Abstract
Curriculum study has always been a contested field with alternative notions and understandings of how it should be understood, enacted, evaluated, and how curriculum should reconstitute the happenings in education. Curriculum theorising has the potential to change societies and orchestrate a way forward on a continent plagued by socio-economic and political challenges. However, curriculum theorising on the continent have failed to produce the desired outcome or the solutions which would drive innovation on the content. Curriculum theorising on the continent has been dominated by three approaches structural theorising, generic theorising, and substantive theorising. Prior to articulating new or alternative approaches to theorising curriculum on the African continent, this paper first articulates the existing approaches, giving explanations as to why they are considered insufficient to theorise the African curriculum landscape. Three key approaches that have dominated the African curriculum theorising landscape were discussed, and they include, substantive theorising, structural theorising, and generic theorising. Curriculum theorising in the era of the fourth industrial revolution needs to move away from these traditional approaches of theorising (structural, generic, and substantive theorising), as they can no longer proffer solutions that would address the ever-changing needs of the educational landscape. This study further proposes three alternative approaches to curriculum theorising: contextual theorising, responsive theorising and theoretical theorising.It concludes that these three approaches would work towards contextual relevance and global excellence for the African educational landscape as it pushes to address issues which make for quality education and responsiveness.
Highlights
Curriculum theorising is at the certain of the curriculum discourse especially because it orients curriculum studies and work towards the development of new theory which makes for alternative pathways for curriculum
In Africa, Curriculum theory and curriculum theorising all appear to be two sides of the same coin with one focusing on the product and the other focusing on the process leading to the product or the one focusing on the theory developed and the other focusing on the process of theory development rather than the theory itself
Curriculum theorising in the era of the fourth industrial revolution needs to move away from the traditional approaches of theorising; structural theorising, generic theorising, and substantive theorising
Summary
Curriculum theorising is at the certain of the curriculum discourse especially because it orients curriculum studies and work towards the development of new theory which makes for alternative pathways for curriculum. 286) confirms this when he argues that “the field of curriculum theorizing has made great strides to multiply the meaning of curriculum, the task of contemporary curriculum theorizing has only begun to imagine a style of thoughtcapable of encountering the curriculum in terms of its un-thought, non-identitarian potentials” This means that curriculum theorising has a lot to offer within the sterile field of curriculum studies as well as finding new paths for the responsiveness of education. In responding to these challenges, Pinar (2008) argues that there is a growing paradigm shift in curriculum studies, in which the primary preoccupation which was curriculum development has been replaced by a multi-discursive academic effort to understand curriculum These new dimensions of theorising has looked at curriculum theologically, historically, biographically, institutionally, politically, autobiographically, racially, aesthetically, and internationally, as well as in terms of gender, phenomenology, postmodernism, and poststructuralism. This makes curriculum studies as a discipline which transcends these two areas a more nuanced field needing a radical rethinking
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