Curriculum Inquiry 44卷5期

1. From Rags to “Rich as Rockefeller”: Portrayals of Class Mobility in Newbery Titles

Author: Danielle E. Forest

Source: Curriculum Inquiry 44.5 (Dec 2014): 591–619.

Abstract: Several scholars have noted the prevalence of the discourse of upward class mobility in the United States, particularly within K–12 education settings. “Rags-to-riches” stories, an extreme form of upward mobility discourse, have been embedded in American culture for generations. However, the prevalence of upward mobility discourse in recently published books for children has not been widely studied. Children's literature merits scholarly attention because it has the potential to influence the perceptions and worldviews of young people, and books for youth reflect the values that adults in a society want to pass on to young people. This qualitative content analysis, grounded in assumptions of the sociology of school knowledge and critical literacy, investigates representations of upward class mobility in 22 titles given the Newbery Medal or Honor between 2009 and 2013. The findings indicate 7 out of 22 books include poor and working-class characters experiencing class ascendency. Characters became upwardly mobile by receiving a large sum of money unexpectedly, being adopted by a more affluent person, and gaining recognition from royalty or nobility. The presence of poor and working-class characters in these titles is positive: American children, who belong to a range of class groups, can find characters like themselves in literature. Yet the portrayals of upward mobility in Newbery titles may reinforce dominant ideologies that value economic success and blame the poor for their circumstances.

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2. Power Relations in Creating and Distributing Official Knowledge in Children's Literature:Historical Picture of Taiwan

Author: Lin-Miao Lu

Source: Curriculum Inquiry 44.5 (Dec 2014): 620–648.

Abstract: With a specific focus on power relations in creating and distributing knowledge in society, this study examines the government-published children's series Historical Picture of Taiwan produced in Taiwan in the Martial Law era (1949–1987) to uncover ideological assumptions and persuasions permeating both linguistic and visual representations of the history of Taiwan. Drawing on the sociology of school knowledge and critical theories of ideology (Althusser, 1986; Hollindale, 1992), hegemony (Gramsci, 1988), and selective tradition (Williams, 1989), the research investigates the relations between literary representations and contemporary socioeconomic, cultural, and political circumstances. Apple's (1990) concept of relational analysis is adopted with the analytic methods of constant comparative analysis (Butler-Kisber, 2010) and ideological analytical approach (Serafini, 2010) to relationally compare and analyze both written texts and images and to relate them to sociohistorical and cultural changes in society.

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3. The Curricular Indian Agent: Discursive Colonization and Indigenous (Dys)Agency in U.S. History Textbooks

Author: Christine Rogers Stanton

Source: Curriculum Inquiry 44.5 (Dec 2014): 649–676.

Abstract: In the 1800s and early 1900s, the United States assigned Indian Agents—non-Native employees of the federal government—to coordinate intergovernmental efforts, to encourage the assimilation of Native peoples into European-American society, and to serve as advocates for individual tribes. Although Indian Agents no longer exist in an official capacity in the United States, the potentially contradictory expectations that informed their work continue to influence communities across the country. Instead of decolonizing education, today's curricular agents typically misrepresent the historical and future agency of Native peoples while reinforcing the patronizing, normative, dominant-culture narrative. This article outlines the critical discourse analysis of five widely adopted U.S. history textbooks, as situated within the broader scope of textbook research and emerging educational movements. Findings show that textbook authors and other curricular agents use strategies of exclusion and passivation to control the historical and curricular agency of Indigenous peoples. Given the influence of educational reform efforts such as those related to the Common Core Standards, now is the critical time to retheorize curriculum design and inquiry as dialogic, dynamic, transformational, and agentive processes. The project's conclusions demonstrate the need to confront the biases of curricular agents in order to guide the decolonization of curriculum materials.

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4. Enacting Critical Literacy: The Case of a Language Minority Preservice Teacher

Author: Hyesun Cho

Source: Curriculum Inquiry 44.5 (Dec 2014): 677–699.

Abstract: This narrative study of an Asian female prospective teacher describes a language minority student's ways of enacting critical literacy in a teacher preparation program in the United States. It discusses how she exerted her agency despite her perceived marginalization as a non-native English speaker. The findings demonstrate how she resisted the identity imposed as a “slow learner” by an instructor while simultaneously challenging the tenets of critical literacy. Ultimately, the study suggests that personal narratives in teacher education from critical perspectives can be a powerful means through which to better understand the lived experiences of language minority preservice teachers.