Reading and Revising History: Educational Leadership as Currere

• In Event: 32.022 - Bridging Educational Leadership and Curriculum Theory/Didaktik for Achieving Educational Opportunity in an Era of Globopolitanism

Abstract

Objectives or purpose. This paper is an essay that provides a century long socio-cultural history as it relates to curriculum aims, ideals and educational leadership from the 1890s and the 1990s.

Perspectives or theoretical framework. 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, 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 (2013a) and Author (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 (1972) genealogy, identify the discontinuities and new beginnings, which challenge contemporary school leadership theories as progress in terms of school improvement.

Methods, techniques or modes of inquiry and data sources. 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.

Substantiated conclusions. In this essay, we make the case that reclaiming and recentering education is first and foremost a research responsibility reflected in the designs and methods of studying teaching, learning and leading. That responsibility is professionally grounded in social relationships across curriculum studies and educational leadership. The reconciliation we seek is about reconstruction how we know what we know and how researchers and practitioners can come together over meanings of theory and practice, and enter into a meaningful praxis that will restore research and learning to a transformational experiment.

Scientific or scholarly significance. In this essay, we provide powerful historical examples of vertical cosmopolitanism and the need for multicultural education as well as an analysis of the ways in which globalization, cosmopolitanism, and external accountability policies have profoundly affected curriculum work-leadership in the United States.

Authors

• Ira E. Bogotch, Florida Atlantic University

• Dilys Schoorman, Florida Atlantic University

• Daniel Reyes-Guerra, Florida Atlantic University