Curriculum Theorizing With Young People Who Are Oppressed: Seeking Spaces to Ask What Is Worthwhile

• In Event: 67.038 - Light in Curriculum Studies: Reflections on William Schubert's Five Decades of Curriculum Theorizing and Praxis

Abstract

Students and teachers need to learn from and with one another (Schubert, 1986/1997, 1991). Despite the common belief that underserved and marginalized Black and other minority students in urban areas cannot address basic curriculum questions about who benefits, the presenter demonstrates possibilities of “making spectacular things happen” in an era of standardization and commodification. In suburban areas, parents and students desire education that is separated from the dominating testing madness. The presenter shows that teachers, administrators, parents, and students can liberate themselves from institutionalized state mandates to invent curricula that help all students to actualize their highest potential in education and life.

This presentation and dialogue with other presenters will draw upon the following background illustrated with anecdotes:

Schubert is an elected member of Professors of Curriculum since 1981. He was named as a Fellow of the International Academy of Education in 1997. He is recipient of both the 2004 Lifetime Achievement Award in Curriculum Studies from the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the 2007 Mary Anne Raywid Award for educational excellence from the Society of Professors of Education. Schubert has published 18 books and over 250 articles and chapters (as well as numerous poems and theatrical expressions) on curriculum history, theory, and development in and out of schools, and has lectured widely on these topics throughout the United States, in China, Korea, Germany, Canada, and Mexico, among other places. Schubert has served as president of the Society of Professors of Education, the John Dewey Society, The Society for the Study of Curriculum History, chair and program chair of the AERA SIG on Creation and Utilization of Curriculum Knowledge (now the AERA SIG on Critical Issues in Curriculum and Cultural Studies), program co-chair (with Ann Lopez Schubert), secretary, and vice-president of AERA for Division B (Curriculum Studies) and a member of the AERA Council, as well as a founder of the SIG on Peace Education. Earlier in his career, Schubert was an elementary school teacher who taught in self-contained classrooms and helped design and teach in an open-space school; he designed learning packages that enabled multi-text experiences in several subjects, and began a theatrical performance approach to teaching, which he has parlayed in his university teaching, consulting, and lecturing to illuminate different orientations to key educational issues, as illustrated in this books and articles.

Author

• Brian D. Schultz, Miami University