Tracing the Field: Toward a Different Narrative of the Growth and Decline of Curriculum Studies in North America

• In Event: 75.015 - Advocacy and Activism in Curriculum Studies: Reconceptualizing the Field

Abstract

This presentation provides a counter (parallel) narrative on the state of the curriculum field by tracing curriculum programs and positions through North American universities over the past thirty years. Here my interest is in what might be learned through the study of sites for curriculum work historically and how they relate to present possibilities. In parallel, I trace the careers of select curriculum scholars to better understand the ways in which they moved intellectually, what was left behind, and what was created within their new academic communities. The idea here is to map historic traces to examine if institutions have maintained commitments to the field over time, particularly their growth or decline. As a doubled study, tracing scholars and their routes toward advancement in curriculum studies, or redirection to other foci and interests, speaks to whether there is a long-term viability within the field for scholars.
Against ongoing claims for decades that the field is morbid, arrested, and “stuck” (see Pinar, The Character of Curriculum Studies: Bildung, Currere, and the Recurring Question of the Subject), this presentation focuses on an empirical study of the field and its work to examine its character and possibility over time. Mapping institutional structures longitudinally teaches us about the range of opportunity for advocacy and activism in the field, particularly as higher education moves toward corporate models for operationalizing education. It also teaches us about the decisions scholars make, and the opportunities available, and to whom, when one pursues curriculum studies as a field. By conducting this research, first presented in this essay, what becomes possible is a different narrative of growth and decline, one that might help readers understand, what is the field of Curriculum Studies ceased to exist? Or, never existed at all?

Author

• Erik L. Malewski, Kennesaw State University