The Critical Divide: Knowledge About the Curriculum and the Concrete Problems of Curriculum Policy and Practice

• In Event: Fifty Years of International Curriculum Studies

Abstract

The growth of socially critically curriculum studies over the past decades is notable. Much of it constitutes a very real gain since curriculum occurs in specific social and cultural contexts of power relations. Yet, our task is not only that of understanding these contexts, but also of building workable alternatives in real schools, communities, and other settings. At the same time, some supposedly “critical” curriculum writing is largely rhetorical, unmoored from the realities that need to be taken seriously. Thus, the field faces very real dangers of having little to say about the concrete problems of curriculum policy and practice, at the very same time when

Author

• Michael W. Apple, University of Wisconsin - Madison