Curriculum as Contestation


Book Description

In 2015 a social movement swept across the South African higher education sector fuelled by the anger of the ‘born free’ generation, the students born into post-apartheid South Africa. The movement found solidarity in other parts of the globe where the past decade has witnessed the rise of student protests in the UK, the US, Chile, Turkey and Hong Kong to name a few. While the demands are specific to national contexts, the underlying obstacles of economic, cultural and political access into higher education are consistent. These protests have put a spotlight on the global academy that, like the society of which it is a part, is increasingly characterized by inequality. At its core these movements call for a more socially just higher education system. This call is profoundly dissonant to the dominant neoliberal discourses currently shaping higher education. Against the backdrop of these discourses there has been an unprecedented pressure on higher education curricula. This edited collection is dedicated to exploring what a socially just curriculum reform agenda might involve. The authors share a commitment to socially just curricula and a concern about the ways in which curricula are deeply implicated in the processes of producing and reproducing inequality. Each chapter opens up a different vista on the contested curriculum space drawing on a range of theoretical tools – Archer, Bernstein, Giroux, and Maton to name a few – to illuminate the contestation. Perhaps even more importantly they also draw on a range of voices from both inside and outside the academy. This book was originally published as a special issue of Teaching in Higher Education.




The Curriculum


Book Description

This new edition of the classic text extends the scope of critically-oriented work in curriculum studies.




Pipeline Pedagogy: Teaching About Energy and Environmental Justice Contestations


Book Description

The proliferation of pipelines to transport oil and natural gas represents a major area of contestation in the landscape of energy development. Battles over energy pipelines pit private landowners, local community representatives, and environmentalists against energy corporations and industry supporters, sometimes drawing opposition and attention from well beyond the impacted regions, as in the case of the Standing Rock/Dakota Access Pipeline. Stakeholders must navigate complex government regulatory processes, interpret technical and scientific reports, and endure lengthy and expensive court battles. As with other forms of environmental injustice, the contentious construction of pipelines often disproportionately impacts communities of lower economic development, people of color, and indigenous peoples; pipelines also pose potential short and long-term health and safety threats. With the expansion of energy pipelines carrying fracked oil and gas across the United States and abroad, the moment is ripe for teaching about pipeline projects and engaging students and community members in learning about methods for mobilization. Our volume examines pedagogical opportunities, challenges, and interventions that campus-community engagement, and other kinds of community engagement, produce in relation to infrastructuring in the form of pipeline development.




Globalization and Education


Book Description

We offer in this book a collection of chapters that reflect a broad range of issues linking globalization to education in an accessible yet theoretically grounded and detailed form. The authors analyze phenomena on the global plane, in local spaces, and in the connections between the global and the local. New developments such as the growing impact of technology on education, the emergence of new policy actors, the growing expansion and segmentation of higher education, the salience of human rights, among others, are emerging as powerful agendas shaping all levels of education. In fundamental ways, the forces of globalization challenge the previous approaches and theories of national development. Recognizing the areas of convergence, dissonance, and conflict should help us grasp with greater clarity the implications of globalization for education and knowledge in the XXI century. The contributors to this book include both well-known scholars in the field of comparative education as well as young scholars. The chapters present a balanced geographical coverage in terms of authors and the countries/regions examined. The second edition has been thoroughly updated throughout and contains seven new chapters. The expanding interest in the intersection of education and globalization has brought up several new topics, including: the salience of global education policies, notably EFA; the expansion and differentiation of higher education; the emphasis on work-related training; the increasing role of non-state actors such as the transnational corporations; and greater attention to human rights. Also in this new edition is a chapter on qualitative methodologies especially suitable to the understanding of the intersection of globalization and education.




Bridging Educational Leadership, Curriculum Theory and Didaktik


Book Description

This volume argues for the need of a common ground that bridges leadership studies, curriculum theory, and Didaktik. It proposes a non-affirmative education theory and its core concepts along with discursive institutionalism as an analytical tool to bridge these fields. It concludes with implications of its coherent theoretical framing for future empirical research.Recent neoliberal policies and transnational governance practices point toward new tensions in nation state education. These challenges affect governance, leadership and curriculum, involving changes in aims and values that demand coherence. Yet, the traditionally disparate fields of educational leadership, curriculum theory and Didaktik have developed separately, both in terms of approaches to theory and theorizing in USA, Europe and Asia, and in the ways in which these theoretical traditions have informed empirical studies over time. An additional aspect is that modern education theory was developed in relation to nation state education, which, in the meantime, has become more complicated due to issues of 'globopolitanism'. This volume examines the current state of affairs and addresses the issues involved. In doing so, it opens up a space for a renewed and thoughtful dialogue to rethink and re-theorize these traditions with non-affirmative education theory moving beyond social reproduction and social transformation perspectives. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.




Curriculum Politics, Policy, Practice


Book Description

Studies the intersections of curriculum politics and policy-making throughout the world.




Education and Power


Book Description

In his seminal volume first published in 1982 Michael Apple articulates his theory on educational institutions and the reproduction of unequal power relations and provides a thorough examination of the ways in which race-gender-class dynamics are embedded in, and reflected through, curricular issues. This second edition contains a re-examination of earlier arguments as well as reflections on recent changes in education.




Schooling, Society and Curriculum


Book Description

Schooling, Society and Curriculum offers a much needed reassessment and realignment of curriculum studies in the UK and international contexts. Comprising a collection of eleven original chapters by prominent, nationally and internationally known experts in the field of curriculum studies, the book leads and fosters critical, generic debates about formal education and its relationships to wider society. Focusing on key debates that have been present for as long as formal state education has been in existence, the contributors contextualise them within a future-orientated perspective that takes particular account of issues specific to life in the early years of the twenty-first century. These include globalisation and nationalism; poverty and wealth; what it means to be a good citizen; cultural pluralism and intolerance; and - centrally - what it is that young people need from a school curriculum in order to develop as happy, socially just adults in an uncertain and rapidly-changing world. The book is organized into four sections: issues and contexts values and learners school curricula in the digital age exploring the possible: globalisation, localisation and utopias.




Practice Theory Perspectives on Pedagogy and Education


Book Description

This book examines the way in which the “practice turn” in education and pedagogy offers unique perspectives on the nature of educational work. Through a plurality of “practice theories” deeper understandings emerge about a range of education and concepts, providing useful tools for advancing and developing practice theory in education and pedagogy. The book discusses the related and dual perspectives of pedagogy as both a teaching and an upbringing practice. It also explores education in a range of contexts and sectors beyond school, including VET, tertiary and non-formal settings. Education is seen as serving a dual purpose – the development of individuals and the betterment of societies and community, and this conceptualisation of education underpins the book. It acknowledges that there are diverse understandings and perspectives of practice theory, pedagogy and education, each of which is contestable and ripe for further development, and this is examined throughout the book. This book was developed alongside an invited symposium held in June 2015 in Brisbane, Australia where the authors and interested others gathered to discuss practice theory perspectives on pedagogy and education. The title – Practice Theory Perspectives on Pedagogy and Education – captures the central overarching focus that underpins the book.




Curriculum in Context


Book Description

This critical analysis locates Irish curriculum policy and practice in their broader socio-cultural and policy contexts. Such an analysis is particularly necessary at a time when Irish schools are experiencing unprecedented waves of curriculum reform in a context where substantive curriculum debates rarely occur. The book explores the implications of these contextual factors for 'official' understandings of and attitudes towards curriculum, with particular reference to the experiences of the curriculum development agencies, recent curriculum reforms and the nature of Irish curriculum contestation and discourse. Education and curriculum policy-making are considered from the perspectives of economic growth, social inclusion, policy fragmentation and the prevailing representational model of partnership. The study identifies the tensions that inevitably arise in attempting to achieve both quality and equality in education, and offers some alternatives to the prevailing contractual model of accountability. The author draws on his own long experience of curriculum development and evaluation and on interviews with key players in Irish curriculum decision-making.




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