Reading and Revising History: Educational Leadership as Currere

• In Event: 46.021 - Theory, History, Debates, and Paradigm Wars: Whence the Field of Educational Administration?

Abstract

This paper provides a century long socio-cultural history as it relates to curriculum and educational leadership from the 1890s to the 1990s. Combining the histories of curriculum and educational leadership requires not just a careful reading of their distinct histories, but also what William Pinar (1975, 2004) called currere or a complicated conversation. Hence, the need for revising history: the very act of revision transforms history from an inert study [as in memorization] of past ideas, accomplishments, and facts to both a theory and method for understanding and challenging current practices as they relate to social, political, and economic dynamics of the day.
In addition to Pinar’s currere, this paper synthesizes approaches to history as presented by Michel Foucault (1972), John Dewey (1920/1952) and Jackie Blount (2008). By focusing on one century divided by its socio-political dynamics into eras, we not only can highlight the distinct political, social and economic contexts of those eras, but also, using Foucault’s genealogy, identify the discontinuities and new beginnings which challenge contemporary school leadership theories as progress in terms of school improvement. Foucault closely read various histories as an historian and linguist, observing dramatic changes over time in language and normative practices. His multiple readings of history identified the dissensus of ideas influenced by changes in power and knowledge. Dewey’s reading of philosophy transposed history into an educational process of social constructions and subsequent reconstructions in terms of growth, development, and experiences. Like Foucault, his ideas were radical departures from the dominant enlightenment views which objectified eras and facts as criteria for determining truth and values. For Dewey, history is brought into the present to revise existing knowledge. All of which makes the reading and revising of history a matter of teaching and motivating (Bogotch, 2005) in order to heighten awareness and help in asking “powerful questions about our future directions” (Blount, 2008, p. 19).
The multiple readings of history allow us to trace school reforms across temporal eras and make plain how social and political forces interact in influencing policies and practices, and to identify the ethical and educational values behind curricular and pedagogical decisions as a guide for future actions. Specifically, the socio-cultural eras begin with the NEA curriculum debates regarding humanistic developments as the foundation of education (W.T. Harris, 1880s-1890s) in contrast with the scientific data (e.g., Stuart Hall and John Dewey, 1890s-1920s). From there, the introduction of scientific management (F. Taylor and Franklin Bobbitt, 1911- 1930s) into both curriculum development and school administration is examined. The paper investigates how education as policy and practice came together during the two world wars and during the interceding economic depression (1914-1918, 1939-1945), only to see those previous decades of consensus turn to violence and dissensus during the era of desegregation (1954ff). These debates were temporally halted as the nation came together in response to the cold war (1946-1991); but here, too, the center did not hold as so-called crises, real and manufactured, emerged. Implications for school leadership theory and practice are discussed.

Author

• Ira E. Bogotch, Florida Atlantic University