Itinerant Curriculum Theory Research Articles

Reconsidering Curriculum Theory and the Way of Doing Education in China: Applying Paraskeva’s Itinerant Curriculum Theory (ICT)

Reconsidering Curriculum Theory and the Way of Doing Education in China: Applying Paraskeva’s Itinerant Curriculum Theory (ICT)

Itinerant Curriculum Theory: Challenging the Monumentalism of the Cartesian Epistemicidal Reason

Modern Western Eurocentric reason, science, and theory have proven to be insufficient to solve humanity’s great challenges. The article examines the underlying reasons for this failure and denounces ‘eugenics’ as the original sin of the Cartesian matrix; it also highlights how particular counter-hegemonic epistemological Eurocentric veins in the field lost focus on the crucial battles and challenges facing humanity. While doing so, the paper argues how Eurocentrism is a divisive epistemological matrix that has obliterated historically other epistemological forms. The article examines how the Eurocentric epistemological matrix is the eugenic riverbed for the monumentality of a racialized reason, science, and theory. The paper explores the role of the curriculum field in producing, perpetuating, and legitimating such eugenic reason; in so doing, the paper denounces the curriculum field as epistemicidal and advances the itinerant curriculum theory (ICT) as a non-derivative path to challenge the monumentality of a racialized Euricentric reason.

Dialectical materialism: an alternative way of thinking and doing education alternatively

ABSTRACT “Dialectic Materialism as a Method of Doing Education” - was written over 30 years ago by one of us – Huebner. Following an interesting dialogue we had over the last years, Dwayne suggested co-re-writing a revised piece to be published under both names. It explores at greater length the ideas that structured the initial piece and offers new avenues toward a better understanding of the importance of dialectical materialism as an alternative way to do education and curriculum. It dissects current dominant traditions of understanding education as undialectical; it explores how ‘undialecticality’ is intimately connected with the yoke of positivism and learning theories fostering what one of us have coined as curriculum epistemicide (Paraskeva, 2011) that colonializes the way we think and debate education, curriculum, and teacher preparation. It explores dialectical materialism as the best way to help educators accurately grasp multiple nexus that determine reality and profoundly impact our schools, teachers, and students’ daily lives. It advances how dialectical materialism provides the tools to engage with non-derivative approaches through an itinerant curriculum theory (ICT) as an alternative dialectical way of a decolonial reading of the word and the world.

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.

‘Did COVID-19 exist before the scientists?’ Towards curriculum theory now

We live in an era that normalized absurdism and abnormality. From successive devastating economic and environmental havoc, the world is now before a pandemic with a lethal footprint throughout the planet. The pandemonium became global. This paper situates the current COVID-19 pandemic within the context of an endless multi-plethora of devastating sagas pushing humanity into an unimaginable great regression. In doing so, the paper examines, how such pandemic reflects the very colors of an intentional epistemological blindness that frames Eurocentric reasoning, which crippled the political economy of global capitalism deepening and accelerating a never-ending and non-stop crisis that started in 2008. The paper explores also the social construction of the current pandemic and argues for alternatives ways to think and to do education and curriculum theory alternatively to challenge Modern Western Eurocentric reasoning. In doing so, advances itinerant curriculum theory as a just approach, a just alter-curriculum ‘theory now’, one that respects the world’s pluri-epistemological diversity, and aims to walk way from utopias framed within the borders determined by coloniality towards an anti-decolonial climax, and ‘heretopia’.

Itinerant Curriculum Theory. An Epistemological Declaration of Independence

espanolEn el transcurso del siglo xx y en el contexto de cuestiones sociales, locales y globales mas amplias y complejas, el plan de estudios se convirtio en un campo de batalla politico e ideologico abierto, en el que los grupos dominantes y contradominantes reavivan la animosidad con los bandos asumiendo basicamente un ‘no asumir el compromiso de los prisioneros’. El proposito de la teoria curricular [curricularista] es viajar, ir mas alla de los limites, moverse y permanecer en una especie de exilio permanente. Una teoria de no lugares y no tiempos es, en esencia, una teoria de todos los lugares y todos los tiempos. El teorico del plan de estudios es un migrante constante, un nomada permanente de su propia conciencia multifacetica que experimenta una serie de eventos [epistemologicos]. Ademas, las teorias curiculares itinerantes (TCI) lo empujan a uno a pensar a la luz del futuro, asi como a preguntarse como ‘realmente’ podemos afirmar que realmente sabemos las cosas que ‘nosotros’ afirmamos saber si ‘nosotros’ no estamos preparados especificamente para pensar lo impensable, sino ir mas alla de lo impensable y luchar con su infinitud. EnglishWithin the course of the twentieth century and within the context of broader complex social –local and global– issues, curriculum became a open political and ideological battle field, in which dominant and counterdominant groups re-escalate the animosity with sides basically assuming a ‘taking no prisioners commitment’. The purpose of curriculum theory[ists] is to travel, to go beyond the limits, to move, and stay in a kind of permanent exile. A theory of non-places and non-times is, in essence, a theory of all places and all times. The curriculum theorist is a constant migrant , a permanent nomad of his own all multifaceted consciousness who experiences a series of [epistemological] events. Moreover, ICT pushes one to think in the light of the future as well as to question how can ‘we’ actually claim to really know the things that ‘we’ claim to know if ‘we’ are not ready specifically to think the unthinkable, but to go beyond the unthinkable and to struggle with its infinitude.

ITINERANT CURRICULUM THEORY: TOWARDS A JUST PEDAGOGY

Abstract: In this article, I examine how Joao Paraskeva’s Curriculum Epistemologies deepens his previous work on Itinerant Curriculum Theory (ICT) and discuss how this can be seen within the US public education classroom. I analyze (a) how the intricacies of ICT allow educators to fight for a just pedagogy by creating spaces of empowerment for youth and decolonizing the Curriculum; (b) how the standardization of US curriculum can be seen as an anti-ICT which helps teachers theorize spaces for ICT. This analysis of ICT reflects the need to struggle for social and cognitive justice through a just pedagogy of hope.

Against the scandal: itinerant curriculum theory as subaltern momentum

PurposeKeeping Spivak’s essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in mind, the purpose of this paper is to examine the itinerant curriculum theory (ICT) as a subaltern momentum unveiling how ICT informs subaltern ways of being and thus, potentially, the research lens for qualitative approaches. In this context, the paper examines how curriculum as an ideological devise produces an epistemicide – the killing of knowledge – an epistemological havoc cooked up daily in the process of qualitative studies promoting and legitimizing a specific modern western Eurocentric episteme.Design/methodology/approachThe paper dissects modernity as a colonial zone, creating “abyssal thinking,” a eugenic system of visible and invisible distinctions that legitimizes the visible, i.e. “this side of the line” and produces “the other side of the line” as “non-existent.”FindingsThe paper urges the need to decolonize leading modern western Eurocentric counter-hegemonic traditions such as Marxism.Originality/valueThe paper analyzes ICT’s contribution to subaltern struggles, asserts ICT’s commitment against any form of canon, grabs the educational matrix of qualitative research as an eugenic beast from its very own ideological horns, alerting the need to examine any study of education and society within the ideological eugenic political economy and modes of production of systems pillared by poverty, exploitation, segregation, and intellectual rape.

Itinerant Curriculum Theory meets Teacher Education: Educational foundations, knowledge production, and the teaching and learning context

Itinerant Curriculum Theory meets Teacher Education: Educational foundations, knowledge production, and the teaching and learning context

“Brutti, Sporchi & Cattivi”: Towards a Non-Abyssal Curriculum

The Western Cartesian Modernity model as an hegemonic model with its arrogant claim to address global social issues is not just moribund, it is dead. This article claims the twentieth century as ‘the last Eurocentric century’. Relying on the work of some key decolonial thinkers, such as Sousa Santos, the article denounces the way Western eugenic curriculum of modernity created an abyssal thinking in which ‘this side’ of the line is legitimate and ‘the other side’ has been produced as ‘non-existent’. In so doing curriculum as we knowing is part of the ‘epistemicide’. The article argues for an Itinerant Curriculum Theory that will help create new avenues to understand the field in the light of the classes within and beyond Eurocentrism, paying attention to other epistemologies beyond the Western framework. The article echoes Ettore Scola metaphor “Brutti, Sporchi & Cattivi” to challenge how hegemonic and specific (or so called) counter hegemonic curriculum platforms – so connected with Western Eurocentric Modernity - have been able to colonize the field without any prudency to “fabricate” and impose a classed, raced and gendered philosophy of praxis, as unique, that drives the field to an ideological surrealism and collective suicide. The article challenges curriculum studies to assume a non-abyssal position one that respects epistemological diversity. This requires an Itinerant Curriculum Theory, which is a commitment with da ruthless epistemological critique of every existing epistemology.