Fomenting Flows: The Special Role of Review Issues for International and Intergenerational Dialogue

• In Event: Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies (CACS): Provoking Educational Research Across Canada: Knowledge, Dissemination, and the Public Good

Abstract

In recent years, Curriculum Inquiry has been dedicating the first issue of each volume to different kinds of “reviews,” inviting authors across the field to engage the extant literature through commentary, critique, and discussion. As editors, we have used this first issue as a way to experiment with different ways of engaging in the process of “reviewing” the literature, both “classic” as well as new works. We have explored different ways of engaging both emerging as well as well-established scholars, and scholars around globe, in order to foment the flow of ideas and a broader discussion about the field. In this paper I will share some reflections on some of these strategies, focusing particularly on those that seek to engage scholars across generations as well as across national boundaries. The paper will draw on my experience as an editor working with authors to develop different kinds of “review” articles, as well as a general commentary on the work involved in such projects and their potential “impact” on the field. The paper will explore how we as editors work with "review" authors on notions of "originality" or its other criteria of relevance, and how this these criteria evolve as we negotiate the editorial process with authors working across various boundaries. We will consider whether and how this process ultimately extends or delimits what it means to know and how national topographies in curriculum studies are recast in the process, perhaps in directions that may both reflect and challenge conceptions of "horizontality" and "verticality."

Author

• Ruben Gaztambide-Fernandez, OISE/University of Toronto