Curriculum Inquiry 43卷5期文章

1. LGBTQ Youth of Color Video Making as Radical Curriculum: A Brother Mourning His Brother and a Theory in the Flesh

Author: Lee Airton

Source:Curriculum Inquiry, 2013, 43(5): 532-562

Abstract:In this article I make a conceptual intervention in the idea that queer children and youth have needs that differ from those of other children and youth on the basis of their gender or sexuality alone, and that doing well by them requires adults to act on the basis of this difference. Namely, I examine the conflation of “fighting school homophobia” and “helping young queers.” I argue that making space for queerness in education is not the same as making space for queers, and that queer young people ought to be left alone. I offer two explanations for the conflation's persistence such that “leaving them alone” is generally unthinkable: one affective and one institutional. In the first instance, I read a short memoir through a recent queer theoretical account of childhood as queerness, and argue that the “queer child” is the vehicle of queer adult longing for origins. In the second instance, I show how in education the nebulous (queerness) tends to become concrete (homophobia) and therefore actionable (fight homophobia) because of the constraints of schooling as the singularity of education in the present. In the conclusion, I suggest that a twist on the liberal concept of individual rights may ironically provide a pragmatic means of moving beyond the flourishing of individual queers and toward the flourishing of queerness in schools, and offer some preliminary suggestions of what can be done if queerness was to become the beneficiary of anti-homophobia interventions in education.

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2.“I Was Becoming Increasingly Uneasy About the Profession and What Was Being Asked of Me”: Preserving Integrity in Teaching

Author: Doris A. Santoro

Source:Curriculum Inquiry, 2013, 43(4): 563-587

Abstract:This article offers a model of the relationship between three dimensions of integrity in teaching: personal integrity, professional integrity, and the integrity of teaching and illustrates the model through interview excerpts from 13 experienced former teachers. I argue that experienced teachers' decisions to leave work they love can be understood not only as attempts to preserve their personal integrity, but also to preserve the integrity of teaching by withdrawing their corroded professional integrity. Only by looking at all three dimensions of integrity can the actions of teaching's conscientious objectors be viewed as moral commentary on a moral enterprise rather than the private and personal laments of disgruntled individuals. When the role of teacher serves as a significant source of moral identity, protecting the integrity of teaching is deeply connected to protecting one's personal integrity. Diminishment in what counts as teaching results in a diminishment of the self. Rather than viewing teachers who leave for matters of conscience as lacking sufficient commitment or ceasing to care about their work, this analysis views their choices as reflecting deep investment in preserving the practice of teaching.

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3.Ecological Mindedness Across the Curriculum

Author: Christy M. Moroye and Benjamin C. Ingman

Source:Curriculum Inquiry, 2013, 43(4): 588-612

Abstract:This article suggests a framework for evaluating and implementing environmental education (EE) curricula in hopes of furthering EE as a mode of living to be embodied, rather than as a subject to be learned. We argue that the current iterations of EE in K–12 schools stand to benefit by attending to Dewey's criteria for educative experience: continuity and interaction. Through an analysis of current literature on EE with a comparative analysis of a study of ecologically minded teachers, we discerned three hallmark qualities of ecological mindedness: ecological care, interconnectedness, and ecological integrity. These qualities are both characteristics of the experience as well as sensibilities developed by those engaged in the experience. We argue that ecological mindedness provides the possibility for educative experiences in K–12 curriculum, and we include vignettes and interviews that illustrate such possibilities.

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4.Remembrance of Things Past: A History of the Socratic Method in the United States

Author: Jack Schneider

Source:Curriculum Inquiry, 2013, 43(4): 613-640

Abstract:The Socratic method is a common touchstone in conversations about classroom pedagogy, widely believed to enhance student engagement and promote critical thinking. Understood as the historical inheritance of antiquity, the method is generally accepted by teachers, administrators, and scholars as a legitimate approach to instruction.As this article reveals, however, the Socratic method was not passed down from ancient Athens across continents and millennia. Instead, it was re-created and reimagined by different groups of educators who were less concerned with establishing a consistent and specific meaning for the method than they were with using it to advance their own distinct agendas. Thus, while the Socratic method is commonly perceived as both identifiable and ancient, it is in reality a vaguely defined and relatively modern pedagogical concept—a fact that should give pause to educators presuming to employ it.

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5.Seeing Feelingly: A Phenomenological Inquiry Into the Mind/Body Experiences of Six Drama Students

Author: Kelli Nigh

Source:Curriculum Inquiry, 2013, 43(4): 641-669

Abstract:What happened when six former drama students recalled their mind-body experiences in a drama class that they attended together, throughout their childhood and adolescence? This article draws

from a phenomenological research inquiry that examined these drama students' recollections of various unique warm-up exercises. The warm-up was originally introduced to gentle, calm and focus the students before rehearsals, but the students' perceptions began to change in unexpected ways. They simply seemed to see and feel differently, sometimes even extraordinarily. The aim of this article is to delve into these students' experiences in direct relation to a phenomenon referred to by Vivian Darroch-Lozowski (2006) as “seeing feelingly.” Calling for a clearer understanding and pedagogical application of feeling in the classroom, I frame this ontological mode of being within an interdisciplinary developmental perspective. To animate the gentling exercises in the imagination of the reader, the discussion intermittently assumes a dramatic, poetic style of writing. I claim that these students experienced numerous benefits from the exercises, for example, calmness, focus, an active imagination, an awareness of different modes of consciousness (thought, imagination, feeling) and a lived understanding of mind-body inquiry. The concluding discussion attempts to move beyond the research claims, to assert through the text of a brief play, the existential and ontological significance of seeing feelingly.