Curriculum Theory and Historical Connections

Abstract

Curriculum studies has paid attention to its history through writings, conference presentations, and the development of professional and personal relationships in the field over the course of many decades. As contemporary scholarship and educational practices take shape, they are built on ideas and practices of the past, of course. One commitment of scholar-practitioners engaged in curriculum studies is to work across the field to understand the nature of movements in thought and practice as they manifest in the field’s literature and have an impact (or not) on educational entities where teaching and learning take place. The author offers a description of an ongoing curriculum project with doctoral students that has historical implications for the curriculum field and represents an example of this ongoing, complicated conversation in the field of curriculum studies. Students work with the author during a course on curriculum theory to create research essays examining books from the curriculum field, ultimately producing volumes of their work for current consumption by scholars. Their article treatments of past, historic curriculum books and the entire project are meant to challenge and reclaim the foundational ideas imbedded in the field of curriculum studies. The author discusses the nature of the work at hand, historical implications of the current work, and the potential the project poses for future work.