Curriculum Inquiry 44卷3期文章

1. Frustrated Returns: Biography, Parental Figures, and the Apprenticeship of Observation

Author:Kyle A. Greenwalt

Source:Curriculum Inquiry 44.3 (Jun 2014): 306-331.

Abstract:This article examines the processes by which the past experiences of undergraduate teacher candidates with their parental figures return in the present, thereby shaping both the nature and the meaning of the experiences offered to them in their initial field placement. Using phenomenological and psychoanalytic lenses, I analyze findings from an ongoing, multiyear study of four aspiring teacher candidates, exploring the life experiences that these teacher candidates brought with them to their teacher preparation program, and how these experiences determined what they could and could not learn in their first formal field experiences. I conclude the article by theorizing the special challenges teachers face in separating out their own childhoods from the childhoods of those they work with, and suggest ways institutionalized teacher education might do a better job of working with such challenges.

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2. Containing Pedagogical Complexity Through the Assignment of Photography: Two Case Presentations

Author:H James Garrett and Sara Matthews

Source:Curriculum Inquiry 44.3 (Jun 2014): 332-357.

Abstract:This article investigates the use of photography as a narrative approach to learning in the context of postsecondary education. Two cases are presented: a social studies methods course in a teacher education program in the South of the United States; and a senior undergraduate seminar on global violence at a university in southern Ontario, Canada. With each case presentation we explore how the assignment of photography both instantiates and cultivates the student's ability to tolerate, represent, and interpret encounters with pedagogical complexity. A term of learning that apprehends the pedagogical encounter as made from the tensions between knowing and uncertainty, pedagogical complexity is discussed with regard to the psychoanalytic concept of containment. Using a case presentation approach, the authors explore the possibilities and limits of the assignment of photography in relation to the pedagogical work of containment. Engaging a cross-case analysis of the research data, the authors conclude by discussing the potential for photographic practices to contain the dynamics of pedagogical complexity.

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3. Race, Memory, and Master Narratives: A Critical Essay on U.S. Curriculum History

Author:Anthony L Brown and Wayne Au

Source:Curriculum Inquiry 44.3 (Jun 2014): 358-389.

Abstract:The field of curriculum studies has a history of looking at its own past, summarizing and synthesizing the trends and patterns across its foundations. Whether through synoptic texts, historical analyses, or edited collections, the field's foundational retrospection typically traces a lineage of curriculum studies that runs through various official committees, university scholars, textbook designers, and school leaders at the turn of the 20th century and into the first few decades. In this critical essay, the authors draw from the theories of cultural memory and critical race theory, to contextualize how the histories of race and curriculum are portrayed. The authors find that, despite curriculum studies' more recent attention to issues of power and identity associated with race, culture, gender, and sexuality, the voices and curricular histories of communities of color in the United States are largely left out of the selective tradition associated with the narrative of the field's foundations. To challenge what amounts to a master narrative of the foundations of curriculum studies, the authors use Charles Mills's (1998) notion of revisionist ontology to explore the curricular conversations that took place in the African American, Native American, Mexican American, and Asian American communities typically left out of the hegemonic history of the field. In doing so, the authors point to the rich curricular history of communities of color and argue for the field of curriculum studies to challenge its own institutional racism and acknowledge the contributions these communities made to its foundations.

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4. Theorizing "Difficult Knowledge" in the Aftermath of the "Affective Turn": Implications for Curriculum and Pedagogy in Handling Traumatic Representations

Author:Michalinos Zembylas

Source:Curriculum Inquiry 44.3 (Jun 2014): 390-412.

Abstract:This essay draws on the concept of "difficult knowledge" to think with some of the interventions and arguments of affect theory and discusses the implications for curriculum and pedagogy in handling traumatic representations. The author makes an argument that affect theory enables the theorization of difficult knowledge as an intersection of language, desire, power, bodies, social structure, materiality, and trauma. To show the possibilities of this theorization of difficult knowledge, the essay puts in conversation Judith Butler's work on vulnerability, affect, and grievable lives with scholarship on difficult knowledge. The essay leans on Butler's work and affect theory to make a political and pedagogical intervention into the terrain of learning and acting in the face of difficult knowledge. This intervention offers a conceptual, curricular, and pedagogical way out of dilemmas of representation and it is rooted in a political project of social action that does not disavow the psychical problematics residing therein.

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5. Politics Without "Brainwashing": A Philosophical Defence of Social Justice Education

Author:Lauren Bialystok

Source:Curriculum Inquiry 44.3 (Jun 2014): 413-440.

Abstract:Social justice education (SJE) is a ubiquitous, if inconsistently defined, component of contemporary education theory and practice. Recently, SJE has come under fire for being politically biased and even "brainwashing" children in the public education system. In a liberal democracy such as our own, it is important that state-sponsored actions and essential public goods can be justified to all citizens, not only to those with a particular set of beliefs. To defend SJE against its detractors, therefore, it is insufficient to argue over the concrete values that SJE seeks to inculcate; it is instead necessary to develop a philosophical argument situating SJE within a conception of democratic liberalism. This article provides such an argument by reviewing competing conceptions of liberalism, analyzing the political culture in Canada, and applying an interpretation of comprehensive liberalism to specific educational initiatives. Rather than defining or justifying all instances of SJE, the goal is to show how some, but not all, substantive political views can be coherently espoused in the Canadian education system without turning into "brainwashing." Five specific criteria are offered for discriminating between legitimate and illegitimate forms of education within Canadian liberalism. I use these criteria to show that much of what we recognize as SJE is justifiable, not because every citizen endorses the concrete values it represents, but because and only insofar as it reflects a democratic political culture that does.