The Affecting Force of Personal Remembering on Curricular Policy Interpretations

• In Event: Millennium Hotel Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: Curriculum and the Culture(s) of Memory, Time, and History

Abstract

While the affect of material bodies is political, the force of prompted remembering can profoundly influence curricular policy interpretations. Engaging a gerundive tack to envision affect as continually affecting frees theorists from having to reify material bodies, a move that backgrounds the notion that they are always inextricable parts of the assemblages that shape them. To consider affect as agential legitimates the productive political implications of remembering. I examine this argument through analysis of a qualitative study about how prompted remembering of encounters with natural environments impacts interpretations of a New Zealand curricular health and environmental guideline. I find it personalized policy interpretations and schooling suggestions, and encouraged respondents to discuss the vast complexity of related issues.

Author

• Mary Chang, Independent Scholar