Journal of Curriculum Theorizing

The Transhumanist Tapestry

Chelsey Barber — 2024-07-01

Artificial Intelligence is an increasingly ubiquitous entity reshaping the ways that we interact and communicate. In all of our online interactions, the boundaries between humans and machines become blurred as we read and are being read by technology. This digital entanglement of machines and minds, of reading and being read, stands as an invitation to interrogate the historical relationship between reader and writer, audience and author. In interrogating these roles I reflect upon the implications this has for the ways that we read the digital spaces we are part of, our agency in shaping this evolving technological relationship, and begin to consider the educational implications of such shifts.

Towards a Theory of Lyric Curriculum

Scott Jarvie — 2024-07-01

We take, as point of departure for this inquiry, the event of Amanda Gorman’s reading of her poem “The Hill We Climb” at the 2021 US Presidential Inauguration, which did something poems rarely do: resonate widely. Its broad uptake in classrooms and communities suggests that poems are not inert words on a page; instead, they do things. This conception of poetry as a social actor is articulated by theorist Jonathan Culler, whose Theory of the Lyric examines poetry from antiquity through today to identify different social functions of lyric poems. In this paper we take up Culler’s theory and pair it with a number of lyric texts as we wonder and worry about curriculum. What happens if we imagine that curriculum might be good for freeing students (and teachers!) from prosaic perceptions of the world? Or How might curricula, like lyric texts, create communities of care and attention? What we offer, ultimately, is as much curriculum poem as academic study.

Time of Wonder

Cynthia Marlene Morawski — 2024-07-01

From early childhood, picture books have captivated us with a spectrum of characters playing out plot lines in places both far and near. More specifically, many of these books, with their aesthetic and efferent elements of words and images, have come together to evoke and inspire our love of Nature and respect the potential role Nature can play in our daily lives—formally known as biophilia. In a back and forth sequence within the pages that follow, each of us presents and responds with both word and image, to 3 picture books that have all played roles in reaffirming our love and respect of the natural world. In particular, our work will be theoretically grounded in Rosenblatt’s reader response, methodologically supported by auto-bibliography as a form of narrative inquiry, and grounded in biophilia.

The Politics of Education

Ayan Abdulle — 2024-07-01

This article looks at the place of curriculum in the maintenance of the concretized myth of white supremacy. Curriculum is positioned as political, social, and economic tool that is inseparable from the establishment and maintenance of the various modes of white supremacy, rather than a neutral document. Curriculum is a historical, and historically white supremacist document.

How Can We Live Freer?

Naomi Poindexter — 2024-07-01

How Can We Live Freer? I examine existing theories to refocus and support educators to avoid victimizing ourselves in our current age of excessive surveillance. Psychologist Dr. Victor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor and author and practitioner of his notion of spirituality and self- actualization discovered while a concentration camp prisoner. I revisit other scholars to support ourselves to remain free within a presently difficult space: The Will To Meaning; To Examine; and To Tarry and Adopt Nonviolence. The use of scholarship is key for educators that we might resist the urge to console ourselves in what remains an inconsolable place.

Engaging Mister Rogers' Neighborhood as a "Great" Curriculum

Kevin M Talbert — 2024-07-01

Fred Rogers was a master pedagogue and his magnum opus, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, is an exemplary progressive curriculum that endures as a “great curriculum” (Poetter, 2011). Using Poetter’s (2011) “great curriculum” heuristic, this curriculum critique (Eisner, 2002) explores the progressive possibilities of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. This critique analyzes Rogers’ staunch advocacy for children and his masterful use of television to model democratic community life. This critique also considers the enduring legacy and, especially, the continuing curricular impact of Fred Rogers’ work.