,
species-centrism, and so on. No discourses are sacred; nothing is innocent. All
speech-acts are in play.
3. What if we embraced a postmodern theory of teaching as a committed pragmatist?
a. Though we recognize ourselves as creatures who can construct no CERTITUDES OF
KNOWLEDGE, we feel we can still inquire into our "best teaching selves"--both individually
and collectively. We feel we don't need to turn to the modern plagues of relativism,
negative individualism, and nihilism. In the spirit of an open-ended self-reflexivity, we feel
we can collaboratively cultivate our human qualities.
b. Though we reject the ideology of centrism as it applies to our profession, i.e., that there are
no central discourses on "good" teaching, we can still experience the joy of personal
discovery:
(1). We can contemplate our individual "best teaching selves" in light of our common
professional heritage.
(2). We can learn our profession in a constructivist fashion, and we can help our students
learn their subjects in the same way.
(3). We can share our constructions with others (no matter how different they are).
(4). We can deliberate over learning problems in the spirit of an ethic of caring.
(5). We can improve the quality of our day-to-day teaching lives in light of our professional
virtues and caring practices.
Schubert's (1986) "Praxis and Critical Questions"
1. How is knowledge reproduced in schools?
2. What are the sources of knowledge that students acquire in schools?
3. How do students and teachers resist or contest that which is conveyed through lived
experience in schools?
4. What do students and teachers realize from their school experiences? In other words,
what impact does school have on their outlook?
5. Whose interests are served by outlooks and skills fostered by schooling?
6. When served, do these interests move more in the direction of emancipation, equity, and
social justice, or do they move in the opposite direction?
7. How can students be moved toward greater liberation, equity, and social justice?
Three Patterns of Educational Discourses-Practices and The Curriculum Bias of Dialogical
Pragmatism
THREE PATTERNS OF EDUCATIONAL DISCOURSES-PRACTICES
1. The Category of the Technocrat: At home in questions of control through the use of standardized
techniques and systems of accountability.
a. Ideological technocrats: Their acts of control signal adherence to one or more metanarratives
(usually positivism).
b. Socially-conservative technocrats: Their acts of control signal vindication of current socioeconomic/political structures.
c. Technocrats who combine the above two discourses-practices.
2. The Category of the Structural Constructivist: At home in meaning construction; interested in
people's "stories."
a. Ideological constructivists: Their concern with "voice" signals one or more metanarratives (a
particular ethnicity is GOOD, Western rationalism is good, etc.)
b. Socially-conservative constructivists: Their concern with "voice" signals vindication of current
socio-economic/political structures.
c. Structural constructivists who combine the above two discourses-practices.
3. The Category of the Poststructural Constructivist: At home in meaning construction (in some
sense of the word) but questions one or more of the structures underlying people's "stories."
a. Anti-metaphysical poststructuralists: They question structures of "Being" but lack
commitment to counterhegemonic activity. (They practice an anti-metaphysical critique but
not a social agency.)
b. Social poststructuralists: They willingly raise counterhegemonic questions but are not welltraveled (well-experienced) on questions of "Being." (They are social activists who often
signal neo-marxism, which is a particular structuralist metanarrative.)
c. Poststructuralists who combine the above two discourses-practices. (Many of today's
feminists, such as Patti Lather, engage in this type of discourse-practice.)
MY CURRICULUM INTEREST: PROMOTING DIALOGICAL PRAGMATISM AND CRITIQUE WITH REFERENCE TO
THE ABOVE THREE DISCOURSES-PRACTICES
With respect to the American pragmatic tradition, West (1989) writes:
The distinctive appeal of American pragmatism in our postmodern moment is its
unashamedly moral emphasis and its unequivocally ameliorative impulse. In this worldweary period of pervasive cynicisms, nihilisms, terrorisms, and possible extermination,
there is a longing for norms and values that can make a difference, a yearning for
principled resistance and struggle that can change our desperate plight. ...The turn
to...American pragmatism...should be an attempt to reinvigorate our moribund academic
life, our letharic political life, our decadent cultural life, and our chaotic personal lives for
the flowering of many-sided personalities and the flourishing of more democracy and
freedom. ...American pragmatism is a diverse and heterogeneous tradition. But its
common denominator consists of a future-oriented instrumentalism that tries to deploy
thought as a weapon to enable more effective action. Its basic impulse is a plebian
radicalism that fuels an antipatrician rebelliousness for the moral aim of enriching
individuals and expanding democracy. (pp.4-5) (See also: West & Moyers, 1990.)
With respect to the topic of dialogism, Holquist (1990) writes: "Dialogism...[is] an
epistemology based on the assumption that knowing an entity (a person or a thing) is to put that
entity into a relation of simultaneity with something else, where simultaneity is understood as not
being a relation of equality or identity." (p.157) Overly and Spalding (1991) argue that the novel is
an important referent for curriculum development.
The United States has enormous educational problems which require collaborative efforts.
Unfortunately (or fortunately) in these postmodern times, these collaborative efforts cannot take
place without dialogue across the above three patterns of discourses-practices. In other words,
people who function out of differing speech-act orientations must learn to talk to one another and to
work together to solve mutual educational problems. The leadership challenge is to create a CIVIC
SPACE that is inclusive of all three of the above categories. No pattern, especially the category of
the technocrat, can be allowed to dominate the social scene. We need to socially construct a new
postmodern DIALOGICAL RATIO to serve as today's referent for pragmatic rationality.
References
Holquist, M. (1990). Dialogism: Bakhtin and his world. London: Routledge.
Overly, N. V., & Spalding, E. (1991). The novel as metaphor for curriculum and tool for curriculum
development. Paper presented at the Thirteenth Conference on Curriculum Theory and
Classroom Practice. Dayton, OH.
West, C. (1989). The American evasion of philosophy: A genealogy of pragmatism. Madison: The
University of Wisconsin Press.
West, C. & Moyers, B. (1990). "Cornel West: Cultural critic." In A. Tucher (Ed.), Bill Moyers: A World
of Ideas (pp.102-107). New York: Doubleday.
Curriculum Inquiry Project: INTEGRAL PRACTICE/THEORY/RESEARCH
1. What's the "problem" for which there is an educational solution?
a. The problem: The historical transition to poststructural educational professionalism (not semiprofessionalism, professionism, or structural professionalism) in accordance with Holmes
Group policy.
b. The educational solution: instruction in poststructural pedagogical judgment.
2. What is the "practice" of this educational solution?
a. Preservice socialization on poststructural pedagogical judgment (Reflective Teaching:
Becoming an Inquiring Educator.)
b. Professional Development School activity.
(1). The creation of a high profile PEDAGOGICAL JUDGMENT policy board for northeast
Ohio.
(2). The facilitation and networking of transformative leaders in northeast Ohio, particularly
"clinical" professors of education, "Roland Barth-type" principals (Sergiovanni's
notion of value-added leadership), and teacher leaders.
(3). The creation of school-university teacher education governance structures.
3. What is the "theory" supporting this practice?
a. Four necessary characteristics of educators who engage in poststructural pedagogical
judgment.
(1). Function with a practical not a technical focus: actively link practice, theory, and
research; work against technocratic hegemony.
(2). Openly embrace dialogical rather than narrow epistemological outlooks: accept a postfoundational relativity; critique all metanarratives.
(3). Follow pragmatic not social Darwinistic tenets: conversant with the rich traditions of
American pragmatism and critical theory.
(4). Practice a caring and not a narrowly analytical cognition: link cognition with eros as
described/prescribed by current postmodern semiotic and feminist scholarship.
b. There are likely individual "developmental" patterns associated with learning this type of
judgment.
c. There are likely "organizational developmental" patterns associated with the transition from
technocratic governance to educational institutions which support/nurture this type of
judgment.
4. What is the "research" that supports this praxis?
a. Four years of action research on Reflective Teaching.
b. Current work on edited book.
c. Needed research on "developmental" patterns.
d. Needed professional lore on this type of praxis.
e. Needed critical examination of premodern and modern mythic structures which inhibit this
lore.
5. Why are these two examples of INTEGRAL PRACTICE/THEORY/RESEARCH "good" (with reference
to the "good" life, the "good" society, and the "good" education)?
a. The downside of technocratic governance.
b. The importance of a dialogical space:
"We must learn how to work with a broadly inclusive definition of teaching
professionalism. American education today is riven by ideological conflict
(Kliebard, 1986). The learning agendas of academic rationalism (Hirsch, 1987)
and social efficiency (Brophy and Good, 1986) have received significant policy
attention during the Reagan-Bush era. The current potency of these agendas is
amply illustrated by the high profile and heavily funded America 2000 reform
initiative emerging out of the White House (America 2000: An Education Strategy,
1991). Contrasting views of good education are provided by liberal structural
constructivists who interpret learning as personal meaning making and, therefore,
promote such norms as developmentally appropriate curricula, whole language
instruction, and cooperative learning. Further to the left are the poststructural
constructivists who challenge the rationalistic and socio-political conservatism of
their liberal constructivist colleagues (Cherryholmes, 1988). This group of
constructivists advocate transformative educational activities guided by the norms
of deconstructive inquiry, critical pragmatism, and participative democracy. The
steering group is currently struggling to create policy guidelines that encourage
dialogue across these conflicting ideological positions. We recognize that though
our small group shares a constructivist orientation (structural and/or
poststructural), our PDS leadership posture must focus on the creation of a
DIALOGICAL SPACE that is open to academic rationalistic and social efficiency
points of view--as long as these perspectives are not treated as the referents for
professional normalization."
c. The importance of American pragmatism.
d. The importance of caring communities and professional generativity.
Liberal Examination of Three Methods of Curriculum Judgment: An Exercise in Consumer Education
1. Scaffolding for curriculum judgment:
*The "problem?" *The prescribed educational "practice?" *The supportive "theory?" *The
supportive "research?" *The justification of the "practice, theory, and research?"
2. What if your inspiration is positivism or some other structured way of engaging in judgments?
How would you go about answering these questions?
*"The point is that eighteenth century philosophers were full of optimism that life in general
could be systematically brought under control of correct logical procedure" (Smith, p.189).
*""...the tradition of consciousness valorizes the work of perception as the means by which the
human subject grasps reality then anchors it as reality through the legitimating codes of the
times embedded in user's language. The tradition of consciousness shapes curriculum
decision-making as fundamentally a form of arbitration over the correctness or appropriateness
of ideas, that is as a judgment of the degree to which they "re-present" reality" (Smith, pp.195196).
3. What if your inspiration for judgment is respect for individual life-world perceptions--the stuff of
phenomenological inquiry? How would you go about answering these questions?
*"...the straightforward, metaphorical communication of primary experience through a creative
medium...is the heart of phenomenological inquiry itself and among the most basic of curricular
tasks" (Willis, p.182).
4. What if your inspiration for judgment is poststructural inquiry--the critical deconstruction of current
socio-political and rational structures? How would you go about answering these questions?
*"Are there really value-free philosophies and technologies of inquiry in the first place? Critical
inquiry begins with the answer "No!" and continues with a process of informed reflection and
action guided by explicit, normative considerations. Moreover, since critical inquiry is basically
dialectical in nature, its methodology can be seen as embodying these same normative
considerations" (Sirotnik, pp.244-245).
*The study and practice of curriculum determines where and on what grounds opportunities to
learn are provided and at what point the deconstruction of these opportunities will stop"
(Cherryholmes, p.142).
*Critical pragmatism involves READING (turning a work into a text), INTERPRETATION
(producing a text upon a text), CRITICISM (producing a text against a text), COMMUNICATION
(practicing open dialogue), and EVALUATION (thinking in value-added terms). (See
Cherryholmes, pp.152-177).
Deconstructing the Two Central Values That Guide the Design of C&I 87001
1. Deconstructing the value of liberal education in curriculum studies. Why think about a broad
range of ways to interpret "theory" and "research" in C&I work?
a. A (simplistic) heuristic to facilitate this liberal education:
*Framing learning "problems" and educational "solutions" (and their accompanying
supportive "theory" and "research") with reference to one or more technocratic policy
structures. Learning is standardized, technical, and vocationally appropriate activity for a
business-oriented, internationally-competitive America.
*Framing learning "problems" and educational "solutions" (and their accompanying
supportive "theory" and "research") with reference to teachers' and students' life stories.
Learning is constructivist activity: personally meaningful, narrative, and existentially alive.
*Framing learning "problems" and educational "solutions" (and their accompanying
supportive "theory" and "research") with reference to challenging hegemonic social
constructions such as sexism. (These are social constructions which subtly set
standards, determine what is abnormal, and establish political agendas.) Learning is
critically-aware, equitable, pluralistic activity.
b. But, is liberal education valuable to the KSU community of C&I specialists?
("Any particular truth is relevant or valid only to the members of the group or
community within which it is formulated. Knowledge, then, is relative to the
community, true in terms of the beliefs of one community but not for other
communities; any rules of knowledge apply only inside the community..." P. M.
Rosenau, Post-Moderninsm and the Social Sciences: Insights, Inroads, and
Intrusions, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992, p.31.)
2. Deconstructing the value of a justified practice-theory-research coherence.
a. If C&I specialists haven't given a lot of thought to this coherence and/or if they don't practice
what they preach (in their theories and research activities), why bother with this value?
b. If C&I specialists are the theorists and researchers for the educational establishment (and
teachers are the practitioners), why bother with this value?
Liberal Curriculum Inquiry
1. In preservice context: inquiry into the topics of educational problem solving, curriculum decision
making, and classroom management guided by specific mentoring advice from:
a. An academic rationalist (Johnny Jackson).
b. A teacher effectiveness advocate (Susan Smith).
c. A phenomenological developmentalist (Dennis Sage).
d. A critical pragmatist (Sylvia Rivera).
(See J. G. Henderson, Reflective Teaching: Becoming an Inquiring Educator, New York: Macmillan,
1992).
2. In inservice context:
a. Inquiry into the topic of curriculum studies from the vantage point of an intellectual
traditionalist, social behaviorist, and an experientialist. (See: W. Schubert, Curriculum:
Perspective, Paradigm, and Possibility. New York: Macmillan, 1986.)
b. Practicing curriculum development advice adapted from:
(1). Mortimer Adler.
(2). Thomas L. Good.
(3). Michael Connelly.
(4). Cleo Cherryholmes.
3. Doctoral studies context: Inquiry into the topic of curriculum praxis (practice-theory-research
coherence) guided by a broad ideological horizon:
Left_______________________Center______________________Right
On the Right: Socialization (conscious? hidden? or?) into a technical, or "Tyler Rationale,"
understanding of curriculum--learning to turn administrative policy into the "correct"
objectives, content, organization, and evaluation.
In the Center: Socialization into a constructivist understanding of curriculum--practicing
collegial dialogue over questions of purpose, content, organization, and evaluation.
On the Left: Socialization into an understanding of curriculum as a rigorous cultural
study/critique of the sources of disempowerment and the resultant practice of liberatory
pedagogy.
Education as a Professional Field
CURRICULUM
STUDY
CULTURAL/POLICY/
ORGANIZATIONAL
STUDY
STUDY OF TEACHING
AND LEARNING
EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP:
FACILITATING "THE GOOD LIFE"
FOUNDATIONAL
STUDY
COGNITIVE
STUDY
CULTURAL/CRITICAL
STUDY
1. Key premise in this course: Our institutions need to change, and we need a certain leadership to
make this happen. What should be the normative referent for this leadership?
2. One possible normative referent: EXISTENTIAL PRAGMATISM GUIDED BY A REFLEXIVE
POSTMODERN DIALOGISM.
3. Dialectics associated with this referent:
a. Professional dialectic: administratively-dominated vs. collegially-based leadership.
b. Liberation dialectic: disempowered vs. empowered for an existential, pragmatic
constructivism.
c. Self-actualization dialectic (Maslow): security vs. growth needs.
d. Civic dialectic: Hobbesian competitive self-interest vs. collaboration/cooperation/collegiality.
e. Dialogical dialectic: monological belief vs. discursively-based, synergistic belief.
4. Evaluation plan #1: documentation that progress has been made with reference to this
professional standard: COMPREHENSIVE UNDERSTANDING OF CURRICULUM STUDIES
AS A MEANS TO EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP.
5. Evaluation plan #2: documentation that progress has been made with reference to this
professional standard: COMPREHENSIVE FRAMING OF A CURRICULAR PROBLEM AS A
MEANS TO EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP.
Conceptualizing a Curricular "Problem" in Light of the Philosophical/Historical Foundations of
American Curriculum and the Need for Educational Leadership
[Schrag: "None of the texts expects initiates to be able to ask questions...or to understand why
certain problems are still outstanding or why certain ideas are currently controversial." (pp.279-280)]
"GOOD" CURRICULUM: PROMOTING THE "GOOD" LIFE
[A hermeneutic undertaking ("...there can be no position outside interpretation...." Jackson,20)
that is based on inquiry ("One argues for what one believes to be good and true and perhaps
even beautiful and just.... Goodlad,327)]
SCIENTIFIC TRADITION
OF INQUIRY
(Embrace Empiricism)
HUMANISTIC TRADITION
OF INQUIRY
(Question Empiricism)
Scientific Positivism
Liberalism Romanticism
Realism Scientism
Rationalism ReconceptualProgressi- (Bobbitt)
(Truth as
ism
vism
Coherence)
Eight Year Technocracy
Self-Interested "...critical
Study Standardization Individualism schools of
Relativism
curriculum
discourse"
Dead End? Dominant OperaLincoln, 94
tional Ideology
Special
(Eisner)
Interests
(Bergamo)
Incomplete?
Action
Authentic?
Civic Withdrawal?
Research Alienation?
New Tribalism?
(England) Cynicism?
Fragmentation?
Meritocracy?
Power Vacuum?
Narratology
NeoKantianism
Pragmatism
(Piaget)
(Dewey)
(Gestalt Psy)
AntifoundationCognitive Science
alism
Cognitive Pluralism (Eisner,320-323)
One reconceptualist project: What if the attempt was made to shift the school's operational ideology
to educative "confirmation" (Noddings)? The inquiry supporting this ideological leadership is a
synthesis of the phenomenology/existentialism, critical progressivism (Deweyan pragmatism),
postmodern dialogism/cognitive pluralism traditions. The research/practice (praxis) agenda:
cognitive monitoring for pedagogical and OD change.
Curriculum Change and Cultural/Policy/Organizational Study
KSU PDS reform focus: change the "operational ideology" of schools (Eisner, pp.305-306) by
impacting on teachers' pedagogical judgment. This work requires the coordination of four types of
study through the use of a decentralized, collegial vehicle (KSU/Northeast Ohio PDS Consortium)
committed to inductive policy making and networking strategies (Elmore and Sykes, pp.200-201 and
D. Schon, Beyond the Stable State, New York: Random House, 1971.)
1. STUDY OF EDUCA- 2. CURRICULUM AND CULTURAL STUDY
TIONAL CHANGE
AND STABILITY
3. CURRICULUM AND POLICY STUDY
4. CURRICULUM AND ORGANIZATIONAL STUDY
1. Cuban: "...I explore in this chapter this apparent contradiction of faddism amidst rigidity within
public schooling." (p.216)
2. Peshkin: "What curriculum suits what cultural orientation as seen by whom is the subject of this
chapter. It is a complex topic because the culture of most contemporary nations is a tangled
tapestry of subcultural variants." (p.249)
3. Elmore & Sykes: "This chapter is organized around the two main topics of public policy
perspectives on curriculum and curriculum perspectives on public policy." (p.185)
4. Bidwell & Dreeban: "...to the extent that one is interested in the dynamics of school organization
and curriculum and in the processes by which the forms and contents of education change...in
relation to social and cultural changes in society, an understanding of the initiation,
development, and outcomes of the institutionalization of education is necessary." (p.345)
The Normative Referent for Teachers' Pedagogical Judgment: Educative Confirmation
1. The problem of ideological "needs displacement" in the educational profession.
2. Hodgkinson's (1991) conception of praxis:
Praxis...implies a duality in action, two 'moments;' one of consciousness or reflection
in the first moment and one of action and commitment in the second moment. (p.43)
3. A holistic elaboration of these two "moments" in educative confirmation:
*dialogical moment (engaging in authentic dialogue)
*constructivist moment (supporting meaning making)
*existentialist moment (affirming personal purposes and self-actualization)
*participatory democracy moment (practicing "power with")
*civic moment (encouraging positive freedom--Dewey, Greene)
*achievement moment (setting and realizing goals--self-efficacy)
*intellectual moment (pedagogical content knowledge--Shulman)
*aesthetic moment (combining being and doing--Dewey, van Manen)
*critical moment (challenging social structures)
*deconstructivist moment (challenging linguistic structures)
*pluralistic moment (embracing alternatives for self and other)
4. Framing the PROBLEM: How shall curriculum development, clinical supervision, administrative
leadership, teacher education leadership, etc. occur so as to establish a synergistic partwhole resonance through networking, mentoring, modeling, scaffolding, coaching, etc.
activities?
Reference
Hodgkinson, C. (1991). Educational leadership: The moral act. Albany: SUNY Press.
Alternative Organizing Scheme for a Handbook of Research on Curriculum
1. Curriculum work is practical problem solving (Schwab) focusing on how to deliver educational
services.
2. Different individuals, groups, associations, etc. engage in this problem solving in different ways.
This is due to the normative referents they use when constructing/reflecting on "learning
situations," identifying "problems," trying out "solutions," and engaging in further "inquiry."
(Dewey)
3. Four "common places" (Schwab) for curricular problem solving.
a. Inquiry disposition and method (with their particular ideological gestalts)
(1). Short (1991): "A continuum will be noticed across the ten methods of inquiry from the
more disciplinary methods associated with the academic disciplines to the more
multidisciplinary methods associated with fields of practice." (p.24)
(a). Disciplinary methods: sciences--focus on experimentation (positivism, scientific
realism, structural psychology) and human sciences--focus on intentionality
(hermeneutics, phenomenology, literary criticism, history, anthropology,
sociology).
(b). Multidisciplinary methods: constructivism (fifteen faces?), Marxism/neomarxism,
pragmatism, poststructuralism.
(c). Unique syntheses (for particular purposes): Eisner, Noddings, Greene, etc.
b. Transmission of knowledge (Schrag's educational traditions and knowledge; questions of
cognition and curriculum)
c. The desired social context for knowledge transmission (culture/policy/organizations/social
criticism)
(1). "Power over" perspectives. (C&I distinction)
(2). "Power with" perspectives. (Transformative considerations; reconceptualizing C&I to
???)
d. The desired personal context for knowledge transmission (teaching/learning/experiencing)
(1). Focus on standardization.
(2). Focus on decision making, judgment, meaning making, etc.
Reference
Short, E. C. (1991). Inquiry methods in curriculum studies: An overview. Curriculum Perspectives,
11(2): 15-26.
Doctoral-Level Curriculum Study
A. Curriculum study: Reflecting on "What educational service should we provide, and how and
why?"
B. Doctoral-level curriculum study: Making lots of things problematic in the above reflection.
Deliberating over:
1. The guiding "inquiry" for the curricular "judgment."
2. The "knowledge" to be "transmitted."
3. The "social context" of this "transmission."
4. The "personal context" for this "transmission."
C. This comprehensive deliberation requires wisdom.
1. One general interpretation of "wisdom."
"A wise person has learned to balance the opposing valences of the three aspects
of behavior: cognition, affect, and volition. A wise person weighs the knowns and
unknowns, resists overwhelming emotion while maintaining interest, and carefully
chooses when and where to take action." (pp.331-332) J. E. Birren & L. M. Fisher,
The elements of wisdom: Overview and integration. In R. J. Sternberg, Wisdom:
Its nature, origins, and development. (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1990.)
2. Overview of various interpretations of "wisdom." (Table 14.2 from Birren & Fisher, pp. 328329.)
3. One interpretation of wisdom in curriculum judgments: Schwab's (1978) "eclectic" and
"practical" arts.
"A curriculum grounded in but one or a few sub-subjects of the social sciences is
indefensible; contributions from all are required. There is no foreseeable hope of
a unified theory in the immediate or middle future, nor of a metatheory which will
tell us how to put them together or order them in a fixed hierarchy of importance to
the problems of curriculum. What remains as a viable alternative is the
unsystematic, uneasy, pragmatic, and uncertain unions and connections which
can be effected in an eclectic. (p.308)
The stuff of theory is abstract or idealized representations of real things. But
curriculum in action treats real things: real acts, real teachers, real children, things
richer than and different from theoretical representations. Curriculum will deal
badly with its real things if it treats them merely as replicas of their theoretic
representations. If, then, theory is to be used well in the determination of
curricular practice, it requires a supplement. It requires arts which bring a theory
to its application: first, arts which identify the disparities between real thing and
theoretic representation; second, arts which modify the theory in the course of its
application in the light of the discrepancies; and, third, arts which devise ways of
taking account of the many aspects of the real thing which the theory does not
take into account. These are some of the arts of the practical. (p.310) [Schwab, J.
J. (1978). The Practical: A Language for Curriculum. In I. Westbury & N.J. Wilkof,
(Eds.) Science, Curriculum, and Liberal Education: Selected Essays. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.]
D. One line of narrative inquiry: stories about learning the practical-eclectic arts in curriculum
judgments.
E. There is a basic limitation to Schwab's discourse: how can a practical eclecticism include
fundamental structural inquiry? At the end of the twentieth century in North America, the
practice of wisdom is historically complicated. For whatever reasons, postmodern questioning
is in the air.
"Postmodernism has questioned the central assumptions of the Enlightenment
legacy.... [S]ome fear that postmodernism is, or will lead to, a new form of radical
relativism, nihilism, and flight from political possibility.... On the other hand,
postmodernism (more particularly poststructuralism) can be understood as
constituting a new critique that gives us a much better sense of the nature of
knowledge, modes of domination, the relation between power and knowledge, and
the limits of critical inquiry...." (p.9) [W. B. Stanley, Curriculum for utopia: Social
reconstructionism and critical pedagogy in the postmodern era. Albany: SUNY
Press, 1992.]
1. One historical insight into why postmodern questioning is occuring: fractured moral
sensibility. (See A. Macintyre's narrative in After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. London:
Duckworth, 1981.)
F. To practice wise curriculum judgment with a postmodern sensibility requires the use of
deconstructive analysis in one's deliberations. This is the examination of underlying systemic
structures. (See Senge's model.) This results in a radical ("root") DELIBERATIVE
RECONSTRUCTIONISM, which gets at the mythos-logos-ethos substrate of human
experience. This is highly imaginative curriculum work: see Eisner's The Educational
Imagination. New York: Macmillan, 1985.
"...the relevance of reconstructionism to contemporary approaches to critical
pedagogy will require an extensive reconceptualization of reconstructionist theory.
Some form of critical pedagogy that incorporates the insights of poststructuralism
and critical pragmatism appears to offer the most promise (Stanley, 1992, p.10).
G. But, how should our deconstructive analysis be critically guided? What is our epistemologicalpedagogical vision?
1. Objectivism? "...an ethic of competitive individualism, in the midst of a world fragmented
and made exploitable by that very mode of knowing." (Palmer, p.22)
2. An alternative? ...relatedness, feminist thought, African-American/Native American
scholarship, ecological studies, creative conflict, love of learning/love of learners. (Palmer.)
H. Several lines of inquiry associated with this argument.
1. How do curriculum scholars help themselves and teachers cultivate a postmodern curricular
wisdom?
2. Is Schwab's conception of the eclectic arts helpful, or a modernist distraction?
3. What might be a better (postmodern) way to theorize/practice the deliberative arts in
curriculum study?
4. Can a new mythos-logos-ethos vision be theorized, practiced, researched?
5. What does all of this have to do with curriculum reconceptualization and paradigm shifts?
Let the Curricular Wisdom Play Begin
Cherryholmes (1988): "Because deconstruction can only follow prior constructions, we begin...with
proposed structural, systematic meanings...[then] playfully explore...uses of words, utterances,
arguments, and metaphors." (p.73)
Key concept in deconstructive analysis: REIFICATION (..."social construction of meanings remains
hidden, they are treated as 'natural'..." Cherryholmes, 1988, p.72.)
1. "[Textbooks] embody what Raymond Williams called the selective tradition--someone's selection,
someone's vision of legitimate knowledge and culture, one that in the process of enfranchising
one group's cultural capital disenfranchises another's...." [M. Apple (1992), The Text and
Cultural Politics, Educational Researcher, 21(7), p.5.]
WHERE IN THE HANDBOOK ARE THE DISCOURSES-PRACTICES ON CURRICULUM
WISDOM-GROWTH?
2. "[The creation of a] 'common culture'...requires a democratic process in which all people...can be
involved in the deliberation of what is important. It should go without saying that this
necessitates the removal of the very real material obstacles--unequal power, wealth, time for
reflection--that stand in the way of such participation..." (Apple, 1992, p.11).
HOW CAN WE GET RICHLY PLURALISTIC DISCOURSES-PRACTICES ON WISDOMGROWTH?
3. "...'don't be afraid of romanticism,' where 'romanticism' refers to the 'revaluation of the
subordinate pole of each of those oppostions...." [J. Goodnow (1992). Putting Persons and
Culture Back Together. Educational Researcher, 21(7), p.35.] Goodnow is refering to R.
Shweder's Thinking Through Cultures: Expeditions in Cultural Psychology. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1991.
IN THE PURSUIT OF CURRICULAR WISDOM, LET'S DECONSTRUCT THE
COMPREHENSIVE/NOT COMPREHENSIVE BINARIES THAT HAVE BEEN CONSTRUCTED IN
THIS CLASS.
Critical Study: Making Curriculum Interests Transparent
1. Jurgen Habermas' concept of "interests:"
"...taken-for-granted knowledge and practice is often ideological. ...ideology
refers to knowledge and practices which serve the interests of some groups or
sections of society but not the interests of all. Ideology gets its power from the
fact that this one-sided interest is disguised as either being actually in the
interests of all or outside the realm of human control altogether--as a fact of
nature. [REIFICATION] In this way, for instance, we could assert that all persons
are born unequal, with unequal looks, intelligence or genetic potential. That
being so, it is but a short step to explaining social inequality as a natural
reflection of this fact of nature. However, the most powerful form which
ideology can take is to be taken-for-granted--to be not only natural but
unquestioned, even, unarticulated" (Robert Young, A Critical Theory of
Education: Habermas and Our Children's Future, New York: Teachers College
Press, 1990, p.28.)
2. Two critical questions in any curriculum: who's "interests" are beings served, and what are these
"interests?"
3. The standard "interest" in our course work to date: taking the interpretive turn towards, or
grasping the textuality (multiple subtexts) in, curricular deliberations.
a. The guiding "inquiry" for the curricular "judgment."
b. The "knowledge" to be "taught."
c. The "social context" of this "teaching."
d. The "personal context" for this "teaching."
4. Questioning this "interest" from the vantage point of another interest: the practical-eclecticdeconstructive-reconstructive arts.
a. The practical arts. How does work on the "comprehensive" standard feel? Is working on
this standard overly intellectual, a flight from practice? If so, what is your practical interest?
Would it be more meaningful to be working on an existentially real problem rather than this
institutionally imposed "problem?" [David Jardine (1992). "Fecundity of the Individual
Case." British Journal of Philosophy and Education, Vol.23.]
b. The eclectic arts. Are your curricular deliberations becoming more multiperspective?
c. The arts of deconstruction. Can you better question the binary oppositions and
power/knowledge connections structuring curriculum discourses-practices?
d. The arts of reconstruction. Can you better imagine, articulate, and practice wise
educational activity?
Critical Inquiry into the Reconceptualization of Curriculum Study (or Deconstructing Bergamo
Binaries)
1. Ayers (TIP; Summer, 1992): "If we want to participate fully in the revitalization of teaching and
curriculum...,[w]e will have to address all the destructive dualisms, the either-ors, that obscure
our vision." (p.261)
2. Five binaries in Bergamo discourses-practices:
PARTICIPATIVE } TEACHERS/PROFESSORS AS CORPORATE
DEMOCRACY } WORKERS (SES GAMESMANSHIP)
POWER-WITH COMMUNITY } POWER-OVER BUREAUCRACY
POSITIVE FREEDOM } ENTREPRENEURIAL INDIVIDUALISM
MYTHO-POETIC; NARRATIVE } POSITIVISM (EMPIRICISM-LOGIC)
NATIVE (PRIMAL) KNOWING } TECHNICAL RATIONALITY
AMBIGUITY/IRONY
} CLARITY/PERFORMANCE OBJECTIVES
MULTIPLE SUBTEXTS
} TOP-DOWN POLICIES
POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION } SCIENTIFIC REALISM
POSTMODERNISM
} MODERNIST METANARRATIVES
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
} ESSENTIALIZING DISCOURSES
SELF-AS-MULTIPLE-SITE } UNITARY SUBJECT (COGITO)
DECONSTUCTION
} BINARY FIXATIONS
INSCRIBING
} DESCRIBING
3. Marshall et al (TIP; Summer, 1992): Are Bergamo discourses-practices bordering on "intellectual
fashion," or is there a sincere interest in educational leadership? (p.269) Or, in the words of
Pinar (TIP; Summer, 1992): "Theory must stay out of bed with current reform in order to remain
free to theorize modes of knowing and knowledge linked with neither the factory nor corporate
model." (p.234)
4. What about this recurrent Bergamo binary ambiguity?
HOLISM
} { NEOMARXISM
PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY } { CRITICAL THEORY
EXPANSIVE PEDAGOGY
} { TRANSFORMATIVE INTELLECTUAL
ETHIC OF CARING
} { FEMINIST CRITICISMS
POSTMODERN PRAGMATISM } { POSTMODERN RECONSTRUCTIONISM
CORNEL WEST'S THE
} { WILLIAM STANLEY'S CURRICULUM
AMERICAN EVASION OF
} { FOR UTOPIA
PHILOSOOPHY)
Curriculum and Instruction 87001-2065
First Ten Weeks of the Course: Comprehensive Curriculum
Study Standard
1. Deconstructing a particular professional standardiza- tion/standard binary that structures the C&I
doctorate.
2. Practicing small-group empowerment based on this freeing of interpretive energy.
3. In the midst of this interpretive work, considering an additional standard: the SYNERGY of four
deliberative arts (practical, eclectic, deconstructive, reconstructive.)
4. The result: five projects based on a Deweyan logic.
5. Grade assessment of Deweyan projects is based on each group's evaluation plan. % of course
grade is ______.
Last Five Weeks of the Course: Curriculum Inquiry Standard
11/12 Phenomenological/hermeneu- Short: 9-10; Jardine:
tical inquiry.
article; Smith: article
11/19 Feminist inquiry.
Noddings: chpt. in Jackson;
Lather: chpt., article, &
paper; Ellsworth: article;
bell hooks: article;
Anderson: paper.
12/2 Spiritual & holistic
Kesson: chpt.; Bowers:
inquiry. (Ethnographic paper; Schubert & Willis:
& narrative inquiry?)
Table of Contents; Short:
article; Henderson: chpt.
12/9 Integrative inquiry
Short: 15-16, Afterword;
How to frame a curriculum Henderson: article &
"problem."
Instr.'s Manual (a before &
after picture.)
12/16 Group presentations.
Group empowerment work is
Discussion of a generic due and (if relevant) incurriculum problem: a
dividual papers are due.
collegial celebration of
comprehensive curriculum
inquiry.
Empowered grade assessment on the "curriculum inquiry" standard is non-existent or individualized
(WHY?/HOW?), or it has been incorporated into the group project evaluation plan (HOW?). An
alternative to a written public justification of one or more of these questions: the instructor will
assess individual ten-page speculative essays on, and/or narrative inquiries into, the three
existential moments in personal-professional curriculum inquiry.
A CURRICULUM INQUIRY STANDARD: APPLYING YOUR HERMENEUTIC IMAGINATION TO A CURRICULUM
PROBLEM
1. Deconstructing the method/inquiry binary that structures much of your doctoral socialization:
"...Gadamer (1977, 1979, 1985) has suggested that it is not possible, in genuine inquiry, to
establish correct method for inquiry independently of what it is one is inquiring into" (Smith,
p.198).
2. Four background principles for this imaginative activity.
(Adapted from Smith, pp.198-202.)
a. Practice historical/semiotic (philological) awareness of the language you are using--of the
discourses that are positioning you.
b. Deconstruct key binaries: play with multiple, contrasting discourses from a experientially
grounded phenomenological perspective.
c. Express your understanding: tell a speculative/ narrative story.
(1). Schubert (pp.68-73) provides guidance on how to compose a speculative essay.
(2). Connelly and Clandinin (pp.133-144) provide guidance on how to compose a narrative
inquiry.
d. Engage in creative meaning making that is engaging, i.e., "both ecological and ecumenical"
(Smith, p.202.)
3. Three "existential" moments in this work.
a. Experiencing/framing the "problem."
b. Playfully "inquiring" into the problem. (Following no one particular METHOD.)
c. Engaging in a comprehensive practice/theory/research "hermeneutic circle." [Excellent
example of this type of balanced praxis: Patti Lather's Getting Smart: Feminist Research
and Pedagogy With/In the Postmodern (New York: Routledge, 1991.)]
4. David Jardine's work is a mature example of hermeneutical writing. See especially his 1992
piece, "The Fecundity of the Individual Case: Considerations of the Pedagogic Heart of
Interpretive Work." Journal of Philosophy of Education, 26(1): 51-61.
The Semiotic Space of Feminist Inquiry
bell hooks: "When our lived experience of theorizing is fundamentally linked to processes of selfrecovery, of collective liberation, no gap exists between theory and practice. ...We must continually
claim theory as necessary practice within a holistic framework of liberatory activism." (pp.80-81)
Patti Lather: "...the development of emancipatory social theory requires an empirical stance which is
open-ended, dialogically reciprocal, grounded in respect to human capacity, and, yet, profoundly
skeptical of appearances and 'common sense.' Such an empirical stance is, furthermore, rooted in
a commitment to the long-term, broad-based ideological struggle necessary to transform structural
inequalities." (p.65)
AFFIRMATIVE
HISTORICAL
POSITIONING
(Phil. hermeneutics
& postmodern,
public rhetoric)5
1
OPPOSITIONAL
HISTORICAL
POSITIONING
(The hermeneutics
of suspicion)4
Rosenau, Post-Modernism and the Social Sciences; Rose, The Post-Modern and the PostIndustrial.
2
Barber, Strong Democracy.
3
Field, A Life of One's Own; Jersild, When Teachers Face Themselves; Wood, Martin Buber's
Ontology.
4
Ihde, Hermeneutic Phenomenology: The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur.
5
Crusius, A Teacher's Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics; Stanley, Curriculum for Utopia;
West, The American Evasion of Philosophy
Integrative and Deliberative Inquiry in Curriculum studies
A. A generic problem statement: How can educational practice be guided by
professional standards and not by administrative standardization?
B. An elaboration of this problem statement based on a particular type of integrative and
deliberative inquiry: Based on a comprehensive cultural critique1 of standardized,
bureaucratically-managed schooling, how can personal-professional pedagogical
practical wisdom (phronesis)2 be supported by public (state-community-school,
university-community-school, community-school, collegial) deliberative forums
(polis)3 which are embedded in a societal context characterized by partially
realized/suppressed democratic traditions4 and impacted by postmodern5 and
post-industrial6 forces?
1
This critique covers epistemic, social, political, economic, and
psychological topics. A good model for this thorough type of critical
work is feminist inquiry.
2
This wisdom is rare when not socially and psychologically supported
(c.f., Vygotsky et al on "situated cognition" and Lacan, Kristeva et al on
developmental psychoanalytics.) This type of work focuses on
teachers-as-curriculum-makers-and-enactors and requires the
sustained inquiry into human understanding associated with
philosophical hermeneutics and existential psychoanalysis (inquiry into
human reasonableness and desire.) For an important historical analysis
on the need for the Enlightenment/Liberation project to shift from
"technical rationality" to "communicative rationality," see the work of
Habermas.
3
This type of deliberation is based on Greene's (1988) argument for
"positive freedom" and "public space" Public deliberative leadership is
inspired by spiritual/holistic inquiry and cannot occur in the current
historical context without organizational development (OD) praxis.
4
The problematic of American democratic norms is examined in the
tradition of pragmatism.
5
Poststructural inquiry helps elucidate postmodern forces: "The tendency
in poststrucuralism is...to regard truth as a multiplicity, to exult in the
play of diverse meanings, in the continual process of reinterpretation, in
the contention of opposing claims. Accordingly, text replaces mind as
the locus of enunciation, and difference replaces identity as the strategy
of reading" (Poster, 1989, p.15.) Poststructural inquiry challenges all
forms of "totalization" discourses-practices (Poster, 1989, pp.104-123.)
6
Such books as Tom Peters' Liberation Management: Necessary
Disorganization for the Nanosecond Nineties highlight these forces.
Baudrillard (1980) on post-industrialism: "...we live in a world of
proliferating information and shrinking sense." (See pp.137-148.)
Poster (1989) writes: "...our current spatial 'confusion' may be due in
part to the structurally new ways in which we are constituted as subjects
in electronically mediated language formations. Television ads, data
bases, and computers, to select some cogent examples, position the
individual as a decentered, dispersed subject outside the binary
oppositions of freedom/determinism, subject/object, identity/difference,
thereby undermining the reference points of history. If that is the case,
domination in no longer only a question of (political and economic)
action but also concerns discursive forms through which the subject is
positioned in cultural space." (p.32)
References
Baudrillard, J. (1980). The implosion of meaning in the media and the implosion of the
social in the masses. In K. Woodward (Ed.), The myths of information: Technology
and postindustrial culture. London:....
Greene, M. (1988). The dialectic of freedom. New York: Teachers College Press.
Poster, M. (1989). Critical theory and poststructuralism: In search of a context. Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press.
CRITIQUING FIVE TEN-MINUTE SPEECH ACTS SIGNIFYING SMALL-GROUP CO-CONSTRUCTED
"STANDARDS"
I. Historical context for this criticism:
A. "Politics, in postmodern society, has been radically reconceived by those who
have come to see the culture-language sphere, rather than the sphere of
production, as the primary locus of power and conflict. Marx is credited with
the most compelling and developed account of the mode of production as the
basis of power relations. ...However, the experience of late capitalism [postindustrialism] has led to substantial revisions of ideas about the location of
power, the constituion of identity, and the viable forms of oppositional
practice...." (p.24)
B. "The developments I want to review are the erosion of the public sphere; the
enlargement of the state's propaganda agencies; the impact of technical
rationality on language; and the spread of conceptually impoverished
discourses that impede critical reflection on [self and] society." (p.30)
C. Dissident postmodern writers "divert our attention away from story to the
processes of signification." (p.42)
Reference
Maltby, P. (1991). Dissident postmodernists: Barthelme, Coover, Pynchon.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
II. Critical questions (refering to practical, public, and personal wisdom.)
A. Do the ten-minute performatives suggest that the practical-eclectic arts, i.e.
deliberative inquiry, supplanted, or started to supplant, such less worthy
alternatives as technical rationality, self-flattering relativism, etc?
B. Do the performatives suggest the initial cultivation of a pluralistic, public space?
(Or does the group continue to reflect an individualistic, bureaucratic, and/or
hegemonic ethos?)
C. Do the performatives suggest an existentially authentic questioning? (Or are
there still strong intimations of low self-esteem, external locus of control,
psychic repression, etc?)
Five Fundamental Topics in the Curriculum Field*
A. Curriculum is an interpretive (hermeneutic) endeavor, and there are a variety of
images/interpretations of "curriculum:" as content/subject matter, as a program of
planned activities, as intended learning outcomes, as cultural reproduction, as
experience, as discrete tasks/concepts, as agenda for social reconstruction, and as
"currere."
B. "Curriculum" is a subdivision of education and is closely related to other subdivisions,
including: administration, supervision, educational foundations, educational policy
studies, program evaluation, research methodology, subject specialties, age/grade
specializations, equity agendas, educational psychology, and instructional
technology. Because "curriculum" is interrelated with many other subdivisions in
education, "curriculum" leadership requires ecological sensibility, i.e., awareness of
interdependence.
C. Curriculum studies includes five key domains: curriculum history, curriculum theory,
curriculum inquiry, curriculum change, and curriculum
design/development/implementation/evaluation.
D. There are four "perennial" deliberative categories associated, in particular, with
curriculum design considerations. These categories are derived from Ralph Tyler's
Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1949.)
1. Purpose.
a. Orientations: global, behavioral objectives, evolving (Deweyan ends-in-view),
expressive outcomes.
b. Criteria for selecting purposes: disciplines of knowledge, personal growth,
socialization, achievement, social change, procedural/administrative
concerns (representation, clarity, defensibility, consistency, feasibility, state
mandates).
2. Content or learning experiences.
a. Orientations: content as subject matter, content as learning activities,
content as learning experiences.
b. Criteria for selecting content: "great" ideas/structure of the disciplines,
learner interest, societal needs, utility, publisher decision, political
pressure, democratic action.
3. Organization.
a. Criteria for determining scope: separate subjects, broad field integrations,
projects, core, individual integrations.
b. Criteria for determining sequence: textual organization, teacher preference,
structure of disciplines, learner interest, learning hierarchies,
developmental appropriateness.
c. Types of learning environments: self-contained classroom,
departmentalization, non-graded, open-space, cooperative learning,
community-based, alternative schooling, non-school education.
d. Instructional considerations
(1). Teaching: science or art?
(2). Models of teaching: information processing, social interaction,
personal, behavioral (Joyce & Weil).
(3). Arrangements: large group, small group, individualization, team
teaching.
4. Evaluation.
a. Orientations: goal-based, goal-free, naturalistic (qualitative), educational
connoisseurship and criticism, teacher-as-researcher (action research),
theorizing, and responsive.
b. Criteria for judgment: use of quantitative or qualitative methods, short-term,
long-term, student focus, program focus, societal focus, accountability,
decision and action.
E. There are three curriculum camps. (Schubert calls them "paradigms in curriculum.")
1. On the Right: A technical, or "Tyler Rationale," understanding of curriculum-diligently turning administrative policy into unambiguous objectives, content,
organization, and evaluation.
2. In the Center: An experiential (constructivist) understanding of curriculum-resulting in the practice of community, collegial, and classroom dialogue over
questions of purpose, content, organization, and evaluation.
3. On the Left: A social reconstructionist understanding of curriculum (the rigorous
cultural study/critique of the sources of disempowerment) which results in the
practice of specific forms of liberatory pedagogy.
*
This overview adapted from Schubert, 1986.
Foundations for PRAXIS Projects in C&I: A Structural Analysis of the Relationship
Between Educational Practice, Theory, and Research
1. How is the "innovative practice" undertaken?
There is quite a contrast between technical practice and praxis in curriculum. The
former is ideologically and/or systemically unaware on important curricular matters.
Continuous unreflective technical practice (as distinct from episodically appropriate
technical practice) is associated with technocracy and the trivialization of curriculum
thinking. Since praxis is ideologically/systemically-aware curriculum practice, it is
reflexively guided by a well-developed normative frame of reference as to what is
curriculum work and how this work should proceed.
2. How is "theory" understood?
For example, theory from a "reconceptualist" curriculum studies perspective is quite
different than theory grounded in the Tyler Rationale perspective. The former type of
theory is a normative critique of (and possibly a particular social reconstructionist
position on) an oppressive aspect of culture. The latter type of theory is often
interpreted as "instructions to be applied." The critical curriculum question, of course,
concerning this latter type of theory is: what's the conception of power structuring these
instructions?
3. How is "research" conducted?
The notion of research as praxis is quite a contrast to traditional empirical research.
Research always emerges out of theory, supports particular types of educational
practice, and is itself a type of practice. A fundamental curriculum question, therfore,
pervades the relationship between educational research, theory, and practice: what is
valuable educational theory, what is valuable educational practice, and what is
valuable educational research? Thoughtful curriculum studies, ultimately, implies
that you can publicy defend the value of your theoretical, practical, and research
activities.
Peer Review Form
A. Was the "innovative practice" clearly described?
1--------2--------3--------4--------5
Comments:
B. Was the underlying structure supporting the practice clearly articulated?
1--------2--------3--------4--------5
Comments:
C. Was the theoretical rationale justifying the practice clearly explained?
1--------2--------3--------4--------5
Comments:
D. Was the (overt/tacit) definition of theory in the justification clearly analysed?
1--------2--------3--------4--------5
Comments:
E. Was the research program (past, present, future) supporting the innovative
practice clearly explained?
1--------2--------3--------4--------5
Comments:
F. Is the research program congruent with the innovative practice and its
theoretical justification?
1--------2--------3--------4--------5
Comments:
G. Was the practice of research clearly analyzed?
1--------2--------3--------4--------5
Comments:
FOUR QUESTIONS THAT DISCIPLINE CURRICULUM INQUIRY
C&I COURSE
QUESTION
C&I 77001 What is the relationship between the "best
educational practice" that interests me and
comprehensive, integrated (design/development/
enactment/evaluation) curriculum practice?
Textual Resources
Henderson, J. G., & Hawthorne, R. D. (In press). Transformative Curriculum Leadership.
New York: Macmillan.
Ornstein, A. C., & Hunkins, F. (1993). Curriculum: Foundations, Principles, and Theories
(2nd Edition). Boston: Allyn and Bacon
C&I 87001 What is the relationship between the "best
educational practice" that interests me and
the discursive (multitextual/multiepistemological) turn in contemporary curriculum studies?
Textual Resources
Cherryholmes, C. H. (1988). Power and Criticism: Poststructural Investigations in
Education. New York: Teachers College Press.
Jackson, P. W. (Ed.). (1992). Handbook of Research on Curriculum. New York:
Macmillan.
Pinar, W. F. (Ed.). (1988). Contemporary Curriculum Discourses. Scottsdale, AZ:
Gorsuch Scarisbrick.
Short. E. C. (1991). Forms of Curriculum Inquiry. Albany: State University of New York
Press.
Summer, 1992 issue of Theory into Practice: "Grounding Contemporary Curriculum
Thought."
C&I 80090 What is the relationship between the policy
implications of the "best educational practice" that interests me and a policy position
of pluralistic, participatory democracy in
education?
Textual Resources
Collins, R. (1992). Sociological Insight: An Introduction to Non-Obvious Sociology (2nd
Edition). New York: Oxford University Press.
Dewey, J. (1989). Freedom and Culture. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.
Elmore, R., & Sykes, G. (1992). "Curriculum Policy." In Jackson, P. W. (Ed.), Handbook
of Research on Curriculum. New York: Macmillan.
C&I 80090 What is the relationship between the "best
educational practice" that interests me and
systemic educational reform that is centered
on comprehensive, integrated curriculum practice and premised on power sharing (collaborative leadership)?
Textual Resources
Alexander, W. M. (1950). The Role of Leadership in Curriculum Planning. In V. E.
Herrick & R. W. Tyler (Eds.), Toward Improved Curriculum Theory (pp.100-109).
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Barth, R. S. (1990). "A Personal Vision of a Good School." Phi Delta Kappan, 71(7):
512-516.
Glickman, C. (1991). "Pretending Not to Know What We Know." Educational
Leadership, 48(8): 4-10.
Maeroff, G. I. (1993). "Building Teams to Rebuild Schools." Phi Delta Kappan, 74(7):
512-519.
Popkewitz, T. S. (1991). A Political Sociology of Educational Reform: Power/Knowledge
in Teaching, Teacher Education, and Research (Chapter 1: 13-44). New York:
Teachers College Press.
Schlechty, P. C., & Cole, R. W. (1992). "Creating 'Standard-Bearer Schools.'"
Educational Leadership, 50(2): 45-49.
Senge, P. M. (1990). "The Leader's New Work: Building Learning Organizations." Sloan
Management Review, 32(1): 7-23.
Sergiovanni, T. J. (1990). "Adding Value to Leadership Gets Extraordinary Results."
Educational Leadership, 47(8): 23-27.
Sizer, T. R. (1991). "No Pain, No Gain." Educational Leadership, 48(8): 32-34.
Snauwaert, D. T. (1993). Democracy, Education, and Governance: A Developmental
Conception. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Greyden Press Packet for C&I 80090, Spring, 1994
Alexander, W. M. (1950). "The Role of Leadership in Curriculum Planning." In V. E.
Herrick & R. W. Tyler (Eds.), Toward Improved Curriculum Theory (pp.100-109).
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Barth, R. S. (1990). "A Personal Vision of a Good School." Phi Delta Kappan, 71(7):
512-516.
Glickman, C. (1991). "Pretending Not to Know What We Know." Educational
Leadership, 48(8): 4-10.
Maeroff, G. I. (1993). "Building Teams to Rebuild Schools." Phi Delta Kappan, 74(7):
512-519.
Popkewitz, T. S. (1991). A Political Sociology of Educational Reform: Power/Knowledge
in Teaching, Teacher Education, and Research (Chapter 1: 13-44). New York:
Teachers College Press.
Schlechty, P. C., & Cole, R. W. (1992). "Creating 'Standard-Bearer Schools.'"
Educational Leadership, 50(2): 45-49.
Senge, P. M. (1990). "The Leader's New Work: Building Learning Organizations." Sloan
Management Review, 32(1): 7-23.
Sergiovanni, T. J. (1990). "Adding Value to Leadership Gets Extraordinary Results."
Educational Leadership, 47(8): 23-27.
Sizer, T. R. (1991). "No Pain, No Gain." Educational Leadership, 48(8): 32-34.
Anatomy of Good Critical Inquiry
Eisner (1991): "Criticism is inherently an act of judgment." (p.109)
1. Follow the general principles of critical reasoning [logic (deductive, inductive, and
dialectical reasoning); analytical philosophy]. Dewey: "active, persistent and careful
consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in light of the grounds
that support it and the further consequences to which it leads" (cited in Zeichner,
1981-82).
2. Follow the general principles of informed judgment (with reference to the need for
educational change):
a. Compose an illuminating description of what is wrong [Eisner's (1991) "referential
adequacy."] "In this sense criticism is utterly empirical" (Eisner, 1991, p.114.)
b. Create a compelling articulation of what should be [Jackson's (1992) "rhetoric."]
Good critical work is visionary, imaginative.
(These two principles address the question of WHY we should change.)
c. Engage in a penetrating analysis of the key forces preventing change and the
significant leverage points for change [Lewin's (1951) force-field analysis.]
(This principle addresses the question of WHAT we should do to change.)
d. Strengthen your argument with multiple sources of supportive material [Eisner's
(1991) "structural corroboration;" triangulation in ethnography.]
3. Thoughtfully apply a particular method or protocol of critical study:
a. Eisner's educational criticism.
b. Habermas's critical analysis.
c. Lather's critical praxis.
d. Sirotnik's critical inquiry.
e. Etc.
References
Eisner: The Enlightened Eye.
Habermas: Theory and Practice.
Jackson: Chapter 1 in the Handbook.
Lather: Getting Smart.
Lewin: Field Theory in Social Science.
Sirotnik: Chapter 13 in Forms of Curriculum Inquiry.
Zeichner: Interchange, 12(4): 1-22.
Emancipatory Constructivism: An Important Disciplinary Source for Curriculum Inquiries
I. What is emancipatory constructivism: Brief narratives highlighting the emancipatory
possibilities (personal, social, and transpersonal) in educational constructivism.
II. A critical look at the current constructivist policy environment: NCTE, NSSE, NCTM,
etc. Where are the emancipatory concerns? (The question positions this essay
left-of-center.)
III. Why "emancipatory constructivism" is a good "disciplinary source" for curriculum
studies.
A. The concept of "disciplinary source" in curriculum studies.
1. Pinar, et al. (in press): "A more serious problem, we believe, is the
apparent inability of the various sectors [in the curriculum field] to speak
to each other, to move into an independent 'middle' from their various
'corner' positions, and to develop a literature on curriculum at some
distance from sources in other disciplines. These issues of disciplinary
sources and the field's autonomy are not new." (p.17)
2. van Manen (1988): "Educational theorists exemplify their
unresponsiveness to pedagogy in their avoidance of it. They would
rather think of themselves as psychologists, sociologists, philosophers,
ethnographers, critical theorists, and so forth, than as educators
oriented to the world in a pedagogic way." (p.438)
3. Reid (1992): "Could curriculum inquiry reintegrate the new-found
humanism of the reconceptualists with the insistence on the public
nature of curriculum as subject matter which we find in the tradition
which they sought to replace?" (p.174)
B. Schwab's (1969) four "commonplaces" in curriculum: an important disciplinary
focus.
1. Partial vs. comprehensive curriculum inquiries: the question of disciplinary
breadth.
C. "Dialogism" (Henderson, 1992) in curriculum study: the question of
disciplinary depth.
1. Deconstructing the scientific/humanistic binary.
2. The tradition of eclecticism and textualization in curriculum studies
(Schwab (1969), Eisner (1992), Cherryholmes (1988), etc.)
3. Pinar, et al. (in press): "Like no other specialization in education,
influenced as it is by the humanities, arts, and social theory, curriculum
is a hybrid interdisciplinary area of theory, research, and institutional
practice." (p.19)
D. The study of "emancipatory constructivism" allows for disciplinary breadth and
depth.
IV. Why inquire into "emancipatory constructivism."
A. The value for curriculum theorizing.
B. The value for curriculum policy.
C. The value for curriculum practice.
V. Disciplined inquiries into "emancipatory constructivism."
BRIEF REFERENCES
Cherryholmes, Power and Criticism.
Eisner, Curriculum Ideologies. In Jackson's (Ed.), Handbook of Research on
Curriculum.
Henderson, Curriculum Discourse and the Question of Empowerment. Theory into
Practice.
Pinar, et al., Understanding Curriculum. (last chapter).
Reid, The State of Curriculum Inquiry. Journal of Curriculum studies.
Schwab, The Practical: A Language for Curriculum. School Review.
van Manen, The Relation between Research and Pedagogy. In Pinar's (Ed.),
Contemporary Curriculum Discourses.
CURRICULUM STUDY: POSSIBLE SPECULATIVE-HISTORICAL ESSAYS ON THE "SUBSTANTIVE
STRUCTURE" OF THE CURRICULUM "FIELD"
1. Balancing the four curricular commonplaces in the spirit of ideological
pluralism.
a. Schwab's practical essays.
b. Background: Posner's Analyzing the Curriculum; Eisner's The Educational
Imagination (3rd Edition); etc.
c. Future essays?
2. Integration of theory, research, and practice (praxis) in educational work.
a. Background: Short's "Features of Inquiry in a Practical Field" in his edited book,
Forms of Curriculum Inquiry. (See, in particular, his discussion of the partwhole dialectic.); Sirotnik's important policy studies. See, for example, his:
"The School as the Center of Change," in Sergiovanni and Moore's edited
book, In Schooling for Tomorrow; Goodlad's current policy work; Holmes Group
policy work; etc.
b. Teaching as praxis: Knoblauch & Brannon's Critical Teaching and the Idea of
Literacy.
c. Research as praxis: Lather's Getting Smart.
d. Future essays?
3. Practicing pedagogical artistry.
a. Background: Eisner: "There is no reason why there could not be a field called
educology, the study of education, just as there is a field of psychology, the
study of the psyche; or sociology, the study of the social world; or biology, the
study of life; or hematology, the study of blood. Levels of abstraction and the
subject matter of the discipline are arbitrary. We can slice the world in any way
that makes sense. I mention this because some people in the educational
community believe that there cannot be, in principle, a discipline of education.
Indeed, they regard the practice of education as an applied social science.
Apparently they believe that disciplines are natural entities rather than cultural
artifacts. I believe that the qualitative study of educational situations is one of
the most promising ways to create a discipline of education" [The Enlightened
Eye (pp.237-238)].
b. Future essays?
4. Engaging in inclusive critical work.
a. Background: Pinar et al's Understanding Curriculum.
b. Future essays?
5. Integrating excellence and equity in educational practice.
a. Background: Gardner's In Search of Excellence; the theme "unity-withindiversity;" discussions of democratic pluralism; multicultural education.
b. Future essays?
CURRICULUM AS A FIELD OF STUDY
A. The distinction between the curriculum "field" and an academic "discipline."
1. Schwab's (1962, 1964) analyses of the structure of a discipline.
a. "Substantive" criterion: basic concepts, principles or themes that organize
the more specific facts in the discipline. Posner (1992): "The substantive
structures are essentially the fundamental ideas of the discipline
that...direct...inquiry." (p.159)
b. "Syntactical" criterion: the procedures for establishing truth and validity.
These are "the rules for settling disputes between competing knowledge
claims" (Posner, 1992, p.159).
2. Curriculum is a "field."
a. Short's (1991) introduction to curriculum research, particularly his contrast
between the holistic nature of curriculum practice and the partial nature of
any particular form of disciplined inquiry.
b. Walker (1992): "I take curriculum to be a field of practice...in the root sense
of being capable of being resolved only through taking action in the
situation...." (p.109)
c. Pinar, et al. (in press): "Like no other specialization in education, influenced
as it is by the humanities, arts, and social theory, curriculum is a hybrid
interdisciplinary area of theory, research, and institutional practice." (p.19)
d. The curriculum field: a theory-research-practice arena that has a broad,
loosely-coupled substantive structure but no precise syntactical structure.
B. Substantive concerns in curriculum are based on one's vision of the "good" life and
how this good life is educationally cultivated. This latter concern is the focus of
curriculum practice.
"What knowledge is most worthwhile? Why is it worthwhile? How is it
acquired or created? These are three of the most basic curriculum
questions. They are the 'bottom line' of all activities commonly
associated with educational theory and practice." (Schubert, 1986, p.1)
C. This course is based on an interpretation of the substantive structure of the
curriculum field. It builds on six curricular concerns. (Underlying this interpretation
of curriculum "substance" is a particular normative view of the good life.)
1. Curriculum practices should be pedagogically-centered.
a. van Manen (1988): "Educational theorists exemplify their unresponsiveness
to pedagogy in their avoidance of it. They would rather think of themselves
as psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, ethnographers, critical
theorists, and so forth, than as educators oriented to the world in a
pedagogic way." (p.438)
(1). Metaphorically speaking, this is a balancing of the "heart" with the
"head." [van Manen's (1991) "pedagogical tact."]
(2). This also involves embracing a dialectic between the emancipatory
concerns of the personal/transpersonal and the socio-cultural
(Henderson & Hawthorne, in press).
b. Dewey (1938): the "educative experience."
2. Curriculum practices should be humanities-based (humanistic).
a. This particular substantive concern has strongly driven curriculum theorizing
since James Macdonald's pioneering reconceptualist work beginning in
1968.
b. Schwab's (1971) concept of the "arts of the eclectic."
c. Eisner (1991): "There is no reason why there could not be a field called
educology, the study of education.... I mention this because some people
in the educational community believe that there cannot be, in principle, a
discipline of education. Indeed, they regard the practice of education as
an applied social science. Apparently, they believe that disciplines are
natural entities rather than cultural artifacts. I believe that the qualitative
study of educational situations is one of the most promising ways to create
a discipline of education." (pp.237-238)
d. Curriculum practice is multi-dimensional, multi-layered: "curriculum is
intensely historical, political, racial, gendered, phenomenological,
autobiographical, aesthetic, theological, and international" (Pinar et al., in
press, p.3).
e. The "6C" professional development inquiry referent for reflective
practitioners: thoughtful educational work characterized by calling, caring,
creative, constructivist, critical, and centered qualities (Henderson, in
process).
3. Curriculum practices should be critically-based (in all senses of this term).
a. With reference to analysis of assumptions and consideration of
consequences.
b. With reference to "progressive" change.
c. With reference to "emancipatory" change.
d. Two critical referents: educational aesthetics and ethics (Henderson &
Hawthorne, in press.)
e. Key foundational sources for this critical work.
(1). Analytical philosophy (deductive and inductive logic, conceptual
analysis).
(2). Phenomenology/hermeneutics (includes existentialism).
(3). Marxism/neo-marxism/post-marxism.
(4). Structuralism/poststructuralism (includes the disciplines of semiotics
and cultural studies).
(5). Aesthetics.
(6). Moral philosophy (ethics).
4. Curriculum practices should be balanced in several ways.
a. Good judgment in the curriculum field results from deliberative artistry. This
requires following the principles of informed believing not certain, apodictic
knowing. (See Thompson on this distinction.) Philosophical hermeneutics
provides insight into the exercise of deliberative artistry (Henderson, in
process).
b. One key referent: Schwab's (1971) four curricular "commonplaces":
learners, teachers, subject matter, and milieu. (This referent requires
deliberations over the strengths and limitations of a wide range of
curriculum ideologies.)
c. Another referent: equity-excellence. (This referent raises many complex
issues concerning support for educational rights and legitimate merit.
Engaging in a balanced treatment of equity-excellence considerations
requires serious deliberations over the strengths and limitations of the
diverse educational beliefs that are located across the "right-center-left"
ideological spectrum in curriculum.)
d. Another referent: theory-practice-research. (This referent raises many
complex issues concerning educational empowerment and collaboration).
(1). Paris (1993): "...teachers' progress through curriculum making...is
better characterized as recursive and episodic movement through
the interdependent processes of observing, questioning, and
altering curriculum." (p.139)
(2). Knoblauch & Brannon (1993): "Praxis entails a theorizing of the 'work'
of teaching, but also a continual reconstituting of theory by appeal
to the concrete experience of practitioners. We're not talking here
about that other notion of 'theory' to which high school teachers, for
instance, are regularly exposed when outsiders, typically from
universities, drone on about 'residual learning outcomes' or 'the
acquisition of decoding skills' during sterile in-service meetings
designed to colonize the working class so that Madeline Hunter or
the publishers of basal readers can make more money. We don't
mean theory that is purchased with federal funding and
'disseminated' to docile faculties, theory pre-packaged with colorcoordinated transparencies and imposed by local superintendents.
This kind of theory merely allows 'managers,' whether politicians or
principals or university researchers, to retain control of education by
subordinating teachers, parents, students to a jargon, an esoteric
body of knowledge, and an agenda all essentially foreign to the
school world. Praxis doesn't descend from above (although much
'theory' does); it emerges from within. Praxis entails teachers' own
'representations' of what they do, standing at a critical remove both
from the hectic, daily routine of the classroom and also from the
alternative representations that cast teachers (students and their
parents too) exclusively as characters in other people's stories
rather than as subjects coauthoring the narrative. In true praxis,
teachers scrutinize for themselves the choices they make in the
classroom, remembering that they are constantly deciding what to
do and how to do it, albeit so routinely that they might well forget
the agency that suffuses their work. Theory reminds teachers that
they're acting by design--never merely their own design, too often
indeed mainly that of others, but hopefully in some measure a
design that they have helped to negotiate." (p.8)
5. Curriculum practices should be comprehensive (This is a strong focus in
C&I 67001 and 77001, "Fundamentals of Curriculum.")
a. There are many variations of the Tyler Rationale (TR). (See Tyler, 1949).
b. An alternative to this rationale: transformative curriculum leadership (TCL).
(See Henderson & Hawthorne, in press.)
TR
TCL
*Purpose
*Constructivist enactments (a
particular reflective practice)
*Experience *Critical reflection (on enactments)
*Design, development, and evaluation
*Organization that sustains constructivist enactments
*Creation of learning communities
*Evaluation *Practice of continuing inquiry
Agenda: Sup- Agenda: Support schools and
port top-down, their surrounding communities
standardized as centers of inquiry
implementation
6. Curriculum practices should be ecologically informed. (There should be
an awareness of interconnections).
a. "To portray curriculum as a field of inquiry and practice, it must be viewed in
its interdependence with other subdivisions of education. This invokes an
ecological perspective in which the meaning of anything must be seen as
continuously created by its interdependence with the forces in which it is
embedded. Thus, the character of curriculum shapes and is shaped by its
external relationships with knowledge perspectives, and practices in other
educational domains: administration, supervision, foundations, policy
studies, evaluation, research methodology, subject areas, educational
levels, teaching or instruction, special education, educational psychology,
and so on. Some of these areas have more direct relevance to curriculum
than others...." (Schubert, 1986,, pp.34-35) (A curriculum referent for this
awareness: the new UPR requirement: Ecology of Education and Human
Services.)
b. Curriculum studies overlaps with foundational studies. This awareness is
foregrounded in "reconceptualized" or critical curriculum theorizing:
D. Given the syntactical openness of the "field," how can curriculum research proceed?
1. This syntactical openness allows for the legitimacy of multiple forms of inquiry,
each of which possesses its own theoretical justification. See Short (1991).
2. Understanding these multiple forms of inquiry requires foundational breadth.
REFERENCES
Dewey, J. (1938). Experience & Education. New York: Collier Books.
Eisner, E. W. (1991). The Enlightened Eye: Qualitative Inquiry and the Enhancement of
Educational Practice. New York: Macmillan.
Henderson, J. G. (in process). Inquiry-Oriented Reflective Practice (2nd Edition). New
York: Macmillan.
Henderson, J. G., & Hawthorne, R. D. (in press). Transformative Curriculum Leadership.
New York: Macmillan.
Knoblauch, C. H., & Brannon, L. (1993). Critical Teaching and the Idea of Literacy.
Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.
Paris, C. L. (1993). Teacher Agency and Curriculum Making in Classrooms. New York:
Teachers College Press.
Pinar, W. F., Reynolds, W. M., Slattery, P., & Taubman, P. M. (in press). Understanding
Curriculum: A Comprehensive Introduction to Contemporary Curriculum Discourse.
New York: Peter Lang.
Posner, G. J. (1992). Analyzing the Curriculum. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Schubert, W. H. (1986). Curriculum: Perspective, Paradigm, and Possibility. New York:
Macmillan.
Schwab, J. J. (1962). The Concept of a Structure of a Discipline. Educational Record,
43: 197-205.
Schwab, J. J. (1964). Structure of Disciplines: Meaning and Significances. In Ford, G.
W., & Pugno, L. (Eds.), The Structure of Knowledge and the Curriculum. Chicago:
Rand McNally.
Schwab, J. J. (1971). The Practical: Arts of the eclectic. School Review, 79: 493-542.
Short. E. C. (1991). Forms of Curriculum Inquiry. Albany: State University of New York
Press.
Thompson. Teachers' Beliefs and Conceptions: A Synthesis of the Research. In D.
Grouws (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Mathematics Teaching and Learning. New
York: Macmillan.
Tyler, R. (1949). Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
van Manen, M. (1988). The Relation between Research and Pedagogy. In Pinar, W. F.
(Ed.), Contemporary Curriculum Discourses (pp.437-452). Scottsdale, AZ: Gorsuch
Scarisbrick.
van Manen, M. (1991). The Tact of Teaching: The Meaning of Pedagogical
Thoughtfulness. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Walker, D. F. (1992). Methodological Issues in Curriculum Research. In Jackson, P. W.
(Ed.), Handbook of Research on Curriculum (pp.98-118). New York: Macmillan.
A CRITICAL STUDY OF CONSTRUCTIVIST REFORM:
FOUR "SUBSTANTIVE" CURRICULUM PRINCIPLES
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
A. Constructivist reform: policy and practice.
B. The distinction between the "field" of critical curriculum studies and an academic
"discipline."
1. Schwab's (1962, 1964) analyses of the structure of a discipline.
a. "Substantive" criterion: basic concepts, principles or themes that organize
the more specific facts in the discipline. Posner (1992): "The substantive
structures are essentially the fundamental ideas of the discipline
that...direct...inquiry." (p.159)
b. "Syntactical" criterion: the procedures for establishing truth and validity.
These are "the rules for settling disputes between competing knowledge
claims" (Posner, 1992, p.159).
2. The "field" of critical curriculum studies.
a. The starting point for critical study: "I take curriculum to be a field of
practice...in the root sense of being capable of being resolved only through
taking action in the situation..." (Walker, 1992, p.109).
b. Through a critical analysis of curriculum practice, underlying principles of
"good" curriculum work can be identified.
c. This critical inquiry is informed by multidisciplinary, foundational studies.
(1). Short's (1991) introduction to curriculum research, particularly his
contrast between the holistic nature of curriculum practice and the
partial nature of any particular form of disciplined inquiry.
(2). Pinar, et al. (in press): "Like no other specialization in education,
influenced as it is by the humanities, arts, and social theory,
curriculum is a hybrid interdisciplinary area of theory, research, and
institutional practice." (p.19)
d. The field of critical curriculum studies: a specialized area with a
substantive structure (key foundational principles for curriculum practice)
but no precise syntactical structure.
C. Four foundational principles: curriculum practice should be pedagogic, deliberative,
comprehensive, ecological.
D. An overview of the foundational studies that informs these four principles.
1. Short's (1991) Forms of Curriculum Inquiry.
2. Pinar et al. (in press): "...curriculum is intensely historical, political, racial,
gendered, phenomenological, autobiographical, aesthetic, theological, and
international" (p.3).
E. An overview of the book: critical analysis of constructivist reform guided by one of the
above four principles followed by an examination of the foundational studies that
inform that particular principle.
SECTION 1. THE PEDAGOGIC PRINCIPLE
CHAPTER 1.
A. van Manen (1988): "Educational theorists exemplify their unresponsiveness to
pedagogy in their avoidance of it. They would rather think of themselves as
psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, ethnographers, critical theorists, and so
forth, than as educators oriented to the world in a pedagogic way." (p.438)
B. Henderson & Hawthorne's (1995) discussion of pedagogically-centered curriculum
practice: design that supports development, enactment, and evaluation.
C. The pedagogic critique of constructivist reform.
D. Preparation of, and support for, pedagogic professionals.
CHAPTER 2: Foundational study that informs this critical work: phenomenology, hermeneutics,
aesthetics, spiritual inquiries, etc.
SECTION 2. THE DELIBERATIVE PRINCIPLE
CHAPTER 3.
A. Defining curriculum deliberation.
"[Curriculum deliberation...is neither deductive nor inductive. It is
deliberative. It cannot be inductive because the target of the method is
not a generalization or explanation, but a decision about action in a
concrete situation....It cannot be deductive because it deals with the
concrete case and not abstractions from cases, and the concrete case
cannot be settled by mere application of a principle, for almost every
concrete case falls under two or more principles, and is not, therefore, a
complete instance of either principle....Deliberation is complex and
arduous. It treats both ends and means and must treat them as mutually
determining one another....It must try to identify the desiderata in the
case. It must generate alternative solutions...(Schwab, 1978, p.318)."
B. Critical features of curriculum deliberation:
1. Educational means and ends are not confused. Confounding these two elements
of curriculum deliberation can lead to faddism, presentism, lack of critical
insight, limited moral imagination, an engineering mentality, and so on.
2. Educational ends are clarified in the context of other goals (societal,
administrative, legal, etc.) Without this clarification, the deliberations are not
curricular.
3. Means-end interplay is encouraged. Without this encouragement, practical
intelligence can turn into technical rationality--a narrow type of deliberation
frequent in "top-down" organizations. Some people do the thinking, while
others do the implementing (thought and action are separated). See Schon
(1983) on this important topic.
4. There is an openness to broader, non-technical, visionary considerations. This
openness is fostered through the liberalization and humanization of educational
professionals. This is, in part, what Schwab (1971) calls "eclectic artistry." See
Beyer et. al (1989) and Henderson (in press).
5. Interactive deliberative forums are encouraged. Without such encouragement,
thought-action integration remains personal and private. See Henderson &
Hawthorne (1995).
C. The deliberative critique of constructivist reform.
D. Preparation of, and support for, deliberative professionals.
CHAPTER 4: Foundational study that informs this critical work: hermeneutics, action
research, etc.
SECTION 3. THE COMPREHENSIVE PRINCIPLE
CHAPTER 5.
A. Two alternative frameworks.
TR
TCL
*Purpose
*Constructivist enactments (a
particular reflective practice)
*Experience *Critical reflection (on enactments)
*Design, development, and evaluation
*Organization that sustains constructivist enactments
*Creation of learning communities
*Evaluation *Practice of continuing inquiry
Agenda: Sup- Agenda: Support schools and
port top-down, their surrounding communities
standardized as centers of inquiry
implementation (Henderson & Hawthorne, 1995)
(Tyler, 1949)
C. The comprehensive critique of constructivist reform.
D. Preparation of, and support for, comprehensive professionals.
CHAPTER 6: Foundational study that informs this critical work: historical and philosophical studies,
pragmatics, etc.
SECTION 4. THE ECOLOGICAL PRINCIPLE
CHAPTER 7. (Two chapters?)
A. Discussion of the principle.
1. Schubert (1986):
To portray curriculum as a field of inquiry and practice, it must be
viewed in its interdependence with other subdivisions of education.
This invokes an ecological perspective in which the meaning of
anything must be seen as continuously created by its interdependence
with the forces in which it is embedded. Thus, the character of
curriculum shapes and is shaped by its external relationships with
knowledge perspectives, and practices in other educational domains:
administration, supervision, foundations, policy studies, evaluation,
research methodology, subject areas, educational levels, teaching or
instruction, special education, educational psychology, and so on.
Some of these areas have more direct relevance to curriculum than
others. (pp.34-35).
2. Bowers (1993):
The scope of the environmental/population crisis brings into question
the adequacy of Western culture and the assumptions upon which it
rests. Of particular concern are the cultural assumptions undelying the
belief systems of the developed countries whose technologies and
patterns of consumer-oriented living are depleting the world's energy
resources at an alarming rate. The core values of this belief system-abstract rational thought, efficiency, individualism, profits--were at one
time believed to be the wellspring of individual and social progress. But
in societies such as the United States and Canada, where these values
have evolved to the point of creating technologically oriented cultures,
the sense of progress is being badly eroded. (p.3)
C. The ecological critique of constructivist reform.
D. Preparation of, and support for, ecologically-aware professionals.
CHAPTER 8: Foundational study that informs this critical work: historical, philosophical, and cultural,
studies etc.
AFTERWORD: CLOSING REFLECTIONS
References
Beyer, L. E., Feinberg, W., Pagano, J., & Whitson, J. A. (1989). Preparing teachers as
professionals: The role of educational studies and other liberal disciplines. New
York: Teachers College Press.
Bowers, C. A. (1993). Critical essays on education, modernity, and the recovery of the
ecological imperative. New York: Teachers College Press.
Henderson, J. G. (in process). Inquiry into reflective teaching: The humanization of
your educational practices (2nd Ed.). Columbus: Merrill/Prentice Hall.
Henderson, J. G., & Hawthorne, R. D. (1995). Transformative curriculum leadership.
Columbus: Merrill/Prentice Hall.
Pinar, W. F., Reynolds, W. M., Slattery, P., & Taubman, P. M. (in press).
Understanding curriculum: A comprehensive introduction to contemporary
curriculum discourse. New York: Peter Lang.
Posner, G. J. (1992). Analyzing the Curriculum. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Schon, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. New
York: Basic Books.
Schubert, W. H. (1986). Curriculum: Perspective, paradigm, and possibility. New York:
Macmillan.
Schwab, J. J. (1962). The concept of a structure of a discipline. Educational Record,
43: 197-205.
Schwab, J. J. (1964). Structure of disciplines: Meaning and significances. In Ford, G.
W., & Pugno, L. (Eds.), The structure of knowledge and the curriculum. Chicago:
Rand McNally.
Schwab, J. J. (1971). The practical: Arts of the eclectic. School Review, 79: 493-542.
Schwab, J. J. (1978). The practical: A language for curriculum. In I. Westbury & N. J.
Wilkof, (Eds.), Joseph J. Schwab: Science, curriculum, and liberal education (pp.287321). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Short. E. C. (1991). Forms of curriculum inquiry. Albany: State University of New York
Press.
Tyler, R. (1949). Basic principles of curriculum and instruction. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
van Manen, M. (1988). The relation between research and pedagogy. In Pinar, W. F.
(Ed.), Contemporary curriculum discourses (pp.437-452). Scottsdale, AZ: Gorsuch
Scarisbrick.
Walker, D. F. (1992). Methodological issues in curriculum research. In Jackson, P. W.
(Ed.), Handbook of research on curriculum (pp.98-118). New York: Macmillan.
CRITICAL FEATURES OF CURRICULUM DELIBERATION:
1. EDUCATIONAL MEANS AND ENDS ARE NOT CONFUSED. CONFOUNDING THESE TWO
ELEMENTS OF CURRICULUM DELIBERATION CAN LEAD TO FADDISM, PRESENTISM,
LACK OF CRITICAL INSIGHT, LIMITED MORAL IMAGINATION, AN ENGINEERING
MENTALITY, AND SO ON.
2. EDUCATIONAL ENDS ARE CLARIFIED IN THE CONTEXT OF OTHER GOALS (SOCIETAL,
ADMINISTRATIVE, LEGAL, ETC.) WITHOUT THIS CLARIFICATION, THE DELIBERATIONS
ARE NOT CURRICULAR.
3. MEANS-END INTERPLAY IS ENCOURAGED. WITHOUT THIS ENCOURAGEMENT,
PRACTICAL INTELLIGENCE CAN TURN INTO TECHNICAL RATIONALITY--A NARROW
TYPE OF DELIBERATION FREQUENT IN "TOP-DOWN" ORGANIZATIONS. SOME PEOPLE
DO THE THINKING, WHILE OTHERS DO THE IMPLEMENTING. (THOUGHT AND ACTION
ARE SEPARATED).
4. THERE IS AN OPENNESS TO BROADER, NON-TECHNICAL, VISIONARY CONSIDERATIONS.
THIS OPENNESS IS FOSTERED THROUGH THE LIBERALIZATION AND HUMANIZATION
OF EDUCATIONAL PROFESSIONALS.
5. INTERACTIVE DELIBERATIVE FORUMS ARE ENCOURAGED. WITHOUT SUCH
ENCOURAGEMENT, THOUGHT-ACTION INTERGRATION REMAINS PERSONAL AND
PRIVATE.
CURRICULUM INQUIRY ASSIGNMENT
CURRICULUM INQUIRY ASSIGNMENT
THE DECONSTRUCTIVE GROUND OF THE WHOLE(W)-PART(P)
PROBLEMATIC IN DISSERTATION RESEARCH
A. Constructing the "deconstructive ground."
1. Norris (1987): "Derrida's version of [the] Kantian argument makes writing (or
'arche-writing') the precondition of all possible knowledge. ...His claim is a priori
in the radically Kantian sense: that we cannot think the possibility of culture,
history or knowledge in general without also thinking the prior necessity of
writing. ...Thought is deluded if it thinks to comprehend the nature of writing
from a standpoint securely outside or above the field that writing so completely
commands." (p.95)
2. Norris (1987): Derrida's most typical deconstructive moves (pp.18-27).
a. Dismantle conceptual oppositions.
b. Seek out "aporias" (blindspots indicating tensions between rhetoric and
logic.)
c. Examine the margins of a text. (This is where the unsettling forces are at
work.)
d. Avoid succumbing to deconstruction as a concept or method.
e. Look for intertextuality (the logic of the supplement).
f. Look for forgotten metaphors.
g. Be aware of the "logocentric" bias in Western thinking. [This is the possibility
of "pure, self-authenticating knowledge...." (p.23)]
h. Don't simply invert cardinal oppositions. Instead, practice mutual
interrogation.
i. Critically analyze "philosophemes." These are "ways of thinking which by
now have impressed themselves so deeply on our language that we take
them as commonsense truths and forget their specific (philosophic)
prehistory." (p.26)
3. Derrida (1984) summarizes deconstructive reasoning as follows: "My central question
is: how can philosophy as such appear to itself as other than itself, so that it can
interrogate and reflect upon itself in an original manner?" (p.98)
References
Derrida, J. (1984). Interview with Richard Kearney. In R. Kearney (Ed.), Dialogues with
contemporary continental thinkers (pp.83-105). Manchester University Press
Norris, C. (1987). Derrida. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
B. The W-P problematic in dissertation research:
W
P
P
W [P ]
W
W
The general dissertation problem
(implicated in positionality/
intertextuality)
P
The specific foregrounded
dissertation problem (in
part, identified through
conceptual analysis)
P
The specific methodology
for studying the specific
dissertation problem (developed in relation to the
W -P problematic)
W [P ]
The universe of inquiry
discourses-practices fraught
with epistemological positionality/intertextuality
W
The universe of thoughtful
educational endeavors (including reflective practices, innovations,
evaluations, narratives,
and developments.) These
endeavors are implicated
in positionality/intertextuality.
Curriculum Theory
(This handout draws heavily on chapter 3 in C. Marsh and G. Willis, Curriculum:
Alternative Approaches, Ongoing Issues (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Merrill/Prentice Hall,
1995). References to this chapter will be abbreviated as follows: M&W.)
1. The purpose of curriculum theory: "In Zais's (1976) view, the purpose of a curriculum
theory is describing, predicting, and explaining curricula phenomena in ways that
serve as policy for guiding practical curriculum activities" (M&W, p.77)
2. Can anyone create a viable curriculum theory?
There are several reasons for such unimpressive advances in the
development of curriculum theories, the major one being that the
experienced curriculum--and particularly what we have referred to
as its "lived" qualities--is never sufficiently regular, orderly, and
periodic to enable principles and explanations to be developed.
The curriculum in use in classrooms is so idiosyncratic that it is
extremely difficult, if not impossible, to come up with anything close
to universal generalizations (McCutcheon, 1982, 1985; Molnar,
1992). M&W, p.77
3. Three alternatives to the establishment of a general, all-purpose curriculum theory.
a. Establish key questions that need to be answered by a curriculum theory:
Kliebard (1977) suggested that the fundamental question for any
curriculum theory is, "What should we teach?" This question then
leads us to consider other questions:
Why should we teach this rather than that?
Who should have access to what knowledge?
What rules should govern the teaching of what has been
selected?
How should the various parts of the curriculum be interrelated
in order to create a coherent whole? (M&W, p.78)
b. Develop models of curriculum (Vallance, 1982):
...although they may lack statements of rules and principles
that theories include, [models] can identify the basic elements
that must be accounted for in curriculum decisions and can
show their interrelationships. M&W, p.78
c. Shift to the process of curriculum theorizing:
Theorizing is thus a general process involving individuals in three
distinct activities:
*Being sensitive to emerging patterns in phenomena
*Attempting to identify common patterns and issues
*Relating patterns to one's own teaching context.... Emphasis
falls on the ongoing process, not on any particular result, and
the ongoing process links thought with action--and the
planned curriculum with the enacted curriculum and both with
the experienced curriculum. M&W, p.80
4. Forms of curriculum theorizing.
a. Good references: Macdonald, 1971; Eisner & Vallance, 1974; McNeil, 1977;
Pinar, 1978; Reid, 1981.
b. Two classification systems.
(1). To be used in Henderson and Kesson (Eds.), Constructivist Reform Informed by
Curriculum Theorizing.
*Critical-Dialogic (multi-textual)
*Systems Considerations (There are different types of systems,
which can overlap with one another.)
*Comprehensive-Deliberative (subject matter, individual, society;
Schwab's "commonplaces")
*Critical-Social Analytic (class, gender, race, etc. issues)
*Critical-Attunement (the mytho-poetic: autobiography, narrative,
aesthetics, spirituality, etc.)
(2). Reid (1981) has a four-part classification approach, which can be adapted as
follows: Systems-Supporting Theorizers (SST), Systems-Supporting Explorers (SSE),
Systems-Opposing Theorizers (SOT), and Systems-Indifferent Explorers (SIE).
Working with the three languages of emancipation outlined in Henderson & Hawthorne
(1995)--personal, transpersonal, and social, an ideologically right-center-left continuum
can be conceptualized and linked to Reid's classification approach:
LEFT
CENTER
RIGHT
SST
SSE
SOT
SIE
COURSE OVERVIEW
Curriculum theorizing defined: broad, liberal, and diverse "critical thinking" projects
that can inform curriculum practices.1 These practices can include design,
development, teaching (critically reflective), evaluation, organizational development, and
continuing inquiry activities (Henderson and Hawthorne, 1995). This is a "hermeneutic"
understanding of curriculum theorizing.
Thematic organization of curriculum theorizing: curriculum study can be thematically
and chronolgically organized into five categories: systems, deliberation/reflection, critical
social analysis, mythopoetics, and poststructuralism. (In poststructural terms,
curriculum theorizing is understood in the context of pluralistic discourses (Pinar,
Reynolds, Slattery, and Taubman, 1995). This point of view foregrounds a "textualized"
understanding of curriculum, i.e., curriculum as historical text, as political text, etc.)
Curriculum research: diverse forms of inquiry that inform curriculum practice. In
poststructural terms, these forms of inquiry "bleed into one another," i.e, they are
"interdisciplinary" (Short, 1991).
Thematic organization of curriculum research: curriculum research can be organized
into seventeen, overlapping "forms" of inquiry (Short, 1991). This classification strategy
must be understood in the context of inquiry "textualization" (Lenzo, 1995).
REFERENCES
Henderson, J. G., & Hawthorne, R. D. (1995). Transformative curriculum leadership.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Merrill/Prentice Hall.
Lenzo, K. (1995). Validity and self-reflexivity meet poststructuralism: Scientific ethos and
the transgressive self. Educational Researcher, 42(4), 17-23,45.
Pinar, W. F., Reynolds, W. M., Slattery, P., & Taubman, P. M. (1995. Understanding
curriculum: An introduction to the study of historical and contemporary curriculum
discourses. New York: Peter Lang. (P)
Short. E. C. (1991). Forms of Curriculum Inquiry. Albany: State University of New York
Press. (S)
The referent for "critical thinking" is all
possible forms of reasoning. These forms are not limited by
the closed ideology of "logicism." See K. S. Walters,
"Introduction: Beyond Logicism in Critical Thinking," in K.
S. Walters (Ed.), Re-Thinking Reason: New Perspectives in
Critical Thinking (pp.1-22). Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1994.
1
WHAT IS YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF "CURRICULUM THEORIZING?"
A. Curriculum
}
Curriculum Practice } Diverse Interpretations
Curriculum Theorizing}
B. The instructional strategy in C&I 87001 to help you think through your own
interpretation of "curriculum theorizing" (CT):
1. Model work on a particular interpretation of CT (by presenting some background
material on an edited book project). The modeling:
CT:
Good Life
=
(Strong Democracy)
Educational Environment
(Constructivist Experiences)
(This interpretation of CT is argued by James Macdonald and can be
viewed as a curricular refinement of Deweyan "educational theorizing.")
2. This type of CT is facilitated by engagement in a continuous "hermeneutic circle"
of expanding understanding: a back-and-forth movement between specific
"constructivist" practices and five theoretical perspectives drawn from the 78
year history of CT:
Perspective
Starting Point
Systems
Bobbitt's The Curriculum (1918)
Deliberation
Schwab's 1st "practical" essay (1969)
Cultural Criticism ASCD's "Radical Caucus" (1969)
Mythopoetics
Macdonald's "A Transcendental Developmental Ideology of Education" (1974)
Dialogics
Cherryholmes' Power and Criticism:
Poststructural Investigations in
Education (1988)
3. Your essay inquiry: a "constructivist learning exercise designed to help you
explore what "CT" means to you. The two referents for this learning activity:
Schubert's "Philosophical Inquiry: The Speculative Essay" and the constructivist
view of learning in chapter 1 of Reflective Teaching: The Study of Your
Constructivist Practices.
4. Another highlighted referent for CT in C&I 87001: Pinar et al's interpretation of
CT as an "extraordinarily complicated conversation" involving "historical,
political, racial, gendered, phenomenological, autobiographical, aesthetic,
theological, and international" dialogics or subtextual elaboration. (pp.847-848)
A HERMENEUTIC STRATEGY FOR CURRICULUM RESEARCH
1. Why does the curriculum field contain multiple forms of inquiry? Short (1991):
Because many of the questions that give rise to inquiry in a realm of
practical activity are holistic rather than analytic in character, most of the
processes defined by the academic disciplines are not well suited for
answering these kinds of questions. The disciplines require that
questions be conceived and worded in a particular way such that they are
amenable to the forms of inquiry associated with each discipline. This is
well and good if the inquiry is being conducted for its own sake, that is,
just to see what the answers to the questions are. But if there is a realworld imperative to have a particular practical question answered,
rewording the question to fit the inquiry tools available is really not
acceptable. One should search for aproaches to inquiry other than these
disciplinary ones and match the inquiry processes to the demands of the
actual questions being asked.... (pp.13-14)
2. The forms of curriculum inquiry can take many shapes, some of which are more
precise with reference to a particular disciplinary tradition and some of which are
more general. Short (1991):
Many of the disciplinary forms of inquiry may be used in practical inquiry,
but in addition, multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary forms of inquiry may
also be used. (p.13)
a. Ethnographic inquiry is grounded in several specific disciplines.
b. Aesthetic inquiry is more general and has a "transdisciplinary" grounding.
3. The forms of curriculum inquiry operate with different degrees of procedural
specificity. (Think of a continuum with broad philosophical principles at one end
and precise procedural protocols at the other end.)
a. Ethnographic and narrative inquiry are more procedurally specific.
b. Phenomenological and hermeneutic inquiry, though grounded in general
principles, allow for more procedural interpretation.
4. There is a binary distinction that can be imposed on the complex interplay of forms of
curriculum inquiry: the contrast between quantitative and qualitative research
methods. (The sciences are generally sources for quantitative methods, while the
arts and humanities are generally sources for qualitative methods. The social
sciences are generally sources for both quantitative and qualitative methods.) Each
side of this somewhat artifical binary distinction builds on a problematic
epistemological "foundation."
5. The problematic "foundation" of quantitative research methods: the historicalpolitical contingencies of nomological nets. Cherryholmes (1988) writes:
Construct validity points toward identity between an attribute or quality
being measured and a theoretical construct. ...Construct validity...[is]
always more than matching constructs to measurements. Locating
constructs within sets of lawlike statements is also involved. Lawlike
statements related to each other form theoretical schemata and theories.
In order to validate research operations, one must state at least some
lawlike statements in which a construct occurs and relate them, along
with their key constructs, to other lawlike statements. Then it is
determined whether measurements of the constructs are related to each
other as hypothesized. Construct validation occurs in the context of a
nomological net, a set of related lawlike statements. This creates an
interesting paradox, because nomological nets change. Identity,
consistence, coherence, definition, and stability are valued and pursued
in the context of change and instability. (pp.100-101)
a. A certain "post-positivist" analytical acuity can help one cope with this
problematic foundation. [See Phillips' (1987) brief discussion of Karl Popper's
(1968) work, i.e., conjecturing on the falisfiability of truth claims.]
6. The problematic "foundation" of qualitative research: the inherent paradoxicalness
of qualitative sensibility. Kalamaras (1994):
Recent scientific discoveries parallel a rhetorical paradigm founded on
the philosophies of poststructuralism. ...Nonconceptual or mystical
understanding has the capacity to hold paradoxical tendencies
comfortably, as it both begins in a condition of paradox and yields an
awareness in which such tendencies reciprocally reside. This capacity is
meaningful in that it grants the meditator an understanding of the
interconnected or--to borrow a term from Bakhtin--"interanimate" aspect
of the universe, as well as her own status as an empowered participant in
this reciprocity. Now I want to argue that many Eastern mystical texts,
such as those that describe the paradoxicalness of sound and silence,
parallel the generative condition of paradox that the quantum model [in
physics] reveals, depicting a concept of origins as a highly fluid condition
and, in particular, as psychic identification with continual transaction.
(p.172)
a. A certain critical-poststructural playfulness can help one cope with this
problematic foundation. [See Lather (1993) on "transgressive validity" and
Lenzo (1995) on the "transgressive self."]
7. A strategy for coping with these two problematic foundations: practice a particular
hermeneutic that plays specific questions/research methodologies off a broader
background dialogics.
REFERENCES
Cherryholmes, C. H. (1988). Power and Criticism: Poststructural Investigations in
Education. New York: Teachers College Press.
Kalamaras, G. (1994). Reclaiming the Tacit Dimension: Symbolic Form in the Rhetoric
of Silence. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Lather, P. (1993). Fertile obsession: Validity after poststructuralism. The Sociological
Quarterly, 34(4), 673-689.
Lenzo, K. (1995). Validity and self-reflexivity meet poststructuralism: Scientific ethos and
the transgressive self. Educational Researcher, 24(4), 17-23,45.
Popper, K. (1968). Conjectures and Refutations. New York: Harper Torchbooks.
Short. E. C. (Ed.) (1991). Forms of Curriculum Inquiry. Albany: State University of New
York Press.
A CRITICAL-NARRATIVE HERMENEUTIC INQUIRY ASSIGNMENT
1. Foreground a specific "C&I" question out of a subtextually complex background
curriculum problem. Tell the story of how you constructed (semi-constructed?) this
first foregrounding/backgrounding.
2. In the background of the interplay of relevant "forms of curriculum inquiry,"
foreground two or more contrasting "forms" that would facilitate inquiry into your
specific "C&I" question, . Tell the story of how you constructed (semi-constructed?)
this second foregrounding/
backgrounding.
3. Critically analyze three or more articles and/or books (or portions of books or other
type of material) for each selected "form." Your analysis should be based on as
many of the following criteria as are applicable to your two
foregrounding/backgrounding constructions (semi-constructions):
a. Utility.
b. Openness/flexibility.
c. Concreteness/precision.
d. Comprehensiveness.
e. Insightfulness.
f. Other salient criteria.
A CORE C&I SEQUENCE
Fundamentals of Curriculum
Curriculum thinking focuses on designing coherent educational experiences for the
good life. The dominant paradigm in the curriculum field, the Tyler Rationale, is based
on a managed understanding of the good life. Critically examine a curriculum topic
associated with this understanding and/or critically examine a curriculum topic
associated with an alternative humanistic understanding based on the notion of
"emancipatory constructivism" (Henderson and Hawthorne, 1995). Design a humanistic
curriculum leadership plan for a specific organizational setting.
Theory and Research in Curriculum
You have a C&I interest that has a particular autobiographical, practical, and
theoretical context. Curriculum theorizing has evolved from instructional management
thinking into an "extraordinarily complicated conversation" (Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery, &
Taubman, 1995, p.848). How can this sophisticated conversation inform your interest?
Stated another way, what is the evolving curricular framework for your C&I interest?
You have a C&I question that you want to explore for your dissertation. This
question is embedded in a "complicated" curricular context. In figure-ground terms, the
question is the foreground and the curricular context is the background. With
reference to Short's (1991) seventeen "forms" of inquiry and/or your own categorization
of curriculum research, what two curriculum inquiry methods might usefully guide your
questioning process? Critically compare these two "research methodology" approaches
with reference to your inquiry focus and its background curricular context.
Residency Seminar
The above two Theory and Research assignments promote constructivist learning
for deep understanding. Assuming that this type of learning was our country's referent
for the means to and the end-in-view of the "good life," how would "educational
expertise" be interpreted? What are the implications of your response to this question
for a C&I Ph.D.?
An Advanced Doctoral Seminar: Critical Inquiry in Curriculum studies
Educational praxis literally means critically-informed practice. Assuming that the
referents for "critical" are authoritative "truth saying" processes (as in "Following these
thinking, feeling, and/or doing processes are critical for constructing trustworthy
discourses/practices"), what are the necessary valid processes for a particular curricular
(educating-for-the-good-life) aim? For example, what are the valid processes for
constructivist learning for deep understanding? Stated another way, what is "truthful"
thinking/feeling/doing for someone committed to deep understanding? This
humanistic question requires a pluralistic comprehension of validity that encompasses
the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. It raises issues of
pragmatic/experimental (construct) validity, existential authenticity, literary insight,
aesthetic feeling, tacit knowing, political-ethical valuing, and skeptical analysis.
REFERENCES
Henderson, J. G., & Hawthorne, R. D. (1995). Transformative curriculum leadership.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Merrill/Prentice Hall.
Pinar, W. F., Reynolds, W. M., Slattery, P., & Taubman, P. M. (1995). Understanding
curriculum: An introduction to the study of historical and contemporary curriculum
discourses. New York: Peter Lang.
Short. E. C. (1991). Forms of Curriculum Inquiry. Albany: State University of New York
Press.
Democratic Humanism
I.
Democratic humanism possesses at least three characteristics: an outlook (an
argument for the “good life”), a set of values, and an understanding of inquiry
(Kurtz).
II. The historical backdrop of democratic humanism as an argument for the “good life.”
A. Classical humanism.
B. Renaissance humanism.
C. The rise of science and the decline of humanism (Snow).
D. Secular humanism (Kurtz)
E. Democratic humanism (Eisner, Gardner, et al).
III. The values of democratic humanism.
IV. Democratic humanism as an understanding of inquiry.
A. Democracy and freedom through responsible inquiry (Henderson & Hawthorne,
Henderson).
B. Necessary but not sufficient interpretations of inquiry: a certain eclectic artistry
(Schwab).
1. Inquiry as meaning making.
a. Constructivism: the mechanics of active meaning making through
integrating past experiences, present purposes, and subject matter
inquiry (Fosnot).
b. Humanism: deeper resonance, confirmation of “best self” (Noddings), the
romance of integrating the sacred and the profane (Redfield), the need
for a strong liberal arts background.
2. Inquiry as pragmatic action (collaborative action research)
a. Dewey’s How We Think and the concept of reflective decision making.
b. A particular deliberative cycle: plan, act, observe, and reflect.
3. Inquiry as playful dialogical reasoning: critically examining one’s thoughts
and feelings in a multiperspective ideological context (Gadamer, Bakhtin et
al).
4. Inquiry as transformative aesthetics.
a. Dewey’s Art as Experience.
b. The joy of attaining “higher” states of awareness: the romance of
becoming, being-as-becoming (Heidegger et al).
c. The teacher-student play of consciousness: the question of educative
synergy (Dees).
5. Inquiry as the ethics of co-agency: power with vs power over (Kriesberg,
Hutchison).
IV. Praxis informed by democratic humanism.
A. The concept of praxis: individual critique, social critique, change through
education, constraints (Fay).
B. Democratic humanistic praxis.
Five “Public” Morals for the “Strong” Democrat
Barber (1984)

Passionate, continuous, expansive inquiry growth in a context of interdependence—of
loving connection—with ALL living things. (Holonomy not autonomy)
Greene(1988): “That is what we shall look for as we move: freedom
developed by human beings who have acted to make a space for
themselves in the presence of others….(p.56)
Garrison (1997): “Finite creatures can grow wiser only if they share
perspectives, for seeing things from the standpoint of others also allow us
to multiply perspectives. That is why Dewey thought dialogues across
differences were essential for those who desire to grow. When a single
standpoint excludes others, the result is a distorted view of reality. Monism
is dogmatism.” (P.15)

Open-hearted faith (or deep feeling) that this is a good way to live. (Not a “true belief;” the
virtue of ambiguity)
Carlson (1997): “Richard Rorty (1989) working in the Deweyan tradition,
talks of the pragmatic need to construct “fuzzy utopias,” visions of a better,
more humane future that are deliberately vague and imprecise yet provide
us with some basis for advancing democratic agendas and some hope for
a better tomorrow. He argues that to ask for more clarity and detail is, to
use an extreme example, like ‘asking a fourth-century Athenian to propose
forms of life for the citizens of a twentieth-century industrial society.’” (p.13)
Garrision (1997): “There is, however, a natural alternative to Platonism for
those who prefer to live in this imperfect world of becoming rather than the
perfect world of Being. Instead of appealing to supernatural Forms, let us
simply use our mortal imagination to construct hypotheses from our
background knowledge and use them to initiate and continue the inquiry.
Hypotheses are testable and may be refined in everyday practice.” (p.6)

Acceptance of the personal and social (subtextual) complexity of this way of living.
Lather (1996): “Sometimes we need a density that fits the thoughts being
expressed. In such places, clear and concise plain prose would be a sort
of cheat tied to the anti-intellectualism rife in U.S. society that deskills
readers (Giroux, 1992).” (p.528)
Garrison (1997): “If values were all homogeneous, commensurable, and
measured along a single ruler, then value decisions would just be a matter
of cost-benefit calculation of the quantities involved in any moral decision.
That would be instant cookbook rationality. Our moral lives would be as
simple as the recipes recommended by some bureaucratic school
administrators or the technocratic test makers who label our children. The
need is real, but the promise is false. Even the best administrators, and
there are many, struggle at considerable personal and professional risk
against state and federal rules, measures, and calculations to respond
thoughtfully to the needs of individual students and teachers.” (p.17)

Practice a sophisticated part/holistic deliberative artistry informed by the developmental
end-in-view of the strong democrat.
Short (1991): “Because many of the questions that give rise to inquiry in a
realm of practical activity are holistic rather than analytic in character, most
of the processes defined by the academic disciplines are not well suited for
answering these kinds of questions.” (p.13)
Snauwaert (1993): “From the perspective of this tradition [of the
developmental conception of democracy], human development rather than
efficiency is the ultimate standard upon which systems of governance
should be chosen and evaluated. Development, in this tradition, is
conceived broadly as the all-around growth of the individual, which may
include the development of moral, intellectual, spiritual, and creative
capacities. The above theorists maintain that the realization of this value is
contingent upon active participation in the decision-making processes of
institutions.” (p.5)

Continuous critical awareness of the complex negative/positive dialectic of democratic
emancipation.
Henderson, Hutchison, & Newman (in press): “Maxine Greene’s
comprehensive inquiry into the dialectic of freedom provides additional
insight into how the curriculum study field can be further ‘democratized.’
As we noted above, from the beginning sentences in her book, The
Dialectic of Freedom, Maxine Greene is careful to stay critically positioned
within the negative/positive dynamics of human freedom. She continuously
acknowledges both the constraints to, and possibilities of, democratic
liberation and, in doing so, she constantly refers to the intimate relationship
between personal and social freedom. When she examines questions of
human ‘emancipation,’ we not only know what she is against but what she
is for.”
References
Barber, B. R. (1984). Strong democracy: Participatory politics for a new age. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Carlson, D. (1997). Making progress: Education and culture in new times. New York:
Teachers College Press.
Garrison, J. (1997). Dewey and eros: Wisdom and desire in the art of teaching.
New York: Teachers College Press.
Giroux, H. (1992). Language, difference and curriculum theory: Beyond the politics of clarity.
Theory into Practice, 31, 219-227.
Greene, M. (1988). The dialectic of freedom. New York: Teachers College Press.
Henderson, J. , Hutchison, J., & Newman, C. (in press). Maxine Greene and the
current/future democratization of curriculum studies. In W. F. Pinar (Ed.), (Title not yet
finalized). London: Falmer Press.
Lather, P. (1996). Troubling clarity: The politics of accessible language. Harvard Educational
Review, 66, 525-545.
Rorty, R. (1989). Education without dogma: Truth, freedom, and our universities. Dissent,
36(2), 198-203.
Short. E. C. (1991). Introduction: Understanding curriculum inquiry. In E. C Short (Ed.), Forms
of Curriculum Inquiry (pp.1-25). Albany: State University of New York Press.
Snauwaert, D. T. (1993). Democracy, education, and governance: A developmental
conception. Albany: State University of New York Press.
GUIDING CRITERIA FOR OUR CRITICAL EXAMINATION
OF DIFFERING FORMS OF CURRICULUM INQUIRY

Paul’s (1994) definition of being “critical”:
“Critical thinking…is defined in the strong sense as inescapably connected with discovering both that
one thinks within ‘systems’ and that one continually needs to strive to transcend any given ‘system’ in
which one is presently thinking.” (p.182)

Criteria for being “critical” based on this definition:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
Challenge basic beliefs and assumptions.
Challenge “univocal” systems of thought.
Recognize contradictions between conflicting views.
Develop logical arguments that lead to specific conclusions (practice deductive reasoning).
Imagine competing interests and opposing points of view.
Shift conceptual problems and judgments of value.
Identify personal philosophies and ideological commitments.
Reflect on interests and purposes implicit in behavior.
Judge relative credibility of different arguments.
Note differing “philosophical” and “anthropological” broad issues.
Construct dialectical alternatives to the issue(s) under examination.
Think with many points of view, frames of reference, and worldviews.

Consider these twelve being critical criteria in light of the following “critical” comment:
“Derrida’s and Foucault’s exposure of universalizing logic as a fraud and their rejection of masculinist
univocality were especially attractive to feminist thinkers” (Nye, 1995, p.30).

An example of this type of “being” critical—examining the topic of educational “constructivism” via four
dominant teaching ideologies:
“The four teacher-characters will first introduce themselves. Following these brief biographical
sketches, they will discuss the content of their constructivist beliefs and the critical process they use to
clarify their beliefs. In terms of the language we used in chapter 1, these teacher-characters will present
a synopsis of their personal-professional knowledge on educational constructivism, and they will
describe their distinctive critical style, their way of critically examining their teaching” (Henderson,
1996, p.25)

In the spirit of being “critical,” you may want to compare the above criteria with the five criteria for being
“critical” as someone committed to the strong democracy of John Dewey and Maxine Greene:
1.
Examine the general features and value of facilitating continuous inquiry growth toward increased
interdependence.
Articulate or seek articulations of feelings about this love of growth and growth into love.
Explore the “historical, political, racial, gendered, phenomenological, autobiographical, aesthetic, theological, and
international” (Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery, and Taubman, 1995, p.847) and other dimensions of this love of growth
and growth into love.
Examine the part-whole practical artistry of facilitating continuous inquiry growth toward increased
interdependence.
Explore the “emancipatory” questions associated with this educational artistry—both with reference to constraints
and possibilities.
2.
3.
4.
5.
References
Henderson, J. G. (1996). Reflective teaching: The study of your constructivist practices (2nd ed.). Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Merrill/Prentice Hall.
Nye, A. (1995). Philosophy & feminism: At the border. New York: Twayne
Paul, R. W. (1994). Teaching critical thinking in the strong sense: A focus on selfdeception, world views, and a dialectical mode of analysis. In K. S. Walters (Ed.),
Re-thinking reason: New perspectives in critical thinking (pp.181-198). Albany, NY:
State University of New York Press.
Pinar, W. F., Reynolds, W. M., Slattery, P., & Taubman, P. M. (1995). Understanding curriculum:
An introduction to the study of historical and contemporary curriculum discourses. New York:
Peter Lang.
HISTORY OF CURRICULUM STUDIES IN THE UNITED STATES




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
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

OVERVIEW
Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery, and Taubman (1995) on the field of curriculum studies: “Fields
are comprised of people, sometimes extraordinary, often ordinary people, whose job it is to
write material that complies with the rules and principles other people—their predecessors—
have established as reasonable. (pp.3-4)… [T]he general field of curriculum…[is] the field
interested in the relationships among the school subjects as well as issues within the
individual school subjects themselves and with the relationships between the curriculum and
the world….” (p.6)
Macdonald (1975) describes the basic task of curriculum studies as thinking about how to
educate for the “good life.” He makes this point by drawing an analogy between curriculum
theorizing and John Dewey’s philosophizing: “[In light of] Dewey’s comment that educational
philosophy was the essence of all philosophy because it was ‘the study of how to have a
world,’ curriculum theory…might be said to be the essence of educational theory because it is
the study of how to have a learning environment” (Macdonald, 1975) p.12).
The precise beginning of curriculum studies in the United States is difficult to identify due to
the heritage of “curriculum study” ideas going back to Greco-Roman times. However, many
American curriculum scholars would choose 1918 as a convenient starting point. Using this
date as a referent, the history of curriculum studies in the United States (and possibly
Canada) can be divided into pre-1918 “material” and post-1918 “material.”
IMPORTANT CURRICULUM STUDY WORK: PRE-1918
Influential curriculum study material during the Greco-Roman period can be located in the
works of: Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Plutarch, and Quintillian.
Influential curriculum study material during the early Christian period can be located in the
works of: Augustine and Aquinas.
Influential curriculum study material during the Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment
periods can be located in the works of: da Feltre, Sylvio, Erasmus, Elyot, Montaigne, Luther,
Calvin, Loyola, Vives, Rabelais, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes,
Spinoza, Comenius, Petty, and Locke.
Influential curriculum study material from the Enlightenment period to early twentieth century
can be located in the works of: Franklin, Rousseau, Basedow, Pestalozzi, Fichte, Harris, Kant,
Hegel, Herbart, Froebel, Jefferson, Mann, Emerson, Spencer, Harris, Hall, Parker, Dewey,
James, Peirce, Thorndike, Judd, Eliot, Rice, and Montessori.
[For a brief overview of all of the above individuals’
curriculum study contributions, see Schubert, 1986, chapter 3.]
IMPORTANT CURRICULUM STUDY WORK: POST-1918
Bobbitt’s The Curriculum (1918): the formal beginnings of the social efficiency
movement in curriculum studies (the “management paradigm”).
Kilpatrick’s “The Project Method” (1918): a concrete embodiment of Deweyan curricular
philosophy.
The National Educational Association’s (NEA) Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education
(1918): the development of an expanded version of classical curriculum tailored to the needs
of modern life.
1920’s work on “scientific curriculum making” includes: Bonser’s The Elementary School
Curriculum (1920), Snedden’s Sociological Determination of Objectives in Education (1921),
Charters’ Curriculum Construction (1923), Bobbitt’s How To Make a Curriculum (1924), and
Harap’s The Techniques of Curriculum Making (1928).
As a counterbalance to the social behaviorists in the 1920’s, there were the “Deweyan”
progressives centered at Teachers College, Columbia University. This group of curriculum
scholars included: Kilpatrick, Strayer, Rugg, Hopkins, and Bode.
Between 1924 and 1927, the social behaviorists and progressives attempt to achieve a
consensus on central curricular issues. Their attempt results in the publication of The
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Foundations of Curriculum Making, the 26th Yearbook of the National Society for the
Study of Education (NSSE). This two-part book was published in 1927. Participants
included: Bagley, Bobbitt, Bonser, Charters, Counts, Courtis, Horn, Judd, Kelly,
Kilpatrick, Works, and Rugg.
Counts’ Dare the School Build a New Social Order (1932): a key “social reconstructionist” text.
Hopkins’ Integration, Its Meaning and Application (1937): an attempt to bring together
scholars from diverse disciplines in order to address the problem of curriculum balance.
Dewey’s Experience and Education (1938): an attempt to establish critical distance from the
progressive education movement led by the Progressive Education Association (PEA).
Bode’s Progressive Education at the Crossroads (1938): “If progressive education can
succeed in translating its spirit into terms of democratic philosophy and procedure, the future
of education in this country will be in its hands…. If it persists in one-sided absorption in the
individual pupil, it will…be left behind. (pp.43-44)
1938 rift in the PEA between those who favored child study and those who advocated
social reconstruction.
Aikin’s The Story of the Eight Year Study (1942): longitudinal study unequivocally
demonstrating the value of progressive educational ideas.
Caswell and Campbell’s Curriculum Development (1935): the first of the curriculum
“synoptic” texts—a tradition of curriculum study publications that continues to the
present day.
Tyler’s Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction (1949): the definitive word on
“curriculum development” to the present day.
Bestor’s The Restoration of Learning (1955): an influential curriculum study text during the
back-to-basics movement of the 1950’s.
Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Cognitive Domain (1956): an influential
guide for systematic curriculum planning.
Conant’s The American High School Today (1959): an important argument for the
comprehensive high school—big is good, not “small is beautiful.”
Bruner’s The Process of Education (1960): a key curriculum text in the post-Sputnik reform
movement that focused on the relationship between selected “disciplines” of knowledge and
Cold War social and political ends.
Eisner’s “Instructional and Expressive Objectives” (1969) and Schwab’s “The
Practical: A Language for Curriculum” (1969): important “Chicago” challenges to the
Tyler Rationale.
Pinar organizes the University of Rochester Conference in 1973 around the theme of
the possible reconceptualization of the curriculum studies field. Participants include:
Starratt, Bateman, Greene, Huebner, Macdonald, Pilder, and Pinar. This conference is
considered to be the beginning of the movement to establish curriculum studies as a
site for “critical” work in education.
Macdonald and Zaret’s edited book, Schools in Search of Meaning [1975 Association for
Supervision and Curriculum Development’s (ASCD) yearbook]: a key curriculum text that
raises political and socioeconomic issues.
Pinar’s Curriculum Theorizing: The Reconceptualists (1975): the central text in the movement
to rethink curriculum studies as the “critical” understanding of educational practice.
Huebner’s and Macdonald’s many publications during the 1970’s and 1980’s introduce
aesthetic and theological concerns into “critical” curriculum studies.
The Journal of Curriculum Theorizing (now called JCT: An International Journal of Curriculum
Studies) is established in 1978.
Aoki’s Toward a Curriculum in a New Key (1979): an influential Canadian publication that
argues for a multi-perspective approach to curriculum development and evaluation linked to a
“deep understanding” of curriculum studies.
Cherryholmes” Power and Criticism: Poststructural Investigations in Education (1988): an
influential text on the poststructural/postmodern understanding of curriculum studies.
Jackson’s edited Handbook of Research on Curriculum (1992): the first official handbook for

the field of curriculum studies. This is a project of the American Educational Research
Association (AERA).
Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery, and Taubman’s Understanding Curriculum: An Introduction
to the Study of Historical and Contemporary Curriculum Discourses (1995): this text,
which becomes an important “synoptic” text for contemporary curriculum studies,
understands curriculum studies as a textually layered “historical, political, racial,
gendered, phenomenological, autobiographical, aesthetic, theological, and
international” conversation that the “older generation chooses to tell the younger
generation” (Pinar et al, 1995, p.847).
[A historical footnote: if engaging in “curriculum development” is viewed as not
implementing the Tyler Rationale but, rather, initiating and sustaining a democratic culture
of continuing collaborative inquiry focusing on the “artistry” of teaching (Eisner, 1994;
Henderson, 1992 and 1996), then school and other institutionally-based curriculum leaders
will need to undertake a continuous investigation of contemporary curriculum studies. For
an introduction to a democratic understanding of curriculum leadership, see Henderson
and Hawthorne, 1995 and 2000. For guidance on how democratic curriculum leaders can
acquire a deeper understanding of their reform practices with the help of contemporary
curriculum studies, see Henderson and Kesson (Eds.), 1998.]
SELECTED REFERENCES
Eisner, E. W. (1994). The educational imagination: On the design and evaluation of school
programs (3rd ed.). New York: Macmillan.
Henderson, J. G. (1992). Reflective teaching: Becoming an inquiring educator. New York:
Macmillan.
Henderson, J. G. (1996). Reflective teaching: The study of your constructivist practices (2nd ed.).
Englewood Cliffs, NY: Merrill/Prentice Hall.
Henderson, J. G., & Hawthorne, R. D. (1995). Transformative curriculum leadership. Englewood
Cliffs, NY: Merrill/Prentice Hall.
Henderson, J. G., & Hawthorne, R. D. (2000). Democratic curriculum leadership (2nd ed.).
Englewood Cliffs, NY: Merrill/Prentice Hall.
Henderson, J. G., & Kesson, K. R. (Eds.). (1998). Understanding democratic curriculum
leadership. New York: Teachers College Press.
Macdonald, J. B. (1975). Curriculum theory. In W. Pinar (Ed.), Curriculum theorizing: The
reconceptualists (pp.5-13). Berkeley, CA: McCutchan.
Pinar, W. F., Reynolds, W. M., Slattery, P., & Taubman, P. M. (1995). Understanding
curriculum: An introduction to the study of historical and contemporary curriculum
discourses. New York: Peter Lang.
Schubert, W. H. (1986). Curriculum: Perspective, paradigm, and possibility. New York: Macmillan.
ETHICAL-POLITICAL
Implications of an “Intertextual” (Pinar)
and “Critical Pragmatic” (Cherryholmes)
Understanding of “Curriculum”

At the point of application, this understanding challenges progressive
educators to embrace a rigorous educational ethics and politics informed by
“strong democratic” discourse-practices (Dewey; Greene). The highly
developmental referent for strong democracy is a life of authentic inquiry
in a context of dialogue with diverse others.

The educational ethics is informed by an “intertextual” interplay (a
deconstructive analysis) of Aristotle’s basic taxonomy:


Poesis, as in authentic self-making (Heidegger, Greene,
Garrison) informed by a multi-intelligent (Eisner) humility. “The
more you know through multiple ‘forms of representation,’ the less
you know.”

Phronesis, as in practical wisdom informed by a sophisticated,
critical-layering (Pinar) and a deep respect for developmental
diversity.

Praxis, as in critically-informed practice informed by diverse
poststructural projects but guided by an overriding emancipatory
concern for communicative rationality (Habermas, Cherryholmes).

Techne, as in the educational artistry (Garrison, Eisner) of
facilitating dialogical inquiry learning.
The educational politics is guided by the insight that this educational ethics
must be daily nurtured in a polis—in a specific political/local community
context (Arendt). This understanding of politics (with its requirement for
politically-wise leadership) is based on progressive educators’ public
recognition that dialogical inquiry learning is a basic RIGHT of citizens who
choose to “deepen” their democratic living. These progressive educators
publicly recognize and celebrate this RIGHT—even though it is not, as yet,
encoded into law.

The creation of Democratic Curriculum Leadership (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Merrill/Prentice Hall, 2000) will be informed by the above “ethical-political
horizon.” For more on the continuing study of democratic curriculum
leadership through a focus on reflexive systems, curriculum deliberation,
cultural criticism, and educational mythpoetics, see J. G. Henderson & K. R.
Kesson’s Understanding Democratic Curriculum Leadership (New York:
Teachers College Press, 1998). For more on the ethics and politics that
informs this continuing study, see R. J. Bernstein’s The new constellation:
The ethical-political horizons of modernity/postmodernity (Cambridge, MA:
The MIT Press).
COURSE OVERVIEW
Curriculum Design
Text Support
*Deweyan Growth: This course is organized around
John Dewey’s understanding of
“educative” experience.
Garrison
*Praxis: There is an “ethical-political horizon”
embedded in this growth—a participatory,
developmental understanding of democracy—
that informs the practice of this growth.
Garrison
Eisner
*Poesis: There is a “poetry” to this growth that
involves the freedom to engage in continuing, meaningful inquiry, multi-intelligent
creativity, and dialogue with diverse others.
Eisner
*Phronesis: The practice of this growth requires a
wisdom that is informed by a poststructural (multi-textual) curriculum
“conversation.”
Cherryholmes
Pinar
*Assignment #1
 Examine diverse forms of inquiry as sources for
the construction of a dissertation methodology.

Practice a way of “being critical” that is traditionally associated with dissertation defenses.
*Assignment #2

Explore a form of continuing inquiry.

Publicly share this exploration in a suitable
form of representation.
Short
Greyden Press
Greyden Press
C&I 87001
RUBRIC FOR “FORMS OF CURRICULUM INQUIRY” PAPER
General parameters: two or more forms of inquiry; 5-10 written pages; two
contemporary sources for each form of inquiry; and APA format. For the latter
parameter, see Ph.D. Handbook on 3-day reserve or download handbook from
<oas.educ.kent.edu>.
Exemplary Response ... A
Presents a clear, coherent, and elegant comparative analysis of the pros and cons
of two or more forms of curriculum inquiry (with respect to a potential dissertation
problem statement). Identifies all the important elements of the selected forms of
inquiry; includes examples and counterexamples; and carefully supports all
arguments.
Competent Response ...B
Presents a reasonably clear comparative analysis. Identifies all the important elements
of the selected forms of inquiry. All arguments are fairly well-supported.
Minor Flaws But Satisfactory ...C
Completes the assignment satisfactorily: all the basics are covered. Comparative
analysis is relatively perfunctory. Argumentation is thin.
Fails to Complete Assignment ... D
Comparative analysis is spotty and lacking in coherence. Basic elements of the
assignment are missing.
C&I 87001: Background Information for Second Assignment

Excerpt from Henderson (1999):
The final step in my work with graduate students is to encourage the enactment of a TCL praxis,
which is defined as a critically-informed practice. This complex professional development step requires
students to question their TCL practices in light of critical curriculum theorizing and, in reciprocal fashion, to
interrogate their theoretical studies in light of their practical TCL experiences. As Seigfried (1996) notes,
“realigning theory with praxis” (p. 21) is a central feature of the emancipatory work of the “classical”
American pragmatic philosophers, a group that includes Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, Josiah
Royce, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead. This work requires both a critical knowledge of the root
causes of human oppression, exploitation, and domination—the term, “critical,” is derived from the Greek,
krisis, referring to a judgment as to what constitutes the source of a disease—and progressive action to
ameliorate and/or eradicate these root causes.
Pinar et al. (1995) present a wide range of curriculum theory projects that can serve this critical
pragmatic purpose. Their book is organized around emancipatory work on the political, racial, gender,
phenomenological, poststructural, autobiographical, aesthetic, theological, institutional, and international
subtexts of curriculum practice. They celebrate the multitextual understanding that results from this
comprehensive curriculum study:
Thanks to political scholarship we are clear that we must see the curriculum as an
ideological document in the reproduction of power. …To understand curriculum politically
leads us to racial and gender investigations (and they lead back to politics), as both sets
of representations function to distribute knowledge and power differentially.
Phenomenological, aesthetic, autobiographical and theological experience both
expresses political privilege and undermines it. International understandings of
curriculum help us to bracket the taken-for-granted, and the intertextual understanding of
curriculum that the reconceptualized field offers can lead us to ask, with greater
complexity and sophistication, the traditional curriculum questions: what knowledge is of
most worth? What do we make of the world we have been given, and how shall we
remake ourselves to give birth to a new social order? (p.866)
Henderson and Kesson (1999) provide concrete guidance on how transformative curriculum
leaders can tap into this rich, multidimensional tradition of curriculum theorizing. After providing an
overview of transformative curriculum reform guided by democratic ideals, this edited book introduces four
curriculum theory projects that foster TCL praxis. Each project provides specific guidance on how a
particular form of “emancipatory” curriculum theorizing can inform day-to-day democratic curriculum work.
The first project addresses curriculum deliberation and focuses on how to free educational stakeholders
from top-down, rational management mandates through on-the-site collaborative decision-making. The
second project addresses reflexive systems and focuses on how to free educational stakeholders from the
limited, linear rationality of bureaucratic planning and control (an artifact of the modernist paradigm in
education) through “interpretive” systems thinking informed by chaos, complexity and narrative theorizing.
The third project addresses democratic cultural criticism and focuses on how educational stakeholders can
challenge unjust and dominating power structures. The fourth project addresses educational mythopoetics
and focuses on how educational stakeholders can free themselves from the alienating and disenchanting
effects of modern technical and bureaucratic life. Collectively, these four projects address the three
liberatory dimensions of curriculum understanding that have been discussed in this chapter: deliberation,
interpretation, and contemplation.
[Seigfried, C. H. (1996). Pragmatism and feminism: Reweaving the social fabric. Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press.]

Parameters for second assignment:
Given my normative referent for “best” educational practice: ______, I feel this practice
can be transformed into a praxis by teachers and other curriculum stakeholders if they engage in
the following forms of disciplined “critical” theorizing/inquiry/knowing: ______.

An additional application of this parameter (as presented in Transformative Curriculum
Leadership, chapter 2):
Given my normative referent for “best” educational practice: facilitating students’
transformation into lifelong learners who think for themselves, who cultivate their unique “voices”
and authentic expressive “styles,” and who are critically informed on diversity, civility and equity
issues, I feel this practice can be transformed into a praxis by teachers if they engage in the
following forms of disciplined “critical” theorizing/inquiring/knowing: creative, caring, critical,
contemplative, and collegial reflective inquiries as an integral part of their daily teaching work.
A Paradigm Shift in Curriculum Studies?
Deweyan
(Dewey’s “My
Pdeagogic
Creed, 1897)
C&T Techne
(Bobbitt’s The
Curriculum,
1918); Tyler’s
“Rationale,”
1949)
C&T Praxis
(Social
Reconstructio
nists: Rugg,
Counts,
Brameld, et
al., 1920’s1940’s);
Critical
Theorists:
Apple, Giroux,
et al.)
C&T
Phronesis
(Schwab’s
“Practical
Essay #1,
1969)
C&T Poesis
(Macdonal’s
mythopoetics;
Eisner’s
Expressive
Objectives,
Huebner’s
transcendenc
e, 1960’s +)
C&T Multitextual
Critical
Discourse
(Cherryholme
s’ Power and
Criticism,
1988; Pinar’s
Contemporary
Curriculum
Discourses &
Understandin
g Curriculum
An Historical Pattern to the above Timelines?



Rational (Scientific/Positivistic) Management: 1918-1969
Curriculum Reconceptualization/Critical Curriculum Discourses: 1969-Present
Democratic Pragmatism: 2000+???
Westbrook (1991):
Creating the conditions in the classroom for the development of democratic character was
no easy task, and Dewey again realized he was placing heavy demands on teachers.
"The art of thus giving shape to human powers and adapting them to social service," he
said, "is the supreme art; one calling into its service the best of artists;...no insight,
sympathy, tact, executive power is too great for such service." Perhaps because his
philosophy of education called upon teachers to perform such difficult tasks and placed
such a heavy burden of responsibility on them, Dewey was given to unusual flights of
rhetoric when he spoke of their social role in the 1890s.· Occasionally he even called up
the language of the social gospel he had otherwise abandoned. Summing up his
pedagogic creed in 1897, he declared: "I believe... that the teacher is engaged, not simply
in the training of individuals, but in the formation of the proper social life. I believe that
every teacher should realize the dignity of his calling; that he is a social servant set apart
for the maintenance of proper social order and the securing of the right social growth. I
believe that in this way the teacher always is the prophet of the true God and the usherer
in of the true kingdom of God." As this testament suggests, Dewey's educational theory
was far less child-centered and more teacher-centered than is often supposed. (p.108)
Westbrook, R. B. (1991). John Dewey and American democracy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press.
THE FIELD OF CURRICULUM STUDIES
A Central Question of This Scholarly Field:
How Can We Chart and Enact an Educational Course to the “Good” Life?

Examining this question through the “poetics” of education: Elliot Eisner’s The Educational
Imagination: On the Design and Evaluation of School Programs.

Examining this question through a “multi-textual” conversation: William Pinar et al.’s
Understanding Curriculum: An Introduction to the Study of Historical and Contemporary
Curriculum Discourses.

Examining this question through a sophisticated practical deliberation: Edmund Short’s edited
Forms of Curriculum Inquiry.

Examining this question through multiple inquiry modes (archetypes?): James Henderson
and Kathleen Kesson’s proposed Freeing the Curriculum Mind: A Challenge for Educators in
Societies with Democratic Ideals.
On the Concept and Psychology of Archetypes
John Martins (in process): “[Pearson] sees each archetype as being both a guide on a journey
and a stage within the journey. One archetype is the dominating force in one’s life at a time;
however, one may experience any archetype in a fleeting manner on any day. That is to say, all
archetypes can potentially be experienced in consciousness at any time, but a specific archetype
dominates one’s consciousness at a time. The dominant archetype is related to one’s stage of
development.” [c.f., C. S. Pearson (1991). Awakening the Heroes Within: Twelve Archetypes to
Help Us Find Ourselves and Transform Our World. San Francisco: Harper.]
Seven Curriculum Inquiry Modes
(In the Language of Those Who Initially Constructed Forms of Inquiry)
1. Techne (craftsmanship; technical rationality). People who have developed their curriculum
consciousness in this way (people who have been technically mindful during curriculum
inquiry): Isocrates, Madeline Hunter…. An example of this curriculum mindfulness: Hunter’s
Mastery Teaching. Other individuals and artifacts as exemplified in the Pinar et al.’s historical
overview of the (mainly North American) curriculum study field:_________________________
2. Theoria (act of viewing; contemplating). People who have developed their curriculum
consciousness in this way (people who have been contemplatively mindful during curriculum
inquiry): Plato, Dewey…. An example of this curriculum mindfulness: Dewey’s “My
Pedagogical Creed.” Other individuals and artifacts as exemplified in the Pinar et al.’s
historical overview of the (mainly North American) curriculum study field:_________________
3. Phronesis (practical wisdom). People who have developed their curriculum consciousness in
this way (people who have been deliberatively mindful during curriculum inquiry): Schwab,
Reid, McCutcheon…. An example of this curriculum mindfulness: Schwab’s “The Practical: A
Language for Curriculum.” Other individuals and artifacts as exemplified in the Pinar et al.’s
historical overview of the (mainly North American) curriculum study field:_________________
4. Praxis (ethical/political practice). People who have developed their curriculum consciousness
in this way (people who have been critically mindful during curriculum inquiry): Counts, Apple,
Giroux…. An example of this curriculum mindfulness: Apple’s Official Knowledge:
Democratic Education in a Conservative Age. Other individuals and artifacts as exemplified in
the Pinar et al.’s historical overview of the (mainly North American) curriculum study
field:_______________________________________________________________________
5. Poesis (creatively calling something into existence; art as experience). People who have
developed their curriculum consciousness in this way (people who have been expressively
mindful during curriculum inquiry): Dewey, Greene, Eisner, Barone…. An example of this
curriculum mindfulness: Eisner’s “Instructional and Expressive Objectives: Their Formulation
and Use in Curriculum.” Other individuals and artifacts as exemplified in the Pinar et al.’s
historical overview of the (mainly North American) curriculum study field:_________________
6. Polis (a voluntary association of praxis participants). People who have developed their
curriculum consciousness in this way (people who have been collegially mindful during
curriculum inquiry): Dewey, Linda Darling-Hammond, Ann Lieberman…. An example of this
curriculum mindfulness: Thomas Sergiovanni’s Moral Leadership: Getting to the Heart of
School Improvement. Other individuals and artifacts as exemplified in the Pinar et al.’s
historical overview of the (mainly North American) curriculum study field:_________________
7. Dia-logos (the law/word of the in-between; doubt; irony; skepticism; deconstruction). People
who have developed their curriculum consciousness in this way (people who have been
textually mindful during curriculum inquiry): Gorgias, Plato (?), Pinar…. An example of this
curriculum mindfulness: Cherryholmes’ Power and Criticism: Poststructural Investigations in
Education. Other individuals and artifacts as exemplified in the Pinar et al.’s historical
overview of the (mainly North American) curriculum study field:________________________
Rationale for Working with All Seven Inquiry Modes

What if the curriculum study question at the beginning of this handout had a “Deweyan”
flavor? For example what if the organizing question of the curriculum study field was: How
can we educationally experience democratic ideals in our pluralistic, information-age society?
Pursuing such a question requires a multidimensional mindfulness—working with all seven
inquiry modes. No curriculum inquiry mode can be dominated, distorted, misrepresented,
falsified, and/or misread by any other mode.

Is this why the central question animating Dewey’s scholarship (the relationship between
democracy and educational experience) has never been “fully” integrated into the curriculum
study field?

Does this lack of integration suggest both “human development” and “political” problems in
the curriculum study field?

Could it be that the degree to which efficient management/administrative concerns (Pinar et
al.’s “institutional text”) impacted curriculum studies (e.g., some? all? of Franklin Bobbitt’s
work) in the 1918-1968 period, techne was the dominant curriculum inquiry mode?

Could it be that the “reconceptualist” period of curriculum studies (1968-1988) was too
dominated by praxis and poesis curriculum inquiry modes? Is this still the case today?

Could it be that Short’s edited book is too dominated by the phronesis curriculum inquiry
mode?

Could it be that Pinar et al’s book is too dominated by the dia-logos curriculum inquiry mode?
AN EDUCATIONAL END IN VIEW
Being curricularly mindful means having a moral compass for one’s educational activities.
Consider this play on the Latin term: Curriculum study is an inquiry-based “weighing in” on the
best educational way.
What if the following “fuzzy utopia” (Carlson, 1997) was our moral compass?
I-Thou
(Loving Relation)
Self “Growth”
Other “Growth”
Power-With
(Democratic Relation)
Educating with this moral compass in mind is a “multi-dimensional” challenge that requires a
sophisticated effort involving the daily practice of the following ancient inquiry “modes”
(Henderson, in process):

Being contemplatively (morally, philosophically) mindful in an inquiring way

Being dialogically (sub-textually, deconstructively) mindful in an inquiring way

Being technically (craftily) mindful in an inquiring way

Being deliberatively (advisedly) mindful in an inquiring way

Being critically (liberationally) mindful in an inquiring way

Being poetically (aesthetically, spiritually, existentially) mindful in an inquiring
way

Being collegially (reciprocally) mindful in an inquiring way
A Multidimensional Inquiry Grid
Uni-dimensional
Multidimensional
Non-Inquiry
Ideologue
Conservative Classical Education
Inquiry
Specialized “Academic” Focus
Deweyan Democratic Education
References
Carlson, D. (1997). Making progress: Education and culture in new times. New York: Teachers
College Press.
Henderson, J. G. (in process). Reflective teaching: From craft to artistry. Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Merrill/Prentice Hall.
A MULTIDIMENSIONAL CURRICULUM STUDY CHECKLIST
Educating for continuing growth in a pluralistic society from an I-Thou (confirming personal
relations) and power-with (democratic social relations) perspective is a complex challenge
involving technical, deliberative, collegial, critical, moral, textual, and poetic inquiries. Are our
“curriculum study” conversations up to this multidimensional inquiry challenge?
Questions
Technique/
Craft
(Techne)
Deliberative
(Phronesis)
Collegial
(Polis)
Critical: Ethical
and Political
(Praxis)
Moral:
Philosophical
(Theoria)
Textual/Deconstructive
(Dia-logos)
Poetic
(Poesis)
Comments
Brief
Discussions
Extended
Discussions
Other
C&I 87001: PINAR DISCUSSIONS
 Two partners working on one chapter:

Political Subtext

Racial Subtext

Gender Subtext

Phenomenological (Perceptual) Subtext

Postmodern Subtext

Autobiographical/Biographical Subtext

Aesthetic Subtext

Theological Subtext
 Together, partners will prepare opening comments addressing the
following questions:

What curriculum study projects (if any) did you find relevant and why?

If you found none relevant, why not?
 With reference to the projects covered in the chapter, how do you
understand the __________ subtext in curriculum and teaching matters?
Addressing the Complexities of Curriculum Study Scholarship
AERA’s Division B Category System: Five Sections

Section 1: Curriculum Inquiry in Classroom Contexts

Section 2: Curriculum Theorizing

Section 3: Curriculum Design, Content, and Evaluation

Section 4: Curriculum History

Section 5: Alternative Practices and Representations in Curriculum Research
Eisner’s (1992) Category System: Six Curriculum Ideologies + One

Religious Orthodoxy

Rational Humanism

Progressivism

Critical Theory

Reconceptualism

Cognitive Pluralism

Plus One: Schools’ Operational Ideology: “If an ideology is defined as a
public statement of a value position regarding curriculum, the absence of
such a statement would disqualify it as an ideology. If, however, an ideology
also refers to a shared way of life that teaches a certain worldview or set of
values through action, schools everywhere employ and convey an ideology
because they all possess, in practice, a shared way of life or what may be
called an operational ideology.” (p.306)
Reference
Eisner, E. W. (1992). Curriculum ideologies. In P. W. Jackson (Ed.), Handbook
of research on curriculum (pp.302-326). New York: Macmillan.
Freeing the Curriculum Mind
(Proposed text to be published by Teachers College Press)




Scholarship (“Line of Inquiry”) Context
Reflective Teaching: Professional Artistry through Inquiry (Prentice Hall, 2001): Cultivating the
artistry of teaching for democratic living through the integration of five forms of inquiry
public moral inquiry (theoria), multiperspective inquiry (dia-logos), deliberative inquiry
(phronesis), self inquiry (poesis), and critical inquiry (praxis) into one’s ongoing craft (techne)
reflections. Exercising professional leadership for this sophisticated inquiry.
Transformative Curriculum Leadership (Prentice Hall, 2000): Instituting a systemic, schoolbased curriculum development process that nurtures teaching for democratic living.
Understanding Democratic Curriculum Leadership (Teachers College Press, 1999): Engaging
in a curriculum theorizing/curriculum practice “dialogue” that informs democratic
curriculum and teaching practices.
Organizing Question for Inquiry Project
How could curriculum studies (CS) be practiced so that scholars working in this inquiry
tradition would clarify democratic living as a worthy educational end-in-view for the
curriculum and instruction (C&I) field? The exploration of this question will draw upon a wide
range of curriculum study resources, including Short’s Forms of Curriculum Inquiry, Pinar et
al.’s Understanding Curriculum: An Introduction to the Study of Historical and Contemporary
Curriculum Discourses, Eisner’s Cognition and Curriculum Reconsidered, and Cherryholmes’
Power and Criticism and Reading Pragmatism.
Organization of the Proposed Text
Chapter 1. A central focus of CS in societies with democratic ideals: how to educationally
“have” a world of democratic living. Macdonald (1975) on this CS focus:
“[In light of] Dewey’s comment that educational philosophy was the essence of all
philosophy because it was ‘the study of how to have a world,’ curriculum theory…might
be said to be the essence of educational theory because it is the study of how to have a
learning environment.” (p.12)
Pinar et al. (1995) on this CS focus:
We…regard the school curriculum as a provocation to reflect on and to think critically
about ourselves, our families, our society. The point of the school curriculum is not to
succeed in making us specialists in the academic disciplines. The point of the school
curriculum is to goad us into caring for ourselves and our fellow human beings, to help us
think and act with intelligence, sensitivity, and courage…as citizens aspiring to establish a
democratic society and…as individuals committed to other individuals. (p.848)
Inquiry into this question provides a moral compass for a curriculum development process—
another central concern of curriculum studies. (For two contrasting perspectives on the “best”
curriculum development process, see Tyler’s “rationale” and Henderson and Hawthorne’s
“pedagogically centered reform.”)
 Chapter 2. Understanding educating for democratic living through a contemporary
interpretation of our pragmatic heritage in education (James, Dewey, et al.).
 Chapter 3. A robust multi-modal curriculum study of educating for democratic living:
scaffolding and rationale. (Curriculum inquiry as a particular application of educational
research as techne, theoria, dia-logos, phronesis, poesis, and praxis. For more on this multidimensional understanding of educational research, see the UPR course, “Defining Quality
Educational Research.”)
 Chapter 4. Understanding the critical hermeneutics (part-whole dialogics) of educating for
democratic living. (See the new “Critical Hermeneutics” section in JCT: Journal of
Curriculum Theorizing initiated by Kathleen Kesson and me.)
 Chapter 5. Implications of this robust understanding of democratic living for the C&I field.
CS as a polis grounded in an ethical-political commitment to "democratic living."

Freeing the Curriculum Mind
Scholarship Context (“Line of Inquiry”)

Reflective Teaching: Professional Artistry through Inquiry (Prentice Hall, 2001): Cultivating the
artistry of teaching for democratic living through the integration of five forms of inquiry
public moral inquiry (theoria), multiperspective inquiry (dia-logos), deliberative inquiry
(phronesis), self inquiry (poesis), and critical inquiry (praxis) into one’s ongoing craft (techne)
reflections. Initiating professional leadership (polis) for this sophisticated inquiry.

Transformative Curriculum Leadership (Prentice Hall, 2000): Instituting a systemic, schoolbased curriculum development process that nurtures teaching for democratic living.

Understanding Democratic Curriculum Leadership (Teachers College Press, 1999): Engaging
in a curriculum theorizing/curriculum practice “dialogue” that informs democratic
curriculum and teaching practices.
Organization of the Proposed Text

Chapter 1. Rationale for a particular curriculum study (CS) focus:
What is an inviting, generative and energizing “soulfully
inquiring self” (SIS) gestalt for our “post” era, and how do
we educate for this disciplined being/knowing?
(An examination of the key components of this question and an explanation of why this is an
important CS focus. A critique of past CS orientations, particularly American CS from Bobbitt
to Pinar.)

Chapter 2. Understanding this (historically emerging?) SIS gestalt through the lens of the
American pragmatic heritage (from Emerson through James and Dewey to Seigfried).

Chapter 3. The study of how to educate for this SIS gestalt: A multi-modal inquiry. (Rationale
and scaffolding.)

Chapter 4. The critical hermeneutics (part-whole dialogics) of educating for this SIS gestalt.

Chapter 5. Implications of this CS work: Freeing the curriculum mind.
The Distinction between “Modern” Determinate and “Postmodern”
Reflective/Eclectic Judgment*
A word of clarification may be important at this point, concerning the Kantian
distinction between determinate and reflective judgment. While judgment in general is
for Kant the faculty of thinking the particular as contained under the universal, in the
case of determinant judgment such inclusion of the particular under the universal is
understood as a relation of subsumption.
….Reflective judgment, instead, is a kind of judgment in which “only the particular is
given and the universaI has to be found for it” (Kant 1986, p.18). …[I]n the case of
reflective judgment, judgment must be a principle to itself. Reflective judgment, in other
words, obeys no law other than its own or, to use Georg Simmel's expression "is
governed by an·individual law.” The meaning of this expression and the sense in which
it can be understood as a model of universalism, is well rendered in what Luigi
Pareyson, Umberto Eco's and Gianni VattiIno's mentor, says about the well-formed work
of art:
The work of art is as it should be and should be as it is and has no other
law than its own… The work of art is singular because the law that
governs it is but its own individual rule, and is universal because its
individual rule is really the law that governs it. The work of art…is
universal in its very singularity: its rule holds for one case only, but
exactly in that it is universal, in the sense that it is the only law that should
have been followed in its making. (1988, pp.140-1)
We can understand what is meant by conceptual separability of the universal and the
particular by looking at two examples of the model of universalism based on determinant
judgment and of the model of universalism based on reflective judgment: the case of
assessing a work of art and the case of solving an equation. It is nonsense to assess
the concrete case of a work of art against the standard of its satisfying the requirements
of a poetic [sensibility], even of the poetic [sensibility] that we have. It makes no sense
to think that for the artist to follow the best available poetic manifesto means that the
well-formed quality the product is somehow guaranteed, or that following the wrong
poetics condemns the artist to aesthetic failure, though not perhaps to commercial
failure. Were this so, we could assess paintings without seeing them, musical works
without hearing them performed, literary works without reading them.
In the case of solving an equation the opposite is true. The formal principles of
algebra enable us to subsume the concrete single case without loss. We do not need to
know anything about the context within which the need to solve the given equation
arose, about the history of the problem and its formulations, least of all about the
concrete materiality of the symbols that represent the equation for us. All these aspects
recede into the background. Knowledge of algebraic principles and procedures allows
us to solve the equation from a distance, on the telephone, whereas pictorial expertise
will never allow us to assess a painting without seeing it or even by seeing only a
photograph of it.
*Ferrara, A. (1999). Justice and judgment: The rise and the prospect of the judgment
model in contemporary political philosophy. London: Sage. (pp.4-5)
C&I 87001: Three Review Points
Critical Hermeneutics
The focus of the “Critical Hermeneutics” section in JCT: Journal of Curriculum
Theorizing is on avoiding critical narrowness, which Bill Pinar refers to as critical
"balkanization” (Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery, Taubman, 1995, pp. 856, 865). Critical
narrowness is parallel to practical narrowness, which is fostered by the Tyler Rationale
and other “modernist” projects (e.g., standardized test accountability systems). The
section invites papers that challenge critical narrowness in two ways:
 By examining the relationship between a particular critical project and
the underlying spirit of liberatory work in education.
 By examining how a particular form of critical theorizing both
interrogates day-to-day educational practices and, in turn, is
interrogated by progressive educational practitioners.
(Understanding Democratic Curriculum Leadership addresses both “critical
hermeneutic” challenges. The first challenge is presented in chapters 1, 6, and 7. The
second challenge is explicitly discussed in the Preface and in chapters 1 and 7 and
serves as the organizing framework for the text.)
Curriculum Wisdom
Curriculum wisdom is located at the intersection of critical wisdom, practical wisdom and
spiritual wisdom.
 Critical wisdom is defined as advancing pointed, unsettling questions
that are “critical” to vigorous emancipatory efforts in education. The
broader the reach of these questions, the better for robust liberatory
activity.
 Practical wisdom is defined as enacting a “line” of critical questioning
in the context of an appropriate, forceful and generative form of
praxis.
 Spiritual wisdom is defined as cultivating a deep feel for the vital
urgency of emancipatory activity and the ability to express these
feelings in provocative and inspiring “mytho-poetic” discourse.
Thinking about “Democracy as a Moral Way of Living”
“Let us, however, follow the pragmatic rule, and in order to discover the meaning of
the idea ask for its consequences. Then it surprisingly turns out that the primary
significance of the unique and morally ultimate character of the concrete situation is
to transfer the weight and burden of morality to intelligence. It does not destroy
responsibility; it only locates it. A moral situation is one in which judgment and choice
are required…to overt action. The practical meaning of the situation–that is to say
the action needed to satisfy it—is not self-evident. It has to be searched for. There
are conflicting desires and alternative apparent goods . What is needed is to find the
right course of action, the right good.” (Dewey, 1988, p.182)
References
Dewey, J. (1988). Intelligence. In R. E. Greeley (Ed.), The best of humanism (p.182).
Buffalo, NY: Prometheus.
Pinar, W. F., Reynolds, W. M., Slattery, P., & Taubman, P. M. (1995). Understanding
curriculum: A comprehensive introduction to contemporary curriculum discourse.
New York: Peter Lang.
Curriculum Wisdom: A Calling for Democratic Educators
James G. Henderson & Kathleen R. Kesson
(In Process)
Excerpt from Chapter 1: “Curriculum Wisdom in Democratic Societies”
Acknowledging Other Curriculum Understandings
This book’s curriculum wisdom approach draws on the work of a group of influential
curriculum scholars, and we want to acknowledge our indebtedness to these individuals. Without
their insights into the nature of curriculum practice, it is doubtful that this book could have been
created. We begin our thanks with Tyler’s (1949) highly influential curriculum decision making
“rationale,” which is, in effect, a pragmatic inquiry cycle linking educational purposes, learning
experiences, instructional organization and learning evaluation. Tyler argued the curriculum
workers should systematically ask themselves four questions:
1. What educational purposes should the school seek to attain?
2. How can learning experiences be selected which are likely to be useful in attaining these
objectives?
3. How can learning experiences be organized for effective instruction?
4. How can the effectiveness of learning experiences be evaluated?
We are indebted to Tyler for helping us understand the importance of pragmatic inquiry in
curriculum work. Unfortunately, Tyler’s rationale does not carefully distinguish between a work life
and a work system, and so we must turn to other curriculum scholars to help us with this
distinction.
We have already cited Schwab’s (1978) analysis of the practical and eclectic arts at the
heart of curriculum work. His scholarship helps us appreciate the importance of the principles of
pragmatic inquiry and eclectic artistry. Connelly and Clandinin (1988) extend Schwab’s insights
by stressing the importance of teachers’ personal-practical knowing in curriculum work. Their
approach, which parallels McCutcheon’s (1995) work on curriculum development as discussed
earlier, highlights the deeply personal and situational nature of curriculum practice. They make a
clear distinction between a professional life and an educational system and put their faith in
teachers’ “narratives of experience” as the basis for curriculum work:
We believe that curriculum development and curriculum planning are fundamentally
questions of teacher thinking and teacher doing. We believe that it is teachers’ “personal
knowledge” that determines all matters of significance relative to the planned conduct of
classrooms. So “personal knowledge” is the key term. (p.4)
We are indebted to Eisner’s (1994) insights into the importance of imagination in
curriculum artistry:
Curriculum development is the process of transforming images and aspirations about
education into programs that will effectively realize the visions that initiated the process. I
use the terms images and aspirations intentionally. The initiating conditions of curriculum
development are seldom clear-cut, specific objectives; they are, rather, conceptions that
are general, visions that are vague, aspirations that are fleeting. Much of what we value,
aspire to, and cherish is ineffable; even if we wanted to, we could not adequately describe
it. Furthermore, what we value and seek is often riddled with contradictions—even within
the context of schooling—and must be compromised or negotiated in context. We want
children to master "the basic skills"; we would like them to be supportive and cooperative
with their peers and with adults, yet we also would like to them to take initiative, to be able
to compete and not feel bound by rules that might stifle their imagination, curiosity, or
creativity. Our images of virtue are in flux; because images can never be translated
wholly into discourse, to that degree they are always somewhat beyond the grasp of
written or verbal expression. (p. 126)
Macdonald’s scholarship shares many similarities with Eisner’s work, and Macdonald (1981/1995)
helps us appreciate the value of a hermeneutic approach to curriculum: “The fundamental human
quest is the search for meaning and the basic human capacity for this is experienced in the
hermeneutic process of interpretation of the text (whether artifact, natural world or human action).
This is the search (or research) for greater understanding that motivates and satisfies us.” (p.176)
Through the scholarship of Eisner and Macdonald, we have gained insight into the imaginative
and contemplative dimensions of the curriculum wisdom challenge.
Short’s (1991) insights into the diverse inquiry genres that are embedded in sophisticated
curriculum work informs the inquiry guidance in chapter 3. He writes: “All fields of practical
inquiry, including curriculum inquiry, are in reality composite fields. Several domains of inquiry
exist side-by-side within such a field of inquiry, each focusing on a different aspect of the practical
activity toward which inquiry may be addressed….” (p.6) While Short (1991) identifies and
describes seventeen loosely-connected forms of curriculum inquiry, chapter 3 is organized around
seven integrated inquiry approaches.
Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery, and Taubman (1995) present a sophisticated multitextual
understanding of curriculum work as “intensely historical, political, racial, gendered,
phenomenological, autobiographical, aesthetic, theological, and international. …Curriculum is a
extraordinarily complicated conversation.” (pp. 847-848) This argument is applied to curriculum
development by Slattery (1995), who presents “a vision of the postmodern curriculum that is
radically eclectic…and ultimately, a hermeneutic search for greater understanding that motivates
and satisfies us on the journey.” (p. 267) We are indebted to Slattery’s sophisticated, multilayered understanding of curriculum development. He helps us appreciate the importance of
approaching curriculum work through multiple lenses.
Conclusion
We welcome you to the personal and professional journey of this book. You have been
introduced to the curriculum wisdom challenge that serves as the focus for this text; and because
this challenge is guided by the three principles of democratic hermeneutics, pragmatic inquiry and
eclectic artistry, we call it democratic inquiry artistry. We recognize that this approach to
curriculum work is a calling and a professional life style, and so we hope that you will find this text
to be personally meaningful and inspiring. Because our concern is with the artistry of democratic
envisioning and enacting, we end this introductory chapter with an understanding of curriculum
work that, we feel, elegantly captures the spirit and intention of this book:
Curriculum emerges from an orientation and vision of who and what we are, where we
come from, and where we are going. What is of the most extraordinary import, of course,
is which particular vision we decide to choose, for the choosing of a vision allows us to
become that vision (Macdonald and Purpel, 19__, p. _).