In preparation for the upcoming AAACS conference in New York (March 21-24, 2008), on a daily basis I will read and respond to excerpts from Curriculum Studies: The Reconceptualization as a meditative practice of currere.
"Curriculum theory and theorizing," Macdonald (1971/2000) tells us, "may be characterized as being in a rather formative condition, for essentially there are no generally accepted clear-cut criteria to distinguish curriculum theory and theorizing from other forms of writing in education" (p.5). Last year I was hired as a tenure track Curriculum Theory professor at the University of Ottawa. Over the course of this past year, and perhaps even longer, if we date a coursing of my studies back to the Curriculum Theory Project at Louisiana State University with Bill Pinar, Petra Munro Hendry, Claudia Eppert, Bill Doll, and Denise Egéa-Kuehne, I have been trying to situate my thinking, educational experiences, in relation to the following question (among many others): What is Curriculum Theory (for me)? Perhaps, we can push this question a little further and ask What is Curriculum Theory in Canada? What/where/who is part of the field that might help one answer this particular situated question. During the 1970s in the United States, Macdonald (1971/2000) explains, that there were three major camps of theorizers:
1. One group (by far the largest) sees the theory as a guiding framework for applied curriculum development and research and as a tool for evaluation of curriculum development.
2. A second "camp" of ofttime younger (and far fewer) theorizers is committed to a more conventional concept of scientific theory. This groups has attempted to identify and describe the variables and their relationship in curriculum.
3. A third group of individuals look upon the task of theorizing as a creative intellectual task which they maintain should be neither used as a basis for prescription or as an empirically testable set of principles and relationships. The purpose of these persons is to develop and criticize conceptual schema in the hope that new ways of talking about curriculum, which may in the future be far more fruitful than present orientations, will be forthcoming. (pp. 5-6)
Can we trace former graduates students (now professors), their intellectual genealogies, back to these groups? Can I?
until tomorrow.....
Continuing from yesterday.
Returning to his essay entitled Curriculum Theory:
“A further interesting and sometimes complicating factor,” Macdonald (1971/2000) tells us, “is that individuals who theorize [such as myself, as well as others] may well operate in all three realms upon different occasions as specific professional pressures and tasks appear” (p. 6). Furthermore, Macdonald asks us to carefully consider scholars intents, when assessing the works of those who have gone before us. Yet how does the next generation of curriculum theorizers, such as myself, read and study their theoretical works in order to complicate our understandings of their respective intents? Before responding to this specific question, Macdonald first turns our attention to the historical work of Huebner. “Curriculum theory,” Macdonald suggests [now drawing on the writings of Huebner, specifically his essay entitled The Task of the Curriculum Theorist], “can be categorized in terms of the various uses of language by theorists” (p. 6). Huebner calls our attention to six possible kinds of language used (at least at that moment in time):
1. Descriptive
2. Explanatory
3. Controlling
4. Legitimizing
5. Prescriptive
6. Affiliative
An important part of reading and studying such curricular theorizing, Macdonald warns us, is to situate these six kinds of curricular language in relation to the sociopolitical and historical contexts from which they emerged. Since the 1970s have curriculum theorists gone beyond these six linguistic curricular categories? Is curriculum theory, its field, still a discursive field? How might such language help us to understand the intents of the authors included within Curriculum Studies: The Reconceptualization?
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The book is brittle, its binding falling apart. Its cover still water stained from that one canoe trip with Sky, Boucher, and X. Let us not forget Chica, part canine, and forever part wild. Yes, bewildered by a summer of chasing black bears at Spence’s log cabin situated just up from the shores of the Brunswick River, one he built with his own two hands. That is where X and I, and let us not forget Chica, set in for that trip on the Missinabi River. The only time that book was opened was to let it dry after X and I flipped our 16-foot Penobscot while trying to negotiate the six foot drop over Little Beaver Falls. We spent four days and three nights snaking along. Still remember those northern lights dancing around us, up high, at Glassy Falls. Chica always resting somewhere nearby, watching, listening for the wild. X and I jumped the shoots at the Brunswick River, with Chica just behind. We took some time to check out Spence’s cabin before hitting the rapids that day. Met up with Danny and Sky further up, where the Brunswick River ends its journey and bleeds into the northern tributaries of the James Bay Frontier.
I bought the book during a trip to Baton Rouge for a conference back on February 3rd of 2001. William Pinar organized a conference in honor of William Doll’s 70th birthday—entitled In Praise of the Postmodern (see http://asterix.ednet.lsu.edu/~lsuctp/p-mconference.htm). It was my first trip down to Louisiana State University, let alone Baton Rouge—to check the people and place out, before I made a decision. Bill had invited me down to do my doctorate, study curriculum with him at LSU’s Curriculum Theory Project. I was a graduate student at the time, trying to complete my M.Ed. thesis at York University with Celia Haig-Brown.
The best birthday present ever.
My eyes are wet... For Chica, and "The River That Boils."
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