If Curriculum is the Answer, What is the Question?

Abstract

A graduate student sitting across from me expresses an interest in researching curriculum. At this point in the conversation, I must admit to a moment of panic. Where do we begin with such an ungovernable topic? In his 2009 essay,The Questions of Curriculum, noted curriculum theorist J. T. Dillon concedes, Taken as an ensemble, the definitions and conceptions of curriculum are known to be incoherent, and by individual contrast to be divergent when not contradictory (p. 344). If this does not sound a discouraging note, it should at least give us pause. Striving to precipitate coherence in curriculum construction, Dillon tenders seven questions embodying his conception of the basic elements of curriculum. With these questions, Dillon queries who should teach; who should be taught; what knowledge is of most worth (a query Dillon terms hoary); what circumstances, conditions, and contexts prevail; what ends and aims matter; what actions, methods, and means are involved; and what results from all of these considerations. As useful as these seven questions are for overall guidance, I find the most compelling aspect of Dillon's essay to be his observation that it is our actions and practices that reveal the actual curriculum questions we implicitly ask. Dillon remarks, know what we are doing, then, is to know the questions we are answering in action...(p. 357). It is this perspective that frames my introduction to the collection that forms this issue of Studies. That is, what curriculum questions do the practices and actions of the five authors and commentators in this issue reveal?Cock Dieleman's investigation of the implementation of a mandatory interdisciplinary art course-Cultural and Artistic Education (Culturele en Kunstzinnige Vorming, or CKV)-in the Dutch secondary schools, for instance, reveals multiple curricular questions. Most broadly, Dieleman's study addresses a major curricular question regarding the aims and purposes of art education. As Dillon (2009) argues, although the surrounding context of curriculum is often neglected, it represents a powerful curricular factor. Dieleman expands on this, arguing that CKV was not only conceived from educational motivations, but also swayed by a political need to resolve the steep decline in Dutch cultural participation.Requiring the secondary students to attend four to eight cultural activities during the school year, the CKV course was intended to nurture a keen interest in arts participation. Dieleman, however, contends that the strategy for achieving these aims was ill conceived and responsible for the failure of the program to significantly affect student attitudes or noticeably raise levels of cultural participation. Dieleman maintains that rather than fostering personal rewards derived from engaging with challenging aesthetic experiences, CKV instead promoted the social benefits of cultural experiences, an objective Dieleman perceives as misdirected.Curricular questions of means and methods surface in Julia Marshall's examination of what it might mean to frame art education as a transdisciplinary field. Marshall considers signs of a shift in general education from rote reproductive learning toward the cultivation of conceptual and procedural abilities as an opportunity for art education. To demonstrate this potential, Marshall offers the engaging example of Jenna Huxley, a California International Baccalaureate art student who explores human-animal relationships through biological concepts, visits to the local zoo, considerations of Christian and Hindu beliefs and attitudes, and correspondence with scientists training chimpanzees to communicate with humans through an invented language. Conceiving Jenna's wide-ranging research process in terms of systems thinking, a combination of intuitive leaps and conscious logical analysis, Marshall's study posits possibilities of constructive curricula and pedagogical directions for art education.Pamela G. …