Education Sciences 2022 Outstanding Reviewer Award

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education, 2020

Curriculum theory is shaped and held within the larger field of curriculum studies, but its distinctive focus on understanding curriculum as opposed to developing it places it is stark contrast with other parts of the larger field. This focus is further distinctive when curriculum theory shifts to curriculum theorizing. Curriculum theorizing emerged in the United States, principally at Bergamo conferences and precursor conferences, in the Journal of Curriculum Theorizing (JCT), and through scholars associated with the reconceptualization. It has spread internationally via the International Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies and its subsidiaries in many different countries and cultures. Some scholars hold that curriculum theory includes curriculum theorizing as well as normative and analytic conceptualizations that justify or explain curriculum decisions and actions. Curriculum theorizing attempts to read broadly in social theory so as to embody those insights in d...

European Journal of Education Studies, 2020

This is a concept paper in education specifically about curriculum theory. Curriculum theory is a sub-theory of educational theory. Theories provide views about the world. They explain reality. The process of education in general and the field of curriculum in particular are embedded in theory. Teachers and other educators rely on theory in research about the school curriculum. Curriculum theory gives direction and guidance in the process of curriculum planning, development, implementation, supervision, evaluation among others. This concept paper delves on curriculum theory: Its definition, development, functions and characteristics. The paper also explains categories of curriculum theories and theorists. The issues discussed in this paper can trigger research in theory development and inform educationists and teachers in theory development and research in curriculum.

Curriculum Inquiry, 2010

2016

Curriculum Studies is an intellectually dynamic and ever changing field. For curricularists engaging the processes of situating and defining curriculum theorizing and development remains a historically situated and contested “complicated conversation.” Each week we will try to reconceptualize and complicate our historical, present, and future understandings of the discrepancies between various disciplinary discourses, which in turn inform curriculum theorizing and development. Moreover, our weekly conversations will critically examine how such discrepancies create tensions between both internal and external stakeholders to the field of curriculum studies, and the school curriculum writ large. This course thus invites us to participate in a personal dialogue, indeed a “complicated conversation,” in which we will be asked to recursively consider alternative approaches to curriculum theorizing and development, and in turn with the conversational issues that these alternatives involve.

We must make clear," Pinar writes, "that education coursework is intellectual work, not simply the sharing of personal experiences in the classroom and popular prejudices about 'effective' teaching" (180-181). The book is organized as a collection of ten essays (divided into five sections), all woven together around a core set of themes, primary of which is the idea that curriculum is a "complicated conversation." Beyond the self-reflection of everyday practice, Pinar engages the intuitive learner and directs us towards new ideas and relevant knowledge. He questions our methods as educators and questions the limited involvement of unrestricted teaching. Pinar looks to the curriculum field (perhaps a bit hopefully) as a cultural space from which it might be possible to wage a counter movement in public education by teachers and teacher educators to take back, and to reassert intellectual and academic freedom. As we begin to introduce our theories, beliefs, and practices we ask ourselves, "What knowledge is of most worth (210)?

2019

Overview of recurring curriculum issues in historical and contemporary perspectives; introduction to the practices of curriculum theorizing; investigation of the effects of shifting paradigms within the field of curriculum studies.