1. The Practical: a Language for Curriculum
Author: Josehp J. Schwab
Source:Journal of Curriculum Studies, 45(5): 591-621
Abstract:The field of curriculum by inveterate, unexamined, and mistaken reliance on theory has led to incoherence of curriculum and failure and discontinuity in actual schooling because theoretical constructions are ill-fitted and inappropriate to problems of actual teaching and learning. There are three major incompetencies of theory: failure of scope, the vice of abstraction and radical plurality. A renascence of the field of curriculum will occur only if curriculum energies are diverted from theoretic pursuits to three other modes of operation: the practical, the quasi-practical and the eclectic. The practical mode differs from the theoretic in many aspects: its outcome is a decision. Its subject matter is always something taken as concrete and particular and treated as indefinitely susceptible to circumstance. Its problems arise from states of affairs. Its method, ‘deliberation’, is not linear but complex, fluid and transactional aimed at identification of the desirable and at either attainment of the desired or alteration of desires. The quasi-practical is an extension of the practical methods and purposes to subject matters of increasing internal variety. The eclectic recognizes the usefulness of theory to curriculum decision, takes account of certain weaknesses of theory, and provides some degree of repair of these weaknesses.
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2. Joseph Schwab, Curriculum, Curriculum Studies and Educational Reform
Author: F. Michael Connelly
Source:Journal of Curriculum Studies, 45(5): 622-639
Abstract:The ‘Practical 1’ paper combines Schwab’s abiding concern, for the nature and quality of educational experience with another abiding concern, for how we think about what we do. The Practical 1 is the first of a set of four ‘practical’ essays. These in turn are the product of his thinking about college education and his ideas on the principles of scientific inquiry applied to education in the Practical 1. What Schwab said about education was considered provocative at its time. What Schwab was doing has continuing value. He would, no doubt, say different things in the current educational environment but what he was doing as he said them would remain close to the original.
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3. Reading Schwab’s the “Practice” as an Invitation to a Curriculum Enquiry
Author: Ian Westbury
Source:Journal of Curriculum Studies, 45(5): 640-651
Abstract:In this retrospective essay reviewing the implications of Joseph Schwab’s essay, ‘The practical: A language for education’ (2013 [1970]), 40 + years after its first publication, I identify two ‘practicals’. The first is a comprehensive ‘Practical 1.1’ embracing ends, subject matter, problem source and methods. This ‘practical’ has radical implications for curriculum studies, and for educational theory and research more generally. However, these implications have not been recognized. On the other hand, Schwab’s deliberation-centred interpretation of the ‘practical’, the ‘Practical 1.2’, has been widely discussed but has not captured the field of curriculum studies because it fails to map onto the structures of most school systems.
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4. The Practical and Reconstructing Chinese Pedagogics
Author: Zongyi Deng
Source:Journal of Curriculum Studies, 45(5): 652-667
Abstract:This paper explores the relevance and significance of the Practical in Schwab’s the ‘Practical 1’ paper in relation to the reconstruction of pedagogics as an educational discipline in China. It begins with employing Schwab’s medical framework–in terms ofsymptoms, diagnosis and prescription–to analyse the crisis in Chinese pedagogics, and then articulates what is entailed in reconstructing pedagogics in terms of the Practical as a solution to the crisis. The paper next examines the construction of ‘life-practice’ pedagogics by Professor Ye Lan and associates–a remarkable undertaking which in many respects instantiates the Practical, while not influenced by the thinking of Schwab. It concludes by linking the Practical to the European Pädagogik tradition and Chinese educational wisdom concerning theory development.
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5. Memorizing a Memory: Schwab’s the Practical in a German Context
Author: Rudolf Künzli
Source:Journal of Curriculum Studies, 45(5): 668-683
Abstract:The paper outlines the reception of Schwab’s essay ‘The practical: A language for curriculum’ in German-speaking countries in the 1970s and 1980s. The story is a good demonstration of the ways in which different circumstances and phases of development determine transatlantic exchanges and the influence of concepts in the field of education, and especially of curriculum. The central ideas of Joseph J. Schwab’s concept of curriculum theory and curriculum-making were related to the traditions of general Didaktik in the German-speaking world. It would have been well suited for a reception. Nevertheless, the reception the essay received was at first not a story of success; on the contrary, we have to diagnose a historical neglect. Circumstances today are much better for rethinking Schwab’s analysis under the new conditions of standardizing and competence-oriented curriculum policies.
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6. Knowledge, Judgment and the Curriculum: on the Past, Present and Future of the Idea of the Practical
Author: Gert Biesta
Source:Journal of Curriculum Studies, 45(5): 684-696
Abstract:In 1970, Joseph Schwab published the first of four papers that argued for a turn to the idea of the Practical in curriculum research and practice. In this paper, I revisit Schwab’s original paper and explore the extent to which his case for the Practical is still relevant today. I first look at the past of the deliberative tradition in which Schwab’s argument is located. I argue that a more precise engagement with the work of Aristotle – particularly the distinction between making/production and doing, and between knowledge of the eternal and of the variable – can strengthen Schwab’s case and allow for a better understanding of the kind of knowledge and judgement needed in education. In relation to the present, I highlight three ways in which the current context has changed from when Schwab published his paper. These concern the strongly diminished space for teachers’ professional judgement; the rise of a call for evidence-based education; and the shift in curriculum studies away from practical questions. To (re)connect the field of curriculum studies and research with questions about the ‘doing’ of curriculum is, in my view, where a deliberative approach such as the one articulated by Schwab remains highly relevant.
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7. Schools, Teachers and Community: Cultivating the Conditions for Engaged Student Learning
Author: Ian Hardy and Peter Grootenboer
Source:Journal of Curriculum Studies, 45(5): 697-719
Abstract:
This paper reveals the nature of the actions, discussions and relationships which characterised teachers’ and associated school personnel’s efforts to engage poor and refugee students through a community garden located in a school in a low socio-economic urban area in south-east Queensland, Australia. These actions, discussions and relationships are described as both revealing and producing particular ‘practice architectures’ which help constitute conditions for practice—in this case, conditions for beneficial student learning. The paper draws upon interview data with teachers, other school staff and community members working in the school to reveal the interrelating actions, discussions and relationships involved in developing and using the garden for academic and non-academic purposes. By better understanding such interrelationships as practice architectures, the paper reveals how teachers and those in schooling settings learn to facilitate student learning practices that likely to assist some of the most marginalised students in schooling settings.