Critical Curriculum Research Articles

The generation of the utopia: Itinerant curriculum theory towards a ‘futurable future’

ABSTRACT Drawing on Pepetela’s novel The Generation of Utopia, the article situates and dissects the role of a group of intellectuals within a radical critical curriculum river, working towards a more just society and education, and enhancing a utopian generation. The article emphasizes the erroneous persistence of intellectuals associated with such generation in working fundamentally within a Modern Western Eurocentric platform; it underlines how the battles between dominant and counter-dominant traditions could not avoid the epistemicidal nature of the curriculum and drove the field into a theoretical involution, a regression. The paper argues for the need to decolonize Modern Western Eurocentric counter-dominant approaches; and advances the itinerant curriculum theory, as a just approach to champion the struggle against the curriculum epistemicide – a decolonial turn. The article ends calling for ‘the death’ of traditional ways to produce critical theory – Eurocentric fully saturated – as a way to de-link the critical theoretical out of the coloniality matrix, and in so doing, honoring the rich legacy of the generation of utopia.

Critiquing, Curating, and Adapting: Cultivating 21st-Century Critical Curriculum Literacy With Teacher Candidates

Teachers commonly use sites such as Pinterest, TeachersPayTeachers.com, and Instagram to support their lesson planning. Developing a critical lens toward the use of these sites in teacher education is imperative, yet little research has been published outlining how this might be done. This study investigates how 44 teacher candidates (TCs) across two methods courses altered their thinking about the use of sites such as Pinterest, TeachersPayTeachers.com, and Instagram after experiencing explicit instruction and practice in 21st-century critical curriculum literacy. Findings indicate that TCs developed a more critical lens toward these sites, yet the inclusion of critical pedagogical content knowledge within 21st-century critical curriculum literacy is essential to develop a critical lens toward specific resources. Implications include how teacher educators might continue to develop 21st-century critical curriculum literacy in TCs and directions for future research.

Beyond the written word: Newspapers as critical literacy teaching tools in the South African classroom

This paper provides the rationale and purpose for a critical literacy awareness strategy, implemented to 20 English second language students at a township secondary school in South Africa. This empirical study provides insight into using newspapers as a pedagogical tool to develop students’ language and critical literacy skills. Using different classroom activities and class discussions, the teacher helped the students to read beyond different texts and raised their awareness of different ideologies that inform texts. Working in pairs and groups, the learners engaged with different genres of texts. In this study, special emphasis is promoting critical thinking for social justice where critical literacy is used as a tool to better understand and improve the world. Findings of the study show students engaging in critical conversations without being directed into one way of thinking, which leads to significant improvement in their critical thinking. This further shows that texts that raise questions about different discourses can create an inclusive critical curriculum. It can be concluded that students can learn best when presented with a context they can identify with and are able to tap to their everyday experiences.

Equity Unbound as Critical Intercultural Praxis

This article traces the emergence of Equity Unbound, originally founded as “equity-focused, open, connected, intercultural learning curriculum” (Equity Unbound, n.d.) and designed with a critical curriculum approach. We outline how our design and praxis centers on social justice and how our activities and purpose have continued to evolve to respond, with care, to the needs of our networks. We then offer a critical autoethnographic account from an educator who started on the margins of Equity Unbound and later became a key co-facilitator.

Protect Our Kids: a novel program bringing hemorrhage control to schools

BackgroundFollowing the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the Hartford Consensus produced the Stop the Bleed program to train bystanders in hemorrhage control. In our region, the police bureau delivers critical incident training to public schools, offering instruction in responding to violent or dangerous situations. Until now, widespread training in hemorrhage control has been lacking. Our group developed, implemented and evaluated a novel program integrating hemorrhage control into critical incident training for school staff in order to blunt the impact of mass casualty events on children.MethodsThe staff of 25 elementary and middle schools attended a 90-minute course incorporating Stop the Bleed into the critical incident training curriculum, delivered on-site by police officers, nurses and doctors over a three-day period. The joint program was named Protect Our Kids. At the conclusion of the course, hemorrhage control kits and educational materials were provided and a four-question survey to assess the quality of training using a ten-point Likert scale was completed by participants and trainers.ResultsOne thousand eighteen educators underwent training. A majority were teachers (78.2%), followed by para-educators (5.8%), counselors (4.4%) and principals (2%). Widely covered by local and state media, the Protect Our Kids program was rated as excellent and effective by a majority of trainees and all trainers rated the program as excellent.ConclusionsThrough collaboration between trauma centers, police and school systems, a large-scale training program for hemorrhage control and critical incident response can be effectively delivered to schools.

Defining Priority Areas for Critical Care Simulation: A Modified Delphi Consensus Project.

BackgroundSimulation is used in critical care for skill development, formative assessment, and interprofessional team performance. Healthcare educators need to balance the relatively high cost to deliver simulation education with the potential impact on healthcare quality. It is unclear how to prioritize simulation in critical care education, especially considering interprofessional needs across adult and pediatric populations. The objective of this study was to prioritize topics for critical care educators developing simulation-based educational interventions.MethodologyA modified Delphi process was used to identify and prioritize critical care topics taught using simulation. We disseminated a multi-institutional survey to understand critical care simulation topics using a three-round modified Delphi technique. An expert panel was recruited based on their expertise with simulation-based education through the Society for Simulation in Healthcare and the Society of Critical Care Medicine lists. Critical care topics originated using content derived from multiple critical care board examination contents. Additional content for a critical care simulation-based curriculum was generated.ResultsConsensus and prioritization were achieved in three rounds, with 52 simulation experts participating. The first Delphi round surveyed priority topics in critical care content and generated additional topics for inclusion in round two. The second Delphi round added the content with the highest-ranked items from round one to generate a set of simulation-based topic priorities. The third Delphi round asked participants to determine the importance of each priority item taught via simulation compared to other modalities for clinical education. This round yielded 106 topics over four domains categorized into (1) Diagnosis and Management of Clinical Problems, (2) Procedural Skills, (3) Teamwork and Communication Skills, and (4) General Knowledge and Knowledge of Technical Adjuncts.ConclusionsThe modified Delphi survey revealed a prioritized, consensus-based list of topics and domains for critical care educators to focus on when creating a simulation-based critical care curriculum. Future work will focus on developing specific simulation-based critical care curricula.

Interrogating the “gold standard”: Play-based early childhood education and perpetuating white supremacy

ABSTRACT This article examines the role of play-based early childhood programs in perpetuating or interrupting messages of white supremacy which murder the spirits of Black children while reinforcing a sense of entitlement in white children. We ask educators to consider what children’s play might look like if pro-Black teaching and anti-racist teaching that develops children’s critical consciousness around race were explicit, foundational, and daily in ECE classrooms - in contrast to the norm that is Eurocentric and uncritical. We do this recognizing that early childhood settings can be spaces where learned anti-Blackness can be either interrupted or, in our silence, allowed to grow, influencing children’s play as well as the dispositions they take into adulthood. In contrast to free-play as a universalized “gold-standard”? in ECE, we propose playwork as a means for educators to engage with children during play--and within the context of an activist and critical curriculum--to support children’s growing abilities to understand and respond to justice and injustice in a racialized world.

Uma discussão sobre o papel da matemática nos cursos de tecnologia da informação da FATEC Ourinhos

Este artigo tem por objetivo apresentar uma discussão sobre o papel da Matemática nos cursos de Tecnologia da Informação da Faculdade de Tecnologia de Ourinhos [...]. Em tal análise, buscou-se identificar o perfil do profissional a ser formado e a contribuição do conhecimento matemático na formação de tecnólogos desses cursos. A análise dos referidos Projetos Pedagógicos foi feita principalmente à luz de teorias de Educação Tecnológica, Teorias Críticas de Currículo e da Educação Matemática Crítica e mediante três categorias estabelecidas a priori. Como resultado, apontamos que se deve proporcionar uma formação que possibilite a elevação cultural dos sujeitos no desenvolvimento de competências que se estruturam a partir do conhecimento teórico, visando compreender e avaliar impactos sociais, econômicos, ambientais e resolver problemas. A matemática, numa perspectiva crítica, pode ser uma aliada nesta direção. Palavras-chave: Projetos Pedagógicos; Habilidades Matemáticas; Tecnólogos; Mercado de trabalho.

Reading Beyond the Book: Examining a Critical Social Educator’s Race & Equity Read Aloud in an Early Childhood Classroom

In this paper, the authors specifically consider what it means to engage as a critical white social educator of young, racially diverse children. They document how one third-grade teacher–Ms. Honey, a thirty-something white woman–used diverse books as a springboard to cultivate a more critical curriculum. The authors demonstrate how, as the focal teacher centered on pressing and historical social issues–including systemic racism –in her curriculum, classroom, and community, she also re-learned (hi)stories herself. In the findings, the authors demonstrate how Ms. Honey carefully led children through a read-aloud within an integrated social studies and literacy unit. The authors frame Ms. Honey’s actions as a critical social educator and, in doing so, they highlight the messy, seemingly imperfect work required to engage as a critical social educator.

Realigning Funds of Identity with struggle against capital: the contradictory unity of use and exchange value in cultural fields

ABSTRACT The Funds of Knowledge (FOK) and Funds of Identity (FOI) approaches have demonstrated potential in engaging school curricula with the lived experiences of disadvantaged communities. However, both approaches are not without critique. Our own previous work (drawing on Bourdieu) highlights how FOK/FOI methodologies can result in surfacing exchange value (capital) in the home in ways that re-position some students’ access to the school curriculum, while leaving hegemonic practices of schooling unchallenged. In this paper, we propose a new theorization of funds as a cultural commodity of “knowing-in-practice”. Following Marx, this commodity is seen as a dialectical unity of use and exchange value – a relation that implies development arising through internal contradictions. We exemplify this empirically through an analysis of the Mexican American Studies (MAS) program. We illustrate how MAS harnessed students’ lived experience of oppression into a commodity through a critical curriculum which questions the system (use value) whilst offering exchange value through standardized assessment. This contradictory relation can imply development – for students and the system – if socio-material forces engage favorably. Viewing “funds” as a cultural commodity helps to understand and predict developments arising in practice, and may help identify practical action that exploits such contradictions.

The critical piece missing from a critical food studies curriculum

ABSTRACT Many scholars agree that given the history and the missions of many higher education institutions that seek to develop responsible, active, and moral citizens, academics and universities are positioned to play an important role in the food justice movement. However, personal experiences have led me to understand that the curricular characteristics called upon by food studies researchers (e.g., interdisciplinary, sociocultural, sociopolitical) might not be sufficient for a truly just food studies field. Relying on personal narrative methodology as both political and disruptive, I use my own personal narratives and life stories in this paper to illustrate how easily roles and identity of people of color in the food studies field broadly are shaped through historical erasure and dismissal of expertise in higher education institutions further marginalizing those already in the margins. To address this, food studies courses should attend to systemic burdens and challenges associated with sociodemographic categories such as race, ethnicity, class, and gender, through a careful examination of power and privilege. Additionally, self-reflection on learning in and with local communities, allows us to check how our power, privilege, actions, and internal biases can contribute to oppressive systems.

The impact of content knowledge on the adoption of a critical curriculum model by history teachers-in-training

This work analyses the impact of disciplinary training on future Primary and Secondary School teachers’ decision to adopt a critical approach for teaching history. To do this, we will use a two-phase mixed methodological approach (quantitative and qualitative) to analyse the relationship between their previous training and the use of epistemological and psycho-pedagogical objectives and paradigms as outlined in a critical curriculum model. As regards data collection in the first phase, a closed questionnaire was created and validated, using a Likert-style (1–5) evaluation scale. The data was codified using the statistical package SPSS v.26.0 for subsequent analysis. The selected sample included 215 students from a Spanish university on the following courses: Degree in Primary Education (n = 145) and Master’s Degree in Secondary School Teaching specialised in history and geography (n = 70). They were all in the last stage of their initial training. In the second phase, we selected some of the students to participate in discussion groups, where they were able to go into more depth with their answers. In this way, we could better understand the link between their disciplinary training and the adoption of a determined model of history education. To do this, we separated them into three groups with different profiles: students taking the Degree in Primary Education unrelated with History (n = 8), students taking the Degree in Primary Education specialised in arts and humanities (n = 8) and students taking the Master’s Degree in Secondary School Teaching specialised in history and geography (n = 8). The data was gathered using an open coding procedure, based on several categories, which allowed us to compare the different questionnaires. The results reveal significant differences between the different groups. As such, we can conclude as to the importance of mastering epistemological disciplinary knowledge to break with certain traditions which impede innovation and make the adoption of a critical educational model more difficult.

The cultural representation of Chinese-speaking groups in US-produced Chinese as a foreign language textbooks

ABSTRACT Foreign language textbooks not only aid language learners in developing their linguistic skills and knowledge but also reshape their cultural identities. Drawing on theories of critical curriculum studies, this paper examines cultural representation in two sets of US-produced Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) textbooks for American college learners at elementary and intermediate proficiency levels. Verbal and visual data comprising text and images were discursively examined with content analysis focusing on the distribution of cultural representations, the selection of cultural content, and the editorial strategies of inclusion and exclusion. Findings indicate that the textbooks skilfully employ eclectic approaches to addressing culturally controversial matters among various Chinese-speaking groups, such as Mainland Han Chinese, Taiwanese and ethnic minorities in China, in line with an overarching pan-Chinese cultural ideology. Implications are derived from the findings for CFL educators and teachers of other culturally contested foreign languages.

Studying the Middle East from Brazil: reflections on a different worldview

This paper describes and analyses the experiences of two Brazilian professors in teaching History and International Relations of the Middle East and the Arab World, both at undergraduate and graduate levels. Essentially, this paper is an exercise of comparison between the limits faced – but also the possibilities found – by the authors in the development of their activities as Latin American professors promoting the study of the Middle East and the Arab World in Brazil. Its main aim is to help scholars involved with these subject-matters to reflect on their pedagogical practices and on the knowledge they are promoting (or inhibiting) with their research proposals and teaching procedures. Anchored in the methodological techniques of participant observation and critical curriculum analysis, this paper reaches the conclusion that the socialisation of Brazilian scholars in the Anglo-Saxon literature on the Middle East when not mediated by a critical posture towards these parochial knowledges that pretend to be global, can make them more reproducers of the discourses produced in the North about the region than thinkers of the Global South capable of offering their educatees a space of knowledge production that is meaningful to them as Brazilian students.

Recovering Critical Curriculum: Hypothesis-Driven Physical Examination as a Method to Increase Clinical Skills Teaching When Bedside Teaching Remains Limited.

Recovering Critical Curriculum: Hypothesis-Driven Physical Examination as a Method to Increase Clinical Skills Teaching When Bedside Teaching Remains Limited.

“We just followed the lead of the sources”: An investigation of how teacher candidates developed critical curriculum through subject matter knowledge

Subject matter knowledge influences instructional decision-making, particularly for novice teachers. Moreover, teacher candidates’ abilities to create critical pedagogy is influenced by their subject matter knowledge and their opportunity to interact with critical curriculum. Using a researcher-designed task intended to develop teacher candidates’ subject matter knowledge, this qualitative action research study investigated the degree to which the task supported candidates’ critical consciousness and their selection and framing of content for an instructional unit. The findings illustrate inconsistencies in candidates’ abilities to use new subject matter knowledge in ways that conceptualize social studies curriculum in critical ways. These inconsistencies suggest that teacher educators should consider using a critical rationale-based pedagogy as a means to assist teacher candidates to move towards critical pedagogy in ways that subject matter knowledge alone cannot.

Currículo da educação infantil e sua relação com o marco referencial da rede municipal de ensino de Sorocaba/SP, sob a ótica freireana

O presente artigo tem por objetivo buscar aproximações e distanciamentos entre os documentos oficiais da esfera federal sobre educação infantil com o Marco Referencial da Rede Municipal de Ensino de Sorocaba, tendo como aporte teórico a concepção de currículo sob a ótica freireana. Consideramos as Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais da Educação Infantil como o principal documento de análise, uma vez que compreendemos que é neste documento que a concepção de currículo se apresenta de forma explícita. Iniciamos apresentando e contextualizando o Marco Referencial do município de Sorocaba, do ano de 2017. Abordaremos brevemente a concepção de currículo crítico, a concepção de currículo em Freire e alguns pressupostos da sua Educação Libertadora. Em seguida, abordaremos qual a concepção curricular presente nas Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais da Educação Infantil. E finalmente articularemos as concepções curriculares presentes no documento, que orientam a Educação Infantil, com trechos e concepções presentes no Marco Referencial de Sorocaba.

Critical thinking, curriculum mapping, and economic education: an essay

Critical thinking, curriculum mapping, and economic education: an essay

Critical thinking, curriculum mapping, and economic education: an essay

Critical thinking, curriculum mapping, and economic education: an essay

This Moment is the Curriculum: Equity, Inclusion, and Collectivist Critical Curriculum Mapping for Study Abroad Programs in the COVID-19 Era

Background: This article explores critical curriculum mapping in experiential education through immersive travel or Study Abroad Programs (SAPs). Purpose: The tetrad of authors theorizes then models the practice of criticality in curriculum mapping for SAPs. Methodology/Approach: Using Black feminist thought as a theoretical moor and dialogue and reflexive narrative as methods, authors present a curriculum mapping framework that is berthed to collective knowledge of how Black women in the African diaspora make meaning of lived experience to survive a perpetually precarious world. Findings/Conclusions: The framework exemplifies an epistemological alternative to dominant individualistic Euro/American approaches to curriculum mapping. Such approaches privilege predictability and linearity, contributing to the low participation of collectivist-oriented Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) students in SAPs. Implications: A collectivist critical orientation to curriculum mapping may, therefore, be useful for (a) epistemologically diversifying curricular responsiveness (with implications for teaching and learning in the unpredictable chaos of the current COVID-19 moment) and (b) addressing enduring issues of equity and inclusion in SAPs.