Stories to Learn By: Children's Curriculum Making and Identity Making in Schools

• In Event: Experiences of Identity and Knowledge

Abstract

This inquiry explored children’s curriculum making and identity making around learning in schools. Curriculum making is understood as a dynamic and ongoing process of meaning making through experience. This perspective positions curriculum broadly as a course of life, shifts curriculum making beyond the bounds of school, and makes the composition of stories to live by central to the curriculum-making process. From this research, three threads emerged; Children’s stories to learn by are: a) mediated by relationships with teachers; b) are connected to and shaped by dominant stories of curriculum in schools; and c) are shaped by complex home and school social contexts. This work is significant for educators as they attend to children’s meaning making in schools through educational practice.

Author

• Derek A Hutchinson, The University of Kansas